The iOS 12.5.1 Update: A Mixed Bag for Older Devices

The latest update from Apple has been made available for some older devices, including the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5s. This update, which brings the operating system to version 12.5.1, is a significant improvement over previous versions, but it also comes with its fair share of limitations.

One of the notable improvements in this update is the fix of a small bug that was present on older devices. As I mentioned earlier, this was one of the only issues I had encountered on these older devices, and it seems to be completely fixed now, which is excellent news. This can be categorized under the performance section, as it shows that Apple is still committed to supporting its older devices.

Performance-wise, the update is not too shabby, considering the limitations imposed by the device's hardware. With only one gigabyte of RAM, these phones may not feel fast to use compared to newer models. However, they are still usable throughout the day without any major issues, thanks in part to constant software updates that Apple continues to push out for these devices.

Battery Life: The One Area Where iOS 12.5.1 Falls Short

However, one area where this update falls short is battery life. As I mentioned earlier, older devices just don't have the same battery life as newer models. Users can expect to need to charge their phone multiple times throughout the day, which may be a drawback for those who rely on their device as their primary means of communication.

It's worth noting that Apple has not made any significant changes to the battery life in this update, despite releasing several iOS updates over the past year. The focus seems to have been on security fixes and minor bug patches related to the COVID-19 exposure notifications feature, rather than any visual improvements or new features that would impact battery life.

Should You Update to iOS 12.5.1?

Despite these limitations, there is still a good reason to update to this version of iOS 12.5.1. The security enhancements and patches included in the update should provide users with an additional layer of protection against malware and other online threats. Additionally, the jailbreaks that were previously available for older devices are still active on this update, so those who have managed to exploit these vulnerabilities will continue to be able to do so.

The Next iOS Update: Is a Public Release Coming Soon?

As for what's next in terms of iOS updates, it's likely that we'll see a new beta release of iOS 14.4 in the near future. Apple has been releasing regular beta updates for this version, and it's possible that we could see a public release as early as tomorrow, Tuesday, January 12th.

Of course, this is all speculative at this point, but if previous trends are any indication, a new iOS update will likely be released in the coming weeks. For now, though, there's little to suggest that we'll see a major overhaul of the device's software anytime soon.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the iOS 12.5.1 update is an improvement over previous versions, but it still comes with its share of limitations. The fix of that small bug and the security enhancements are definite positives, while the continued lack of significant changes to battery life may be a drawback for some users. If you're using one of these older devices, there's no real reason not to update to this new version of iOS 12.5.1 – just be aware of what to expect in terms of performance and battery life.

