every iPhone from the iPhone 6s and newer is eligible for iOS 15, some of iOS 15’s best features are only available on newer iPhone models.
Whenever Apple releases a new iOS update, the company receives a heap of praise for ing older SharePlay — are present, but many smaller features aren’t ed.
Per spatial audio in Apple Music (compatible with AirPods Pro or AirPods Max), they’ll need to make sure they’re using an iPhone 7 or newer. Additionally, the Walking Steadiness feature in Apple Health is only ed on the iPhone 8 and up.
iOS 15 Features That Require An iPhone XS Or Newer
Along with all of the features mentioned above, many of the updates in iOS 15 require at least the iPhone XS or newer. This boils down to some of iOS 15’s features requiring a lot of processing power, and for older iPhones, they aren’t powerful enough to them. This is seen first and foremost with certain FaceTime features — specifically, Spatial Audio and Portrait Mode. The former allows for a much more lifelike audio experience, whereas the latter blurs the background around someone in a call. Both aim to make FaceTime more immersive than ever before, but if someone has an iPhone older than the iPhone XS, they won't be able to use them.
The same is true for select features in Apple Maps. iOS 15 adds an interactive 3D globe for s to quickly browse the entire planet, more detailed cities, and 'immersive' walking directions powered by augmented reality — so long as someone's using an iPhone XS or newer. This limitation also applies to home/hotel/car keys in Apple Wallet and the new animated backgrounds in the Weather app.
Unfortunately, that's not where the feature limitations end. Once again requiring an iPhone XS or newer is Live Text — essentially Apple's answer to Google Lens. Live Text allows s to copy, paste, lookup, and translate text in any photos they take. The same is true of Visual Look Up, which enables the iPhone to detect certain items in pictures and provide more information about them (such as pet breeds, flowers, plants, etc.). And, last but certainly not least, a newer iPhone is required for many of the improvements to Siri. Older iPhones on iOS 15 won't get on-device processing for faster response times, on-device personalization, on-device dictation, or offline . iOS 15 is still a very welcome upgrade of older releases like the iPhone X, iPhone 8, etc., but it's important to keep expectations in check when it arrives later this year.
Source: Apple