Paul Morris on September 22, 2017, 3:34 am

Does iOS 11 Slow Down Your iPhone?

Does iOS 11 slow down your iPhone with its revamped animations and such? Here we take a look at this in a side-by-side speed test comparison with iOS 10.3.3.

If the general reaction to iOS 11 is anything to go by then you are likely sitting in one of three camps. You are either very happy with the update and how it’s performing on your device, noticing some bugs and niggles in the firmware but other than that are generally content, or have noticed significant performance issues on your device since iOS 11 update was installed. While Apple will most certainly fix the bugs in an upcoming update, and the first set of people are perfectly happy, what about those who are experiencing a sluggish performance as a result of iOS 11 update?

What’s particularly interesting about a lot of the negative reports and concerns being posted on different social media sites and forums is that there is no real common denominator that would explain why performance issues are occurring on certain devices. YouTube channel EverythingApplePro has taken the opportunity to look at how iOS 11 performs against iOS 10.3.3 on various devices from a speed test perspective as well as running the devices through a Geekbench benchmarks test. And the results are quite interesting.

One thing that you will immediately notice is that the iOS 11 devices under test here doesn’t show any immediate signs of lagging or having obscene performance issues when actually interact with them, which is what is being reported by a lot of users. However, a cold boot takes slightly longer on iOS 11 than it does on iOS 10.3.3, which is likely due to the fact that iOS 11 is a bigger operating system and has additional assets to load that aren’t part of iOS 10.3.3. The speed test also shows that iOS 11 lags behind iOS 10.3.3 in some areas such as app launching likely due to a different app opening and closing animation, but actually reacts quicker in others.

The Geekbench scores are all marginally higher on iOS 10.3.3, meaning that iOS 11 doesn’t actually get as much out of the hardware than iOS 10.3.3 does. This will definitely change with iPhone 8 and iPhone X. Still, there are very interesting results and definitely food for thought.

If you have been experiencing any issues on your device since iOS 11 was installed and are concerned about them, or just want to try and put it right, you can check out our guide containing a few handy tips on how to reduce any lag that you maybe facing on iOS 11 compared to iOS 10.3.x: Speed Up Or Fix iOS 11 Lag On iPhone, iPad, iPod touch [Tips].