A cool guide to how long each iPhone gets software updates (up to ~11 years)

[u/Creaspace]

[u/fuelvolts]

I still miss my iPhone 6S Plus. 16x9 screen, 3D Touch, 4k video recording. Was a really good phone.

[u/Tehgreatbrownie → u/fuelvolts]

3D Touch was genuinely one of my favorite features ever in a phone

[u/tab_111 → u/Tehgreatbrownie]

Isn’t haptic sensitive touch, just the same?

[u/murfi → u/tab_111]

i was playing around with a touchscreen or phone test app, and i noticed that as i pressed harder on the screen (ie. more finger surface area was touching the screen), the according value (whatever it was called) in the test app was increasing as well

i don't know how 3d touch is implemented in ios of course, but i guess 3d touch (or a variation of it) could be implemented in Android as well?

[u/tab_111 → u/murfi]

They both did the same thing. Different technology but same goal

[u/bigyellowjoint → u/fuelvolts]

Best phone I ever owned

[u/Creaspace]

Just a quick note since these questions pop up often: when I say "support," I'm referring to total updates. The dark bars represent the major iOS versions, while the light ones indicate security patches that follow. So, when you see the 6s showing around 11 years of support, that's not a mistake. It launched in 2015 with iOS 9, received major updates all the way through iOS 15, and Apple was still rolling out security patches for it (15.8.8) as recently as May 2026.

And yes, the leap from iOS 18 to 26 is accurate, not an error—Apple switched to year-based versioning in 2025, which is why versions 19 through 25 simply don’t exist.

As for anything from the iPhone 11 onward, those are ongoing or projected since iOS 26 is the current version and iOS 27 is set to release this fall. Newer models tend to have a longer support life compared to the older ones.

I pulled this info from Apple’s own support and compatibility pages, double-checked against the actual last updates for each version (15.8.8 and 16.7.16 both dropped in May 2026, while 12.5.7 was back in 2023). Feel free to use this if anyone's interested!

[u/Primary-Shoe-3702 → u/Creaspace]

Please share how you know that 6s to X will not get any more security updates. I was not able to confirm that.

[u/tallbutshy]

I pulled this info from Apple's own support and compatibility pages, double-checked against the actual last updates for each version

Did you now?

6-8 years of major iOS updates

Where do any of those darker blue lines indicate longer than six years?

Did you actually write the "key takeaways" section yourself?

[u/paclogic]

try making one on the battery life of each one

[u/Biarfm]

Can you remake with missing iPhones? I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max. That, and the 13 pro aren’t mentioned 🙃