iOS How an iPhone Dies

[Heisen]

Hello folks,

Here are my findings about the slow death of an iPhone, based on my iPhone 6S 64GB bought in 2015 and still going.

The phone is in service, had gone through multiple users in the family, the phone still turns on, runs smoothly, Home button and silent switch are giving problem intermittently but with assisted touch feature everything works, and it gets through a day. But here’s what no longer works after almost 10 years and why that matters:

---

1. Banking Apps Stopped Working​

Most banking apps just stopped working.
Their are some exceptions like ICICI Bank, which I’ll explain shortly.

2. UPI No Longer Works​

Due to government guidelines, UPI apps no longer support UPI registration on older iOS versions (around 5–6 years old or more) and it's the same on android.
All UPI apps now show this message

“Due to government regulations, UPI registration is not supported on this version of iOS. Please update your OS.”

Which, of course, isn’t possible on a device this old.

My theory?
These guidelines indirectly killed banking apps too because most of them have UPI capability.
Instead of maintaining two versions (one with UPI and one without), banks likely chose to discontinue support entirely.
ICICI, however, still supports an app version without UPI, which is why it still works.

3. Some Apps Don't Install​

OpenAI’s ChatGPT app now requires iOS 16 or 17.
But instead of letting users download an older compatible version, they've disabled that option.
(App developers can choose whether to allow older versions OpenAI chose not to.)

Deepseek works though.

4. YouTube Still Works​

The latest YouTube app requires newer iOS too, but here’s the difference:
YouTube gives you the option to download an older compatible version.

When you try to install it, the App Store says:

“This version can’t be installed. Would you like to download an older version?”
Tap Yes, and it works. Simple and smart.

5. Social Apps (Mostly) Still Alive​

Apps like Instagram and WhatsApp still work fine.
However, WhatsApp recently dropped support for devices older than the 6S.

So I think you could say that these general popular social apps will easily work for 10 years after the phone is launched.

6. iMessage Never Dies​

Even if your other apps stop working, iMessage keeps going.
iPhones older than 6S still works for texting and FaceTime between iOS users.
So if all else fails, Apple’s own ecosystem still has your back.

Final Thoughts​

It’s funny we often worry about how many years of software updates a phone gets.
But in the end, it wasn’t Apple/Android that pulled the plug.

The government effectively ended UPI access on older phones, making even a 10-year-old phone that still gets security updates suddenly feel obsolete.

That was the hardest blow.
Especially if someone is relying on just one phone for everything.

It’s kind of sad, honestly.

 

[mayank4823]

Security patches are there for a reason. Once your phone stops getting that, banking apps become more and more vulnerable as time passes. iPhones live long. 10 years is a lot and you should be proud.

 

[Woonz]

This is my first iPhone (6s), a gift I received during my first year of college back in 2015. The Spigen cover has eroded over the years but I’ve done my best to preserve it. And yes, I agree with everything you mentioned. The phone is still functional but I disabled the software updates a couple of years ago. To me it is just a piece of nostalgia.

 

[Rob126]

in iPhone 7 plus gpay still works but banking app stopped working. So Upi has longer lifespan

 

[Heisen]

in iPhone 7 plus gpay still works but banking app stopped working. So Upi has longer lifespan

It is working because registration is done before the govt guideline, if you delete the app and re-install and try to re-register UPI, you are done. You won't be able to.

in iPhone 7 plus gpay still works but banking app stopped working. So Upi has longer lifespan

One more key information for you.

There is also a bug going on in latest version of whatsapp, this bug triggers on iPhone 6s, 6 plus, 7, 7 plus and 1st gen SE, if you delete whatsapp and re-install, re-register your number you will be stuck at black/white screen.

This bug is not iOS related, is an issue in whatsapp app. Whatsapp still supports these phones. Hopefully in next whatsapp update this will be fixed.

 

[TechUser00]

After USA and China, India is the third largest producer of E-Waste.
Right to repair should be a fundamental thing. And for any electronic device we as a customer should be allowed to use the device as long the hardware become absolute.
iPhones dont have custom rom but it should be made available. Atleast android have this option.
Security patches should be make available over internet for everyone who wants to install can install and run the device.
I understand it's not economically viable to support a device so long but major security vulnerability patches should be made available for all to install separately outside the scope of the Android version updates.