If you have any questions or comments about the iOS 12.5.1 update, feel free to leave them below. I'll do my best to address your concerns and provide more information on this update. And if you'd like me to make videos about older iOS updates – as Apple continues to push out software for its older devices – be sure to let me know with a comment or a thumbs up.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys my name is brandon and apple just released ios 12.5.1 for older devices that are not supported with ios 13 or ios 14. and this update comes about a month after the release of ios 12.5 which i actually did not cover here on the channel so that's kind of just another reason i wanted to make this video today on 12.5.1 so anyways in this video we're going to be taking a look at what's changed in this update we're going to talk about the performance we're going to talk about the battery life the security patches and of course if you should update or not so let's start off with the size of this update so you can see i have my iphone 6 right here and the update size came in just under 200 megabytes at 199.8 and it was smaller on my iphone 5s that i updated as well it was around 98 megabytes so the size will vary depending on your device and also which version you are coming from and then right below that you can see here on the software update page it tells exactly what has changed in this update which we'll talk about here in a moment but first let's go and check out the build number for this new update let's go to our settings general about tap on 12.5.1 you can see the build number there is 16h h22 and then if we scroll down a little bit to the modem firmware you can see that the modem firmware has not been changed it remains at 7.80.04 and that's likely not a big deal because i've not really heard anybody talk about cell connectivity issues on these ios 12 versions so now what's new in ios 12.5 and 12.5.1 so let's backtrack a little bit to ios 12.5 since i did not cover that here on the channel that was a hectic week when it came out and i just never got around to making the video on 12.5 even though i made videos on 12.4.8 12.4.9 and previous versions as well but anyways ios 12.5 was released to basically allow users to opt in to get coven 19 exposure notifications so if we go into our settings and then scroll down you will see exposure notifications right there and then you can see we have the option to turn on exposure notifications then you also have the toggle for availability alert that basically gives you an alert when exposure notifications are available in your current region so obviously the newer phones have had these options for a while but the iphone 6 and the iphone 5s and other devices that are not able to get ios 14 can now you know opt in for exposure notifications for covet 19. and then we also got a security patch right here in ius 12.5 you can see that it's not a kernel exploit or anything like that it's not really an exploit at all basically the impact is only unauthorized code execution may lead to an authentication policy violation so and then you can see the description this issue was addressed with improved checks so and you can see it was discovered by apple there on the cve so really nothing major at all it's not anything that was going to impact or you know have an impact on your security of your device or prevent jail breaks or anything like that so a very small security patch there in 12.5 and then when it comes to 12.5.1 apple did not post anything in terms of cve so nothing publicly has been posted about the security contents of 12.5.1 and of course since we did not have any kernel issues fixed or anything like that jailbreaks are going to work just fine on 12.5 and 12.5.1 so if you're using the uncover or the check range jailbreaks either one of those will work fine of course once they're updated on both 12.5 and 12.5.1 so that's good to know if you are still into jailbreaking now as far as the performance goes performance on 12.5 actually seemed a little bit better than 12.4.9 or any of the 12.4 point x versions and i actually did the geekbench tests on all those as well and that kind of confirmed my suspicion now obviously it's hard to go from something like an iphone 12 back to the iphone 6 and the iphone 5s but when 12.5 released last month i did use it for a couple of days and 12.5.1 feels exactly the same in terms of performance but 12.5 was a slight improvement over the 12.4 point x versions and if we go into our geekbench scores right here you can see i did just run a geekbench score on 12.5.1 and we got a 311 single core and then 595 on the multicore you can kind of see how it compares there of course this was what was says 12.4.9 i believe yes 12.4.9 right there got a 308 and a 582. so you can see the improvement over time there so really nice to see improvements here on 12.5 and 12.5.1 on the iphone 6 it was the same deal with the iphone 5s but of course i like to use the 6 because that is the latest device supported on these ios 12 versions i also wanted to address an issue that i had on ios 12.4.8 where my phones would just really heat up so my iphone 6 and my 5s would both really heat up a lot on that update no matter what i did even just on the home screen it would be extremely hot and 12.4.9 fixed that and it seems like 12.5.1 fixed it even further because 12.4.9 my device still got a little bit hot but on 12.5.1 i really don't feel any heat at all coming from the iphone 6 and it was the same with my 5s as well so that is really good news and that was really the only complaint i had at all on these older devices that was the only you could say bug that i had on these older devices and it seems to be completely fixed now which is just excellent news and that's another testament you know you can kind of categorize that under the performance section but overall the performance really isn't that bad of course there is a little bit of stutter every now and then especially when i go out of photos when i go into photos and then out of it you will see a slight stutter you probably noticed it earlier in the video but for a device with just one gigabyte of ram it's really not all too bad i mean it's something you can live with of course again being used to the newer phones it's hard to go back and you know see this and use this it doesn't feel fast at all but it's usable you could use it throughout the day with no issue especially with these constant software updates which