How IOS 11 ruined my iPhone SE

I’m going to tell you how IOS 11 ruined my iPhone SE, but first a little background context for you.

I love the iPhone overall, ever since I got one, I’ve been a loyal user. I tried going to android once before, but came back within a few months. It’s not you, it’s me. However, one of my major gripes with the iPhone has always been the really crappy battery life. For instance, I went to teach a few Zumba classes in Brooklyn and before I made it back and forth from home to the gym, my iPhone 7 died.

Mind you, I enabled low power mode, dimmed it, went on airplane while underground, and tried my best not to turn the screen on at all. Even with all that, I couldn’t make it home. What about all that crap about 7 hours of usage, or whatever the number is?

It seems rather fair of me to expect to be able to ride the train to a few classes and then back home without my phone dying. Especially when I’ve turned off pretty much all of it’s functionality. Not to mention that I disabled any advanced graphics, push mail was changed to fetch, all app notifications are always off, and so on. This iPhone has been disabled damn near to the point of being a glorified iPod. Even so, it can’t make it to a class in BK and back home? That sucks!

So I became eligible to get an upgrade, but what phone to choose? With pictures and video of the iPhone 8 batteries blowing up to double the phone size, that sucker was out. Besides, I never like to buy the new phones before they’ve been around awhile. So instead of getting another fancy smancy new iPhone, I decided to try the iPhone SE, which according to reviews, and many users, seems to have the best battery life.

I initially had some trouble restoring my phone to the SE, but that’s because my 7 has IOS 10.3.3, and the SE came with 10.1. I figured I could get them on the same version, and found the image for 10.3.3, however, Apple, as they always do, wants to force us into using IOS 11. So, they stopped signing the earlier versions of IOS, and I couldn’t use it. I had no choice but to upgrade the SE to IOS 11 in order to restore my old phone to it.

So once I got the restore done, the battery on this thing was really, really good. However, since Apple forced me to update the IOS in order to be able to restore my backup from my original phone, once I put IOS 11 on it, though the battery was still good, the phone began to lag heavily and became frustratingly slow. Replying to text messages, refreshing apps, opening emails, etc, it all became super slow and delayed. The phone worked, but it was damn near unusable due to the heavy requirements of IOS 11 and the limited SE processor. I think the SE is either a 6 or 6S in a smaller form factor.

Unfortunately for me, I had to roll back to my 7. The only other option that I had to use the SE was to set it up as a “new phone” and not restore my backup. I was not interested in all that work or losing my settings. Since I was well within the 14 day return period, I sent the SE back. Now, I’m back on my 7, and trying to figure out what to do in terms of upgrading.

I really hate that Apple forces us to get their new crap by making our existing hardware unusable. The SE is solid phone, but it just doesn’t work with IOS 11. I wish they made a non-retina, lower graphic version of the iphone for those of us who prioritize better battery life. Perhaps by using one of the older screen technologies from the iphone 3 or whatever? This would use way less power for graphics, and they could keep the same OS and processor. The battery would last forever if so much didn’t go to power the damn graphics. Wishful thinking on my part I’m sure!

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