Apple is set to announce iOS 17 in just three months at WWDC 2023. Ahead of that announcement, a new rumor today claims that iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 will no longer support a handful of older Apple devices. Most notably, this rumor alleges that the iPhone X will lose support…
iOS 17 devices rumor
The rumor comes from an anonymous user on Twitter who has accurately reported details about Apple software updates in the past. According to this user, iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 will drop support for the following devices:
- iPhone 8
- iPhone 8 Plus
- iPhone X
- iPad (5th generation)
- 9.7-inch iPad Pro (1st generation)
- 12.9-inch iPad Pro (1st generation)
This comes after iOS 16 last year also dropped support for a number of devices, including the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the iPhone SE (1st generation), and the iPod touch (7th generation).
As pointed out by MacRumors, Apple’s decision to drop these devices with iOS 17 could be related to an unpatchable bootrom vulnerability that affects the A5 through A11 chips.
Top comment by Thomas Hammond
Seeing Craig's post made me realize that he may have questioned the oldest device on iOS/iPadOS 16 (based on time of release), the 1st gen 12.9' iPad Pro, because it's the only device on this list with 4 GB of RAM, despite having the A9X chip. The 9.7' iPad Pro has only 2 GB of RAM. If the list of dropped devices was true (except maybe the 12.9' iPad Pro 1st gen), there would still be one iPad with 2 GB RAM (6th gen), and several other iPhones/iPads with 3 GB of RAM, including iPhone XR, iPhone SE 2, iPad 7/8/9, iPad Air 3, and iPad mini 5, running iOS/iPadOS 17.
Additionally, Apple will continue to roll out security fixes for iOS 16 even after iOS 17 has been released. iOS 15 has received multiple updates this year to patch major security vulnerabilities.
One more thing to consider, however, is that Apple oftentimes restricts some of the features in a new iOS release to its newest devices. For instance, iOS 16 features such as Live Text are only supported on the iPhone XS, iPhone XR, and later. We also saw this happen with Stage Manager on the iPad, though Apple eventually partially backtracked those restrictions.
This means that even if your device is supported by iOS 17 or iPadOS 17, you might still miss out on some of the most impressive iOS 17 features.
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