 

[nikola]

I hate out govt., how UPI can run on Android 5 10 years old os but not on ios 16 3.5 years old os?

 

[Heisen]

I hate out govt., how UPI can run on Android 5 10 years old os but not on ios 16 3.5 years old os?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think govt is not biased. Same restriction is also on android, it is probably working because UPI was setup before the ban and it will continue to work. If you delete the app and re-install, try to re-register your number for UPI, I don't think it will work.

 

[ninjenstein]

It’s really curious, is it still snappy if you don’t do much on it? If it gets through a day that’s crazy. Many newer phones don’t get through a day without battery getting exhausted!

 

[Heisen]

It’s really curious, is it still snappy if you don’t do much on it? If it gets through a day that’s crazy. Many newer phones don’t get through a day without battery getting exhausted!

It is snappy just like it was new, yes the lag is there by today standards but there are no choppy animations, if we attempt to do something big the phone just waits and then it does it gracefully.

A lot of people are still using this phone, I just found out through reddit, while I was setting up whatsapp on it and due to some bug in the latest app version, it is not working. So many threads on reddit people complaining about that whatsapp bug, but that bug only triggers on very old iPhones. So this phone is still in use. Probably that's why apple sent a security update this year.

It can last a day definitely with a healthy battery.

I replaced battery 4 times, did it myself. I actually ended up buying more than 4 batteries over 9 years, but few failed, you can immediately tell in a day after booting with new battery, if it is good or not, most of them third party ones were not, they were draining very fast. From now on I don't think it's worth it anymore to go for 3rd party battery, yes it is cheaper, but even if someone installs a good 3rd party battery, the seal gasket also has to be replaced and you would have to scrap away the old one properly. There are machines out there which do the seal test on iPhones, by pressurizing it with air through the sim slot and blocking off the speaker grills with a tape. It can tell by checking if it holds the pressure, if the seal is intact the pressure will be held at a set point.

Now I don't know if apple does this seal test, but from now on I would just send the other phones to apple for battery replacement, it might cost 10k, but I am not getting into sourcing the batteries myself. I am sure there must be a protocol that they follow and it is highly likely that it will better than the local 3rd party service guys.

It's a good thing the new phones have less buttons, because the buttons will fail at one point. The home and the silent switch is giving problem now, I am sure it can be fixed parts are cheap, the volume and power button are still fine.

The speaker grill and earpiece speaker will accumulate dust to a point where the sound coming out of them will be muffled. Cleaning them is a tedious task. From my experience it's a good idea to clean them when you are replacing the battery, because the phone is already opened, just open few more parts.

The charging port needs to be cleaned occasionally. What happens is dust accumulates inside, the charging still works, but space which was meant for the male connector to sit in, starts getting occupied by dust, due to this the male connector gets tight over time causing excessive wear to itself and the female charging port. One more thing to do while servicing the phone.

The new phones have face ID, which is extremely delicate, as soon as you open phone, you are suppose to cover it with a small sticker so no dust gets inside. I am afraid the local guys won't do this, one more reason to just send it to apple.

The screen is showing some very light ripple artifact, like the one you usually get when you press on the screen really really hard, the waves like pattern that appears. This happens when I press the home button, I guess over the years pressing the home button must be putting pressure on the bottom part of the screen. Now the screen is showing it as a ripple. Or perhaps I opened the phone so many times, maybe I goofed it up. But everything still works.

Now due to my familiarity with this phone and older iPhones in general, I feel they were built solid (except the iPhone 6, the bendgate). I don't have that much trust in the new iPhones, the phones are fine built with the same standard as before, but due to new technologies like Oled, thin bezels, it makes the phone very fragile. But they are compensating it with better glass. Only time will tell.

 

[t3chg33k]

After USA and China, India is the third largest producer of E-Waste.
Right to repair should be a fundamental thing. And for any electronic device we as a customer should be allowed to use the device as long the hardware become absolute.
iPhones dont have custom rom but it should be made available. Atleast android have this option.
Security patches should be make available over internet for everyone who wants to install can install and run the device.
I understand it's not economically viable to support a device so long but major security vulnerability patches should be made available for all to install separately outside the scope of the Android version updates.

