Iphone 5 question

[heavyfuel]

My gf's Iphone is fucked and I wanna surprise her with a new one, but I can't afford an Iphone 6. I found a brand new unlocked 64gb Iphone 5, just a 5, not a 5s or 5c at a price I can afford. But I don't know anything about Iphones. I need to know if she's gonna have a hard time with software upgrades and that sorta thing with a 3 yr old phone? Is it still gonna be a worth wile phone for a while despite not having all the features of an Iphone 6?

[jltabot]

small screen but still a very functional phone. It'll still be supported since it has the same internals as the iPhone 5C. Hell, apple still sold the iPhone 4s up until recently, that thing is 4 years old now i think?

Bottom line, you have nothing to worry about for updates.

[ExtraSlow]

Software updates are no issue. Super easy. If she's got that icloud backup on her current phone, migrating will be easy as well.

Does she like apple products? Reason I ask, is that my various workplaces have been buying my iphones for years, but if I had my way, I'd go samsung or some other android in a heartbeat.

[heavyfuel]

Originally posted by ExtraSlow
Software updates are no issue. Super easy. If she's got that icloud backup on her current phone, migrating will be easy as well.

Does she like apple products? Reason I ask, is that my various workplaces have been buying my iphones for years, but if I had my way, I'd go samsung or some other android in a heartbeat.

Yeah her work gave her an S4 and she likes it but she wants to stay with an Iphone for personal use for a number of reasons.

[codetrap]

.

[benyl]

It might get iOS 9 if history is any indication, but will likely cripple the phone. It is missing a bunch of features from iOS 8 and 7. It came out with iOS 6.

[Mitsu3000gt]

iOS 7 & 8 crippled my iPhone 4S (and every one at my company), even though it was technically still "supported". I would be very cautious buying any older iPhone. The iPhone 5 is 3 years old now, which in the phone world is pretty old old.

If she's not dead set on Apple, you can get a phone with 2014 specs instead of 2012 specs for the same or less money. Sounds like she wants to stay iPhone though.

[rage2]

Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
iOS 7 & 8 crippled my iPhone 4S (and every one at my company), even though it was technically still "supported". I would be very cautious buying any older iPhone. The iPhone 5 is 3 years old now, which in the phone world is pretty old old.
To be fair, the big reason why the 4S was so slow with iOS8 was because it only had 512MB RAM, vs 1GB RAM with the 5, 5s, 5c, and 6. Pretty much a huge generation gap right there.

The 6S is supposed to jump to 2GB of RAM, so expect the 5 to 6 era of phones to suffer from the same problem by around iOS 10 or 11. Long ways to go.

[ZMan2k2]

Good question. My wife just got a 5S, and I was wondering about updates. Good to know I'm okay for a while.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by rage2

To be fair, the big reason why the 4S was so slow with iOS8 was because it only had 512MB RAM, vs 1GB RAM with the 5, 5s, 5c, and 6. Pretty much a huge generation gap right there.

The 6S is supposed to jump to 2GB of RAM, so expect the 5 to 6 era of phones to suffer from the same problem by around iOS 10 or 11. Long ways to go.

Would it be difficult to have the OS recognize what phone is running it, and tailor things like memory requirements accordingly? Maybe it's not that simple. They must have some flexibility there though, because iOS7 crippled our phones, iOS8 essentially made them unusable, and iOS8.1 brought them back to iOS7 levels. I would be happy with less features on 8.1 if I could have the performance if iOS6 back.