Announcing iOS 12 at WWDC 2018, Apple promised to optimize the system to a great extent. Owners of older devices, such as iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 Plus, are going to notice a particularly significant performance boost. When the first beta version intended for developers became available, there also appeared performance comparisons of iOS 12 and iOS 11.4.
The example of iPhone 5S (which was released five years ago) clearly shows that iOS 12 is both faster and smoother in terms of performance. The new system is swifter at launching applications, downloading content and delivering Siri’s answers. Moreover, devices with iOS 12 on board even demonstrated a slight performance boost in benchmarks. For example, the iPhone 6 showed a 30% performance increase in Geekbench after the OS update.
On newer devices, such as iPhone 8, iOS 12 delivers a less significant performance boost. However, in direct comparison with iOS 11, improvements are noticeable in almost all scenarios.
Worth noting, iOS 12 is still at the first beta stage. By the autumn release, Apple will likely have optimized the system even better.