There is a lot of misconception that custom ROMs can indefinitely extend the life of an Android device. That is true only for devices officially supported by the larger ROM publishers like Lineage but that is mostly limited to Pixel devices and few very old Samsung ones. Most don’t even support bootloader unlocking.

Most custom ROMs are published by enthusiasts (mostly college kids now) by shoehorning the latest build with manufacturer blobs. They usually lose steam after 2 years when these devices are no longer in use by such a crowd and even during that lifetime, the builds are usually very buggy as they don’t have the expertise or manufacturer code to fix device-specific issues.

I would argue that getting that 6-7 year manufacturer support is more important than anything else in extending the life of the device.

 

[raksrules]

iPhones dont have custom rom but it should be made available. Atleast android have this option.

While I understand your sentiment as there was a time (10+ years back) when I used to do custom ROM stuff, let me tell you, people just don't care anymore. You expect GenZ today to tinkle with their phones how millennials did? I doubt.
Even Millennials like me have started to move to iOS after a certain age in their lives. This is evident from the other "what clan (iOS or android) are you in thread". So the enthusiasts are so so niche that it doesn't matter unfortunately.

 

[YeAhx]

One way or another phone becomes obsolete even if its working fine. Best course of action is to give the phone to your younger sibling or child. They don't need the latest and the greatest so such older devices are perfect for them. They also won't need banking apps or chatGPT.

Can't do much for iPhone but If anyone has older android they wish to revive they should install custom ROMs. Some banking apps will still not work without workaround but for everything its the best solution. I recommend LineageOS > YAAP > Crdroid.

 

[Emperor]

2. UPI No Longer Works​

Due to government guidelines, UPI apps no longer support UPI registration on older iOS versions (around 5–6 years old or more) and it's the same on android.
All UPI apps now show this message



Which, of course, isn’t possible on a device this old.

My theory?
These guidelines indirectly killed banking apps too because most of them have UPI capability.
Instead of maintaining two versions (one with UPI and one without), banks likely chose to discontinue support entirely.
ICICI, however, still supports an app version without UPI, which is why it still works.

​

in family using Oppo F5 (2017 Model), UPI Apps still working (June 2025) without any issue.
Yes, ICICI Bank App stop working 2-3 yrs back.

 

[raksrules]

One way or another phone becomes obsolete even if its working fine. Best course of action is to give the phone to your younger sibling or child. They don't need the latest and the greatest so such older devices are perfect for them. They also won't need banking apps or chatGPT.

Can't do much for iPhone but If anyone has older android they wish to revive they should install custom ROMs. Some banking apps will still not work without workaround but for everything its the best solution. I recommend LineageOS > YAAP > Crdroid.

Have a 1st Gen iPhone SE with me and it is not even sellable as battery is almost gone, will jump from 98 to 56 randomly at drop of a hat and such. Right now I have kept in home and activated facetime so if myself and wife go out, and kids are at home (there are other elder members too), we can call them on this phone and they can also initiate facetime calls to us.

Also, they use it to play some games.

 

[PunkX 75]

My 5s (bought end of 2013) served me really well. When I look at it now, it makes me want to try iOS and Apple again.

 

[Heisen]

@Emperor Can you delete one UPI app and re register? This is the main issue.

Have a 1st Gen iPhone SE

I have this too with same battery issue.

My 5s (bought end of 2013) served me really well.

I liked that shape, still do, have the 1st gen SE, same body, actually if you try 5, 5s, 6, side by side in terms of performance, they all are significantly slower than the iPhone 6S series, and if you compare 6S and 7 there is not much difference in UI performance, it was because iPhone 6S was 14nm phone and previous gen iPhone 6 was 20nm, 5s was 28nm, massive gains were happening, but iPhone 7 again went down to 16nm for some reason.

All iPhone 6S, 6Plus, 1st gen SE, iPhone 7, 7 Plus all stopped at iOS 15. They all were so good, many people are still using them.

I am planning to get that new iPhone 16e, depending upon what the price drop is after 17 series launch.

 

[ninjenstein]

It is snappy just like it was new, yes the lag is there by today standards but there are no choppy animations, if we attempt to do something big the phone just waits and then it does it gracefully.

