Apple has officially announced the release of iOS 16 on September 12, 2022, with the new iPhone software promising several interesting changes. These include an all-new lock screen experience, Live Text in videos, shared iCloud Photo Libraries for families, and more.
Unfortunately, as with any major software release, there comes a time when older devices need to be left off the list. Such is the case with iOS 16: It’s been a long time since Apple dropped support for older iPhones, so the writing has been on the wall for a while. Here are the details.
iOS 16 marks the end of the road for any iPhone released before 2017. This includes models such as:
However, iOS 16 will also mark the first time since iPhone OS 1.0 that not a single iPod device is on the list. The first iPod Touch came out in September 2007 with iPhone OS 1.1. Apple retired the iPod Touch family for good this year, and even though the last iPod Touch was released in 2019, it uses the same A10 chip as the iPhone 7.
Note that these iPhones will still work with iOS 15, but this does mark the path to obsolescence, as they will not be getting important security updates, and compatibility issues will eventually overtake them.
Here are the phones that will either receive the iOS 16 update or will launch with iOS 16:
However, some iOS 16 features will only be available on certain iPhone models. That’s especially true of features that need the A12 Bionic chip (first available on the iPhone XS line), which supports subject-capture in photos, live text for video, smart dictation, and more. That’s quite a few features that iPhone 8 models will miss out on. Certain features are only available on even newer models, like door detection for accessibility, which is only available on the iPhone 12 line and newer.
Four years is still a long time to support an older phone model with major software updates. It’s also the minimum bar for Apple, which already does far better than its competitors in this area. Consider that the iPhone 6S, which came out in 2015, has lived through six major software updates. It was released with iOS 9 and can still run iOS 15 today. It beat out the record set by the iPhone 5S, which ran iOS 7 through iOS 12.
Most believed that this year’s iOS release would mark the end of the road for the iPhone 6s and the original iPhone SE, both of which contained the same A9 chip. The iPhone 7 lineup was a bit more of a surprise, but it’s clear that Apple is drawing the line at the A11 — the first Apple chip to feature a Neural Engine for machine learning processing. That’s significant since so many of the new features in iOS 16 rely on machine learning. Even some features introduced in last year’s iOS 15 release were only available on newer iPhone models. The older ones lacked the artificial intelligence power to handle things like Live Text in Photos and on-device speech processing for Siri.
Those features actually require the A12 chip introduced with the 2019 iPhone 11. That’s because the original Neural Engine only had two cores. Apple upped that to eight cores in the A12 and later 16 cores in the A14. That second increase is why only the iPhone 12 and later support the iOS 15.4 feature that lets you use Face ID while wearing a mask.
Technology marches on, and sooner or later, Apple has to draw the line somewhere. Even today, folks who bought their last iPhone when Barack Obama was President and Star Wars: The Force Awakens was hitting theatres can still enjoy iOS 15. That’s a pretty good run when it comes to smartphone updates.
Merely days after the iPhone Duo hit the shelves, images of broken screens on the phone started popping up across social media. Until now, it’s been unclear what’s causing the line of defective pixels that appears vertically along the crease, as well as horizontally, on the phone’s inner display.
Apple has finally acknowledged the issue, which has shown up on iPhone Duo units owned by customers as well as demo units in stores. In a statement shared with Bloomberg, Apple says that not all iPhone Duo units are affected and that those that are tend to show the display fault early on. The company added that users who experience problems with their iPhone Duo display should contact AppleCare for a replacement.
Not long ago, Apple treated independent repair like an act of outright hostility. The Cupertino giant locked down parts with serial-number pairing, while repair tools remained firmly out of reach of anyone outside its authorized repair network. More importantly, the company waged a legal and lobbying battle against right-to-repair legislation.
I've covered enough of these fights over the years to know what a shift looks like. That's why what happened in October 2026 genuinely caught me off guard. The day the iPhone Duo went on sale, what may be the most mechanically complex iPhone to date, Apple pulled off a surprising about-face. It published teardown-style repair manuals for a handful of major components.
Apple's first foldable phone is now on shelves, in short supply, but with an unreal amount of buzz around it. After all, it's the first foldable iPhone, and there's plenty that this phone gets right. But there's also a lot that is either broken or underwhelming. What's peculiar is the dialogue around this phone, and how it has completely overshadowed every other attempt at making a phone with a similar form factor.
I've spent some time with the iPhone Duo, and I've used the Galaxy Z Fold 8 for almost three months now. In my opinion, Samsung deserves more credit. When the Galaxy Z Fold 8 arrived earlier this year, it was celebrated in some circles and ridiculed in others for supposedly copying what Apple would eventually deliver with the iPhone Duo. The dialogue was pretty odd, for multiple reasons. Samsung has been making foldable phones for years, so claiming that it copied a product Apple hadn't even launched was simply absurd.