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iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

macrumors.com

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Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#11

Post by bartread »

I ran a 5S that I bought in December 2013 as my primary phone all the way up to around March 2020, just as the pandemic was really winding up.

The battery, after ailing for a little while, had eventually just given up. I'd gone skiing a couple of times, with the last trip being just before lockdown, and I think it was the cold exposure of the second trip that dealt the mortal blow, and it died shortly after I returned.

I liked that phone a lot. It did, at the time, everything I needed, and it was a really nice size, but that period in 2020 was a bad time to try to get a phone repaired. I did attempt to replace the battery myself using the guide on iFixit but, sadly, that did not go well due to some contradictory/out of order instructions, and all I succeeded in doing was damaging the phone, I think, beyond repair.

Really good to see that Apple are still supporting them though.

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#13

Post by jauntywundrkind »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #12

I love it when companies keep their old hardware updated. Instills great confidence. AMD drops support as soon as it possibly can for "old" GPUs.

Not AMD doing the work, but 14 year old GCN 1 / 1.1 has been getting a bunch of modernization & other improvements. R9 290, HD 7970, many more old chips. https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-SI-Power-Management https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-GCN-1.1-Driver-Default-Pro...

AMD might not be doing the work, but they set the world up to be able to support their chips. I'd take that over crossing my fingers for ok Windows driver support to hold out any day.

Top range of these cards had (only 8GB) of 0.3TB/s memory, which is what a modern 9060xt can do. Double that for the 9070xt, but still not bad. 4->~48 (fp32) TFLOPS though, wow! Especially with a modern driver stack. With the accelerators all using much older architectures I wonder if they stand to get any benefit, not that they're getting used for graphics much.

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#14

Post by nomel »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #10
mrandish wrote: post #7

I'm not a fan of Apple's walled garden mindset and resistance to inter-operating with other platforms, but this degree of legacy support is a case of Apple doing a good thing and deserves praise. Note: I'm not saying that Google/MSFT et al are much better than Apple, but they're not quite as bad.

I know folks that have 18-month-old flagship Android phones, that can’t get the latest Android releases. When they ask me what Android phones to get, I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion. They are also excellent phones.

"Just jailbreak your phone and install !" they said.

I did that for a while, depending on some random guy in a forum to maintain a working image for my device. He bought a new phone, and that was the end of the updates.

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#15

Post by AndrewDavis »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #10
mrandish wrote: post #7

I'm not a fan of Apple's walled garden mindset and resistance to inter-operating with other platforms, but this degree of legacy support is a case of Apple doing a good thing and deserves praise. Note: I'm not saying that Google/MSFT et al are much better than Apple, but they're not quite as bad.

I know folks that have 18-month-old flagship Android phones, that can’t get the latest Android releases. When they ask me what Android phones to get, I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion. They are also excellent phones.

I had a perfectly functional Galaxy A71 this time last year, still had great battery life, etc.

I had to replace it because it only has 5 years of support. Samsung offers 7 years of support but only on their top tier phones.

Google offer 7 years, even on their A series phones so I chose a pixel 9a. It's fine, I don't love it or hate it, but it's not doing anything I care about better than my last phone.

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#16

Post by tokyobreakfast »

Telaneo wrote: post #5
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #3

TLDR it replaces an expired certificate, no software is being "updated" here. Wake me when old versions of OS X can access the App Store again.

What versions can't access the App Store anymore? I've tried Catalina recently, and that still worked fine, but it only stopped getting security updates in 2022, so it's only been a few years. Also, I've barely ever used the OSX/MacOS app store anyway, and from what little I've heard from other people, it's not really all that great nor popular a place to get your software from.

> Also, I've barely ever used the OSX/MacOS app store anyway, and from what little I've heard from other people

Thanks for the advice.

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#17

Post by fouc »

bartread wrote: post #11

I ran a 5S that I bought in December 2013 as my primary phone all the way up to around March 2020, just as the pandemic was really winding up. The battery, after ailing for a little while, had eventually just given up. I'd gone skiing a couple of times, with the last trip being just before lockdown, and I think it was the cold exposure of the second trip that dealt the mortal blow, and it died shortly after I returne…

Just so you know, apparently it's reasonably straightforward to replace the battery of the iPhone 5s, even easier than the iPhone SE (same form factor) for whatever reason.

A few years ago I bought a replacement battery kit that came with everything needed for probably something like $10 from aliexpress. I never actually got around to doing the replacement yet but maybe this update will give me the excuse to dig it up and replace the battery too ha!

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#18

Post by fouc »

I wonder if this is because some people keep their iPhone 5s around as a backup phone or for some other reason?

My iPhone 5s is still attached to my apple account so a certificate update is probably useful security-wise? But that doesn't seem entirely likely because Apple's account automatically degrades the level of access depending on the age/model/OS version of the device.

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#19

Post by trelane »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #10
mrandish wrote: post #7

I'm not a fan of Apple's walled garden mindset and resistance to inter-operating with other platforms, but this degree of legacy support is a case of Apple doing a good thing and deserves praise. Note: I'm not saying that Google/MSFT et al are much better than Apple, but they're not quite as bad.

I know folks that have 18-month-old flagship Android phones, that can’t get the latest Android releases. When they ask me what Android phones to get, I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion. They are also excellent phones.

> I always say a Pixel, because they will at least get the latest OS support in a timely fashion.

You can also install e.g. GrapheneOS after Google stops supporting them. https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

Re: iPhone 5s Gets New Software Update 13 Years After Launch

#20

Post by [deleted] »

ezfe wrote: post #9
Telaneo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What versions can't access the App Store anymore? I've tried Catalina recently, and that still worked fine, but it only stopped getting security updates in 2022, so it's only been a few years. Also, I've barely ever used the OSX/MacOS app store anyway, and from what little I've heard from other people, it's not really all that great nor popular a place to get your software from.

10.12 appears to have issues

[deleted]
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