A lot of people are still using this phone, I just found out through reddit, while I was setting up whatsapp on it and due to some bug in the latest app version, it is not working. So many threads on reddit people complaining about that whatsapp bug, but that bug only triggers on very old iPhones. So this phone is still in use. Probably that's why apple sent a security update this year.

It can last a day definitely with a healthy battery.

I replaced battery 4 times, did it myself. I actually ended up buying more than 4 batteries over 9 years, but few failed, you can immediately tell in a day after booting with new battery, if it is good or not, most of them third party ones were not, they were draining very fast. From now on I don't think it's worth it anymore to go for 3rd party battery, yes it is cheaper, but even if someone installs a good 3rd party battery, the seal gasket also has to be replaced and you would have to scrap away the old one properly. There are machines out there which do the seal test on iPhones, by pressurizing it with air through the sim slot and blocking off the speaker grills with a tape. It can tell by checking if it holds the pressure, if the seal is intact the pressure will be held at a set point.

Now I don't know if apple does this seal test, but from now on I would just send the other phones to apple for battery replacement, it might cost 10k, but I am not getting into sourcing the batteries myself. I am sure there must be a protocol that they follow and it is highly likely that it will better than the local 3rd party service guys.

It's a good thing the new phones have less buttons, because the buttons will fail at one point. The home and the silent switch is giving problem now, I am sure it can be fixed parts are cheap, the volume and power button are still fine.

The speaker grill and earpiece speaker will accumulate dust to a point where the sound coming out of them will be muffled. Cleaning them is a tedious task. From my experience it's a good idea to clean them when you are replacing the battery, because the phone is already opened, just open few more parts.

The charging port needs to be cleaned occasionally. What happens is dust accumulates inside, the charging still works, but space which was meant for the male connector to sit in, starts getting occupied by dust, due to this the male connector gets tight over time causing excessive wear to itself and the female charging port. One more thing to do while servicing the phone.

The new phones have face ID, which is extremely delicate, as soon as you open phone, you are suppose to cover it with a small sticker so no dust gets inside. I am afraid the local guys won't do this, one more reason to just send it to apple.

The screen is showing some very light ripple artifact, like the one you usually get when you press on the screen really really hard, the waves like pattern that appears. This happens when I press the home button, I guess over the years pressing the home button must be putting pressure on the bottom part of the screen. Now the screen is showing it as a ripple. Or perhaps I opened the phone so many times, maybe I goofed it up. But everything still works.

Now due to my familiarity with this phone and older iPhones in general, I feel they were built solid (except the iPhone 6, the bendgate). I don't have that much trust in the new iPhones, the phones are fine built with the same standard as before, but due to new technologies like Oled, thin bezels, it makes the phone very fragile. But they are compensating it with better glass. Only time will tell.

Absolutely, older iPhones were build solid. One of the benefits of using an older iPhone design today is repairs are cheap. These new phones are fragile and break easily. I’m still rocking my iPhone SE 2020 with a cracked screen and <80% battery health. Those repairs are going to be cheap, I just haven’t gotten around to do them yet.

The only problem I have with iPhones is no expandable storage. My 128gb is full and it’s not great having to delete something every now and then when apps become unusable due to lack of storage. Plus the phone really slows down when the storage is full.

 

[Heisen]

The only problem I have with iPhones is no expandable storage. My 128gb is full and it’s not great having to delete something every now and then when apps become unusable due to lack of storage. Plus the phone really slows down when the storage is full.

Pop in that USB pendrive, it's the only way. Adds breathing room for the base models.

 

[superczar]

The only problem I have with iPhones is no expandable storage. My 128gb is full and it’s not great having to delete something every now and then when apps become unusable due to lack of storage. Plus the phone really slows down when the storage is full.

Regardless of platform, the best way to both get around this and also to keep your data safe is to get the native cloud plan (icloud in your case)
All your older data that has not been accessed in a while will get symlinked to the online copy instead of local copy - this happens in the background without user intervention

As end user, you will not notice anything major (except for example, maybe 2-3 extra seconds when loading a full res copy of an old photo)
However you will not run out of storage on your phone for the foreseeable future

PS: Non native cloud plans will also work but they will require periodic manual transfers and deletions which can get annoying very quickly