When Apple unveiled iOS 27 at WWDC, the main highlight was artificial intelligence, which is only available on newer phones. The company spent a good portion of its keynote talking about the new Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, and other features that require the latest hardware to run. Unsurprisingly, this left owners of older iPhones wondering what exactly they would gain from the update.
After spending some time testing the iOS 27 beta on an iPhone 11 Pro Max (the oldest iPhone supported by the update), I can report that iOS 27 is just as important for older iPhones—maybe even more so. Although they’ll miss out on the latest AI features, iOS 27 may be the best update older iPhones have received in years.
If you’ve installed iOS 26 on an older iPhone, you’ve probably noticed that some things weren’t exactly smooth. Even some of the latest iPhones had some trouble running the fancy animations added with Liquid Glass.
Also, I recently wrote about how iOS 26 seemed noticeably buggy compared to other recent iOS releases. Animations stuttered more often, apps took longer to launch, and even basic system interactions sometimes felt sluggish.
Apple promised that iOS 27 would address many of these issues. While we only have access to the first beta of iOS 27, my tests with the iPhone 11 Pro Max show that the company was serious about improving performance, especially when it comes to old hardware.
iOS 27 will bring some design refinements to Liquid Glass, but the real improvements are with performance.
To get a better idea of how much has changed, I measured the time it takes to complete a handful of common tasks on the same iPhone 11 Pro Max running iOS 26 and iOS 27 beta 1.
I started with something simple that most people do every day: taking photos with their iPhone. On iOS 26, my iPhone 11 took 0.98 seconds to open the Camera app, then 3.61 seconds to take a photo and load it into my photo library.
I ran the test again with iOS 27, and the improvements were noticeable. Now it only takes about 0.65 seconds to open the Camera app, and 2.44 seconds to take a photo and immediately open it from the thumbnail preview. For users, this means a lower chance of missing an important shot because their phone is too slow.
Many iPhone users also rely on the Maps app every day, and on iOS 26, the iPhone 11 took a long 3.01 seconds to load it. With the first beta of iOS 27, the same iPhone now loads the Maps app in just 1.36 seconds. That’s twice as fast as on iOS 26.
Other actions, such as launching Safari, browsing the App Store, and opening the share sheet, are also noticeably faster in iOS 27.
Results are in seconds. Lower results/shorter bars are better.
On their own, these numbers won’t transform the experience. After all, we’re talking about fractions of a second in some cases. But when you’re running these tasks multiple times a day, every second adds up to minutes saved. And the whole system feels remarkably faster.
Performance benchmarks are only part of the story. What really makes iOS 27 better on the iPhone 11 is how much smoother the animations feel during everyday use.
Visuals everywhere appear more consistent and less prone to frame drops. Swiping to open Control Center is noticeably more fluid. Unlocking the phone feels more responsive. App transitions seem better optimized and less likely to hitch.
