No iOS 16 for iPhone 6S: Goodbye to the Steve Jobs-Tim Cook masterpiece that outsold The Beatles

When during WWDC 2021, we found out that iPhone 6S and 6S Plus would receive iOS 15, we were both shocked and thrilled because everyone was expecting iOS 14 to be the last software update iPhone 6S was going to get.

Anyway, nearly seven years after the original launch of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, the phones remains surprisingly usable. My unit has a brand new battery, which makes it a viable option for a backup device in 2022 when your main phone dies or is out for repair.

Sure, after six OS updates and seven years of existence, the iPhone 6S feels slow and sometimes even laggy when pushed a harder. However, in no way does this stop you from making calls, texting, watching YouTube videos, and scrolling through social media, which is what most people do on their phones anyway. Any serious gaming isn't an option on the 6S anymore, both because of the old chip but mostly because of the tiny battery, which will tap out in no time.

Still, the fact that this ancient iPhone is running the same version of iOS as the latest and greatest iPhone 13 Pro Max and covers the basics is something to applaud Apple for!

It’s (almost) time to move on from Apple's timeless design: How iPhone 6 and 6S became the best-selling smartphones of all time

When launched in 2014, the original iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were met with mixed opinions. iPhone 5 was the last iPhone designed by Steve Jobs & Co, and people loved the compact form-factor. The bigger iPhone 6 and huge iPhone 6 Plus seemed out of the ordinary, but Apple had to adhere to the trend of bigger devices.

Gladly, iPhone users jumped on board in no time! In fact, people bought enough iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S units to make Apple's 2014 and 2015 devices the best-selling smartphones in history, and no iPhone or Android device has managed to come close until today.

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S sold about 400 millions units during their lifespan, which is about the total number of physical albums, physical singles, digital albums, digital singles, LPs, and streams sold by The Beatles - the best-selling music artists of all-time.

iPhone SE (2022) will keep the iconic home button around for another five years, but then it's really over

And for those who are deeply in love with the iPhone 6S’s vintage design (which probably makes it the most recognizable smartphone ever) or simply don't want to spend more than $400 for a new iPhone, the 2022 iPhone SE... exists and it's more powerful and capable than ever!

In fact, the iPhone SE has enough horsepower to keep going and stick around for at least another five years, thanks to the iPhone 13's A15 Bionic chip, which lives inside the SE. So, yes, the timeless iPhone 6 look might still be somewhat relevant in 2027. Let that sink in…

For the iPhone SE fans out there, it's important to note that Ross Young, display analyst and leakster with a 100% track record, reports that the next iPhone SE will come with Apple's newer design, meaning the SE (2022) is quite literally the last iPhone 6-looking Apple device we've seen.

iPhone software support in the future: Will new iPhones get 6-7 years of software updates?

Speaking of software support and older iPhones, we can't ignore the iPhone 7 series, mostly because it seems like the absence of iOS 16 on this model has upset some users who wouldn't like to give up their old iPhone... So, let me clear the air!

Apple's decision to extend the iPhone 6S's software support to six years of iOS updates was something new, unexpected, and unusual back in 2021. As mentioned at the beginning of the story, the standard amount of iOS updates for an iPhone is five - it's plenty, and it still makes the iPhone the longest-supported phone in the world (ahead of Samsung's flagships which now get four years of OS updates).

So, technically Apple was supposed to drop software support for the iPhone 6S last year, meaning that iOS 16 was never meant to come to iPhone 7 anyway - as it happened. The decision to keep iPhone 6S fresh for an extra year made it seem as if Apple cut off two iPhones from the OS update cycle at the same time, but as you now know - that's not exactly the case. Although, technically it is the case.

Software support for current and upcoming iPhones

So, although it seems like Apple wants to support iPhones for more than five years, as shown with the iPhone 6S, there might be a few challenges in Cupertino's way...

The first one's obviously the processors that power the iPhones - the older the chip - the less likely it is to be able to run new features that demand more power to operate fluidly (which is key for Apple). The other reason could be... RAM. Random Access Memory (as absolutely no one ever calls it), is crucial for running multiple tasks at once and keeping apps operating in the background.

It's a public secret that old and even current iPhones are rather conservative when it comes to RAM, mostly because of Apple's great optimization, which manages to make the most out of the scarce 2GB of RAM in phones like the iPhone 8 or 4GB of RAM in an iPhone 13. For reference, the standard for Android flagships is 8GB of RAM, which often grows to 12-16GB if you choose to pay for more storage.

Anyway, if we look at the most recent events, what we know for sure is that iPhone 7 updates weren't terminated because of low RAM since iPhone 7 has just as much RAM as the iPhone 8 (2GB), which is definitely getting iOS 16.

So, it's going to be quite interesting to see how things unfold next year with iOS 17. iPhone 8 and iPhone X run on the same A11 Bionic chip, but obviously, they look like they are years apart. Furthermore, iPhone X has 3GB of RAM, which might make a difference or at least a good excuse for Apple to keep OS updates for this model around for an extra year - like they did with iPhone 6S.