The problem has to do with how rechargeable batteries age, and the power demands that a new operating system places on those devices. If you have a one year old iPhone 16, then upgrading to the newest version of iOS probably didn’t slow down your device. But if you have a four or five year old iPhone model, you may have began noticing glitching or lagging after the update to iOS 26.

This may seem counterintuitive, since newer operating systems should reduce bugs. But the reason your older iPhone is struggling isn’t due to faulty lines of code, but rather a more power-hungry operating system that demands more performance from the devices they run on. And if your device is a few years old, this can cause some problems.

Because as lithium ion batteries age, their capacity and performance declines. As the degradation approaches 80% of original capacity, you’ll probably start to notice your iPhone acting up. This is because the battery can’t provide enough power to the processor, causing lag, glitches, and even app crashes.

You can check your iPhone’s maximum capacity and battery health settings. But the issue is magnified when updating that older iPhone to a newer, more powerful operating system. This adds new features that are designed for the latest iPhone’s processing power.

If you don’t have the latest iPhone, and your existing battery has already degraded close to 80%, that new operating system is going to put it under even more stress, making your device slow down even more, and giving the impression that Apple’s intentionally messing up your iPhone.

Now since this problem is caused by an old underperforming battery, you can fix it by simply getting a battery replacement, which is free if you purchased AppleCare Plus, or $69 for all iPhone models since the 10. That way you can still enjoy the latest features of iOS without spending $1,000 on a brand new iPhone.

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This has become even more of an issue now that Apple doesn’t include a charger in the box with its phones. If your new (or old) iPhone is charging slowly, it might be down to a few key reasons.

Why your iPhone is charging slowly

First, lets clear up how fast an iPhone can charge in principle. As of this writing, the latest iPhone generation is the iPhone 17, with the iPhone 17 Pro Max topping out at 40W when it comes to charging speeds. That’s the fastest for any iPhone model I’m aware of, and as you go back to older generations that speed goes down as well.

Realistically, "fast" charging on an iPhone means something closer to 20W, and that’s exactly what the official Apple USB-C power adapter offers.

In general there are three reasons that your iPhone might be charging slowly:

• Charger specs: The charger can’t put out as many watts as the phone can handle.
• Cable quality: The cable can’t handle the wattage, or it doesn’t have the right components to negotiate the right power level.
• Battery state: Something about the current condition of your iPhone’s battery is limiting how fast it can charge, if at all.

I’ll unpack each of these broad issues next.

Your charger or cable isn’t delivering the power your iPhone expects

If the charger you’re using doesn’t have enough power to match what your iPhone can handle, then that explains why your iPhone is charging slowly. That’s just physics. However, in some cases even though a charger is rated for the wattage you need or more, things aren’t working. First, if you’re using a new USB-C iPhone, the charger has to support a suitable USB-C PD (Power Delivery) profile.

If you’re using an iPhone (like mine) which is still stuck on the Lightning standard, then you need to ensure you’re using an MFi-certified cable and charger. If you use any type of USB-A charger, you’re likely going to get the fallback 7.5W mode too.

The cable also need to be in good physical condition. If it’s kinked, worn, or otherwise has higher electrical resistance than it should because of damage the charging system will fall back to the safest slow-charging minimum.

Your iPhone is regulating speed to protect the battery

Even if you’re using the right cable and charger, the power management system on your iPhone can still choose to charge more slowly.

For example, if you have "Optimized Charging" turned on then your iPhone will time its charging rate so that the phone is fully charged at the point you usually take it off the charger. This is meant to improve the lifespan of your battery by reducing how much time it spends at full charge. When it works, it works great, but if your routine changes you might find your phone is only 80% charged when you pick it up. You might mistake that for slow charging, but things are working as designed.

Then there are situations where the phone will slow down or even stop charging because the phone is too hot. For example, if your phone is doing background tasks while on charge it can heat up the system leaving less thermal headroom for charging. Likewise, if you’re using the phone while plugged in, the combination of heat from the processors and from charging can limit the total amount of charge and is offset against increased power drain.

Environmental or usage conditions are getting in the way

The environment your phone is charging in also has an effect. For example, if it’s charging in a car and baking in the sun, then fast charging isn’t going to be an option. If the phone is running a GPS app or streaming music, then the same rule applies as when you’re using the phone while plugged in for anything else.

How to restore full-speed charging (or get as close as possible)

Whether your iPhone charges at its maximum speed isn’t always within your control, and honestly most people don’t actually need their phones to charge that quickly. However, if you want to maximize the chances that your phone will go from empty to full as quickly as possible, do the following:

• Use the correct certified cable and charger for your iPhone model.
• Keep the phone cool. Personally, I’ve had success with using vent-mounted phone holders in the past, but at the very least make sure the phone isn’t in direct sunlight or near some other heat source.
• Don’t use the phone while charging.

That’s about the extent of what you can do on iPhone, but you may also want to check your battery health just to make sure that there’s nothing funny in the battery diagnostics.

See also: How to Calibrate The iPhone Battery

The post Why your iPhone is charging Slowly(and how to fix it) appeared first on nerdsmodo.

Well, it’s because Apple’s accumulated a lot of different operating systems over the years. And their version numbers aren’t very intuitive. For example, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS are all on version 18, which implies they’ve all been around for 18 years. But that’s only the case for one of them, iOS, which came out in 2007, and has been updated once a year since then.