is just incredible that apple is still pushing out updates for these extremely old devices now when it comes to the battery life this is the only issue you're gonna have if you wanted to use one of these phones on a daily basis because of course the battery life is not going to be great you will have to plug it in multiple times throughout the day that's one of the biggest improvements apple has done year over year is with the battery so battery though on 12.5.1 is really no different from 12.5 or the 12.4.x versions you really will not notice any type of battery improvement with pretty much any of these updates anymore because apple is not really touching the battery at all in these ios 12 updates they're mainly just pushing out security fixes and of course little bugs to do with the kobe 19 exposure notifications and just really small things like that you're not really seeing any type of visual improvements you're not getting new options anything at all that would really impact the battery so don't expect any type of battery improvement and of course it shouldn't get worse either so just don't go into this update expecting anything to change with the battery life so there's really not a ton to talk about with this update but if you're wondering if you should update i say yes there's really no reason not to update to 12.5 or 12.5.1 we did get the security enhancements on ios 12.5 12.5.1 kind of patches up some things as well and fixes up some minor bugs related to the kobe 19 exposure notifications and of course the jailbreaks do still work on 12.5 and 12.5.1 so again there's really no downside to updating to this new version of 12.5.1 on your iphone 6 5s or whatever device you are running now if you have a newer device than the iphone 5s the iphone 6 and you also get the ius 14 updates and the beta updates as well i know you might be wondering when we can see the next ios 14 release and i think we could actually see a new version of ios 14.4 a new beta of 14.4 as early as tomorrow tuesday january 12th now as far as a public release we could see a 14.3.1 sometime soon but probably not this week it's possible but probably not this week it just really depends on what we see in terms of the 14.4 beta and what that build number is that really will tell us a lot as well so just stay tuned to the channel of course i will be posting videos on these new ios updates and of course i will keep you updated over on twitter as well so anyways guys there you have it that is ius 12.5.1 for the iphone 6 iphone 5s and all other devices that are not able to update to ios 13 or ios 14. so not much in this video of course it wasn't a huge update but i do like to keep you guys informed and let you guys know when a new update comes out no matter how big or small just to keep you guys in the loop so i hope you did enjoy this video if you did i would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up and of course if you guys want me to keep making videos on these old ios 12 updates apple just seems to continue pushing them out which is just insane that they're doing that i mean no other manufacturer is doing that in terms of software updates still supporting such old devices so that's incredible if you guys want me to keep you know making these videos on these older versions of ius let me know with a comment down below and of course with a thumbs up on this video but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon youwhat's up guys my name is brandon and apple just released ios 12.5.1 for older devices that are not supported with ios 13 or ios 14. and this update comes about a month after the release of ios 12.5 which i actually did not cover here on the channel so that's kind of just another reason i wanted to make this video today on 12.5.1 so anyways in this video we're going to be taking a look at what's changed in this update we're going to talk about the performance we're going to talk about the battery life the security patches and of course if you should update or not so let's start off with the size of this update so you can see i have my iphone 6 right here and the update size came in just under 200 megabytes at 199.8 and it was smaller on my iphone 5s that i updated as well it was around 98 megabytes so the size will vary depending on your device and also which version you are coming from and then right below that you can see here on the software update page it tells exactly what has changed in this update which we'll talk about here in a moment but first let's go and check out the build number for this new update let's go to our settings general about tap on 12.5.1 you can see the build number there is 16h h22 and then if we scroll down a little bit to the modem firmware you can see that the modem firmware has not been changed it remains at 7.80.04 and that's likely not a big deal because i've not really heard anybody talk about cell connectivity issues on these ios 12 versions so now what's new in ios 12.5 and 12.5.1 so let's backtrack a little bit to ios 12.5 since i did not cover that here on the channel that was a hectic week when it came out and i just never got around to making the video on 12.5 even though i made videos on 12.4.8 12.4.9 and previous versions as well but anyways ios 12.5 was released to basically allow users to opt in to get coven 19 exposure notifications so if we go into our settings and then scroll down you will see exposure notifications right there and then you can see we have the option to turn on exposure notifications then you also have the toggle for availability alert that basically gives you an alert when exposure notifications are available in your current region so obviously the newer phones have had these options for a while but the iphone 6 and the iphone 5s and other devices that are not able to get ios 14 can now you know opt in for exposure notifications for covet 19. and then we also got a security patch right here in ius 12.5 you can see that it's not a kernel exploit or anything like that it's not really an exploit at all basically the impact is only unauthorized code execution may lead to an authentication policy violation so and then you can see the description this issue was addressed with improved checks so and you can see it was discovered by apple there on the cve so really nothing major at all it's not anything that was going to impact or you know have an impact on your security of your device or prevent jail breaks or anything like that so a very small security