But the history of iPadOS is more complicated. Despite the iPad being released in 2010, the operating system didn’t have its own name until nine years later in 2019. But how could that be? Well, Apple just said iPad ran iOS, the same operating system as iPhone. And that made sense at the time, because in the early days of iPad, it didn’t have any unique software features compared to iPhone. People just liked it for the bigger screen.

In fact, when iOS 4 came out, multitasking was one of its headlining features. But iPad didn’t receive it until five months after iPhone. It wasn’t until 2015, with iOS 9, that Apple began adding iPad-exclusive features. Like slideover, split view, and picture-in-picture.

By 2019, iOS running on iPad began looking quite different from iPhone. To make a distinction between the two devices, Apple changed the name of iPad’s operating system from iOS to iPadOS. And while this proved to be the right move, it ended up causing confusion. Because Apple didn’t name the first version iPadOS 1, they named it iPadOS 13. On one hand, this made sense, since it matched the version number of iOS. But on the other hand, it was misleading.

Traditionally, the purpose of Apple’s version numbers is to indicate how many times something has been updated. iOS 13was its 13th update, Safari 9 was its 9th update, iTunes 12 was its 12th update, and so on. But Apple broke from this trend with iPadOS 13. Although it wasn’t their first time.

macOS also has a complicated release history. Today we’re on macOS 15. But during Apple’s modern era, it’s actually been updated 21 times. And technically, the first 16 versions were all called macOS 10, since Apple used decimal points to represent each release. Like macOS 10.1, then 10.2, instead of macOS 11 and 12.

Then things got even more confusing when the code name for their 2002 update was leaked. Internally, every project Apple works on has a code name. For example, iPhone was called Purple, iPad was called K48, and the Apple Watchwas called Gizmo. These names are used to prevent employees from leaking information about upcoming products.

The code names Apple had used for macOS 10 came from big cats. Version 10.0 was called Cheetah, and version 10.1 was called Puma. Both of these code names were kept secret. But with macOS 10.2, its code name Jaguar was leaked, and it was posted all over internet forums and rumor sites. Luckily for Apple, people like the name, and their marketing team suggests using it to promote the operating system. Apple even used Pixar’s 3D rendering technology to create a realistic graphic of an X covered in fur.

So for the first time, Apple not only assigned macOS a version number, 10.2, but also a name, Jaguar. This continued until we ended up with Lion and Mountain Lion. As you can imagine, they were starting to run out of cat names.

So in 2013, they switched to naming macOS 10 updates after natural landmarks in California. And in 2015, Craig Federighi said this: "OS 10 has been with us for over 15 years, but when we look at it alongside our other operating systems, something sticks out. We realized there was a name that would be so much clearer and so much more elegant. And so the name is now macOS."

So they dropped the Roman numeral 10 from its name, but it was still in the version number. It wasn’t until 2020 that Apple moved on from 10 completely with macOS 11. Every year since then, they’ve followed the same pattern as their other operating systems with macOS 12, 13, 14, and 15.

Now let’s take a look at tvOS, which was heavily influenced by the Mac. In fact, its initial interface was just an updated version of Front Row, a Mac media center application. And the OS didn’t even have a name. Apple typically just updated the interface when a new model of Apple TV came out. It wasn’t until 2015 when the operating system was officially called tvOS, and they gave it the number 9 to match the corresponding version of iOS.

So by 2020, Apple had made a lot of progress in optimizing their operating system lineup. iPad went from running iOS to iPadOS. The Mac went from being stuck on the same OS 10 number for 16 years to receiving a new number every year, and tvOS became a distinct operating system.

This resulted in the lineup we have today. With iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. The names are streamlined, intuitive, and clear. But there’s a whole other side to this equation that isn’t so clear, and that is their version numbers.

Three of them match. iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and tvOS 18. But the other three are all over the place. With macOS 15, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2.

Now you could argue this isn’t an issue, since each number just represents how many updates there have been. But as we covered earlier, that’s not actually true. Apple has been pretty inconsistent with how they name and number their operating systems. Yes, iOS 18 has had 18 versions, but macOS 15 has had about 30 versions. tvOS 18 has had 17 versions, and iPadOS 18 has had 6 versions. So users are left thinking, what do these numbers even mean?

In an effort to clear up this confusion, Apple completely rethought how they numbered their operating systems. Now you might assume they’d just make each number reflect how many versions of that OS had been released. But this actually becomes pretty complicated.

Consider macOS. Technically, the first version was released in 1984, although that wasn’t its name at the time. Back then it was called Macintosh Systems Software. Would you include all those early versions in the total number of macOS updates today? And what about iPadOS? It technically ran iOS for its first nine years. Would you still count those versions when calculating its number?

I think the more important question is, does Apple need to advertise an operating system’s version history? I mean, the Mac went 16 years with this same number, OS 10, and they didn’t even use numbers to differentiate between versions. They used cats.

So what might make the most sense is moving away from version history and instead focusing on something that does three things. First, unifies all six of their operating systems. Because it doesn’t really make sense that Vision OS 2 came out the same year as iOS 18. Second, it should be easy to understand which version came out when. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people ask what version of iOS are we on now, because the numbers are all over the place. And third, it should be a long-term solution that won’t break down with the release of a new operating system or when dividing one OS into two, like what happened with iPad.

So what was Apple’s solution? Well, they did what the car industry has been doing for decades. Giving new updates a number based on the upcoming year. That’s why Apple skipped iOS 19 and jumped all the way to iOS 26. It may not seem intuitive today, but it solves all the problems Apple’s had, and it’ll make updates much easier to understand going forward.

The post Why Apple Skipped iOS 19 and jumped all the way to iOS 26 appeared first on nerdsmodo.