patch there in 12.5 and then when it comes to 12.5.1 apple did not post anything in terms of cve so nothing publicly has been posted about the security contents of 12.5.1 and of course since we did not have any kernel issues fixed or anything like that jailbreaks are going to work just fine on 12.5 and 12.5.1 so if you're using the uncover or the check range jailbreaks either one of those will work fine of course once they're updated on both 12.5 and 12.5.1 so that's good to know if you are still into jailbreaking now as far as the performance goes performance on 12.5 actually seemed a little bit better than 12.4.9 or any of the 12.4 point x versions and i actually did the geekbench tests on all those as well and that kind of confirmed my suspicion now obviously it's hard to go from something like an iphone 12 back to the iphone 6 and the iphone 5s but when 12.5 released last month i did use it for a couple of days and 12.5.1 feels exactly the same in terms of performance but 12.5 was a slight improvement over the 12.4 point x versions and if we go into our geekbench scores right here you can see i did just run a geekbench score on 12.5.1 and we got a 311 single core and then 595 on the multicore you can kind of see how it compares there of course this was what was says 12.4.9 i believe yes 12.4.9 right there got a 308 and a 582. so you can see the improvement over time there so really nice to see improvements here on 12.5 and 12.5.1 on the iphone 6 it was the same deal with the iphone 5s but of course i like to use the 6 because that is the latest device supported on these ios 12 versions i also wanted to address an issue that i had on ios 12.4.8 where my phones would just really heat up so my iphone 6 and my 5s would both really heat up a lot on that update no matter what i did even just on the home screen it would be extremely hot and 12.4.9 fixed that and it seems like 12.5.1 fixed it even further because 12.4.9 my device still got a little bit hot but on 12.5.1 i really don't feel any heat at all coming from the iphone 6 and it was the same with my 5s as well so that is really good news and that was really the only complaint i had at all on these older devices that was the only you could say bug that i had on these older devices and it seems to be completely fixed now which is just excellent news and that's another testament you know you can kind of categorize that under the performance section but overall the performance really isn't that bad of course there is a little bit of stutter every now and then especially when i go out of photos when i go into photos and then out of it you will see a slight stutter you probably noticed it earlier in the video but for a device with just one gigabyte of ram it's really not all too bad i mean it's something you can live with of course again being used to the newer phones it's hard to go back and you know see this and use this it doesn't feel fast at all but it's usable you could use it throughout the day with no issue especially with these constant software updates which is just incredible that apple is still pushing out updates for these extremely old devices now when it comes to the battery life this is the only issue you're gonna have if you wanted to use one of these phones on a daily basis because of course the battery life is not going to be great you will have to plug it in multiple times throughout the day that's one of the biggest improvements apple has done year over year is with the battery so battery though on 12.5.1 is really no different from 12.5 or the 12.4.x versions you really will not notice any type of battery improvement with pretty much any of these updates anymore because apple is not really touching the battery at all in these ios 12 updates they're mainly just pushing out security fixes and of course little bugs to do with the kobe 19 exposure notifications and just really small things like that you're not really seeing any type of visual improvements you're not getting new options anything at all that would really impact the battery so don't expect any type of battery improvement and of course it shouldn't get worse either so just don't go into this update expecting anything to change with the battery life so there's really not a ton to talk about with this update but if you're wondering if you should update i say yes there's really no reason not to update to 12.5 or 12.5.1 we did get the security enhancements on ios 12.5 12.5.1 kind of patches up some things as well and fixes up some minor bugs related to the kobe 19 exposure notifications and of course the jailbreaks do still work on 12.5 and 12.5.1 so again there's really no downside to updating to this new version of 12.5.1 on your iphone 6 5s or whatever device you are running now if you have a newer device than the iphone 5s the iphone 6 and you also get the ius 14 updates and the beta updates as well i know you might be wondering when we can see the next ios 14 release and i think we could actually see a new version of ios 14.4 a new beta of 14.4 as early as tomorrow tuesday january 12th now as far as a public release we could see a 14.3.1 sometime soon but probably not this week it's possible but probably not this week it just really depends on what we see in terms of the 14.4 beta and what that build number is that really will tell us a lot as well so just stay tuned to the channel of course i will be posting videos on these new ios updates and of course i will keep you updated over on twitter as well so anyways guys there you have it that is ius 12.5.1 for the iphone 6 iphone 5s and all other devices that are not able to update to ios 13 or ios 14. so not much in this video of course it wasn't a huge update but i do like to keep you guys informed and let you guys know when a new update comes out no matter how big or small just to keep you guys in the loop so i hope you did enjoy this video if you did i would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up and of course if you guys want me to keep making videos on these old ios 12 updates apple just seems to continue pushing them out which is just insane that they're doing that i mean no other manufacturer is doing that in terms of software updates still supporting such old devices so that's incredible if you guys want me to keep you know making these videos on these older versions of ius let me know with a comment down below and of course with a thumbs up on this video but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon you\n"