Following the release of iOS 12.5.1 last week, Apple has stopped signing the previous version: iOS 12.5. In the most recent version, Apple fixed some bugs present in the exposure notification system.
An update for an iPhone from 8 years ago
Although iOS 12 was released more than two years ago, Apple continues to offer major updates to the system. Thus, users of an iPhone 5s or 6, although they cannot run iOS 13 or 14 on their devices, can know that the safety and proper functioning of their iPhone is guaranteed.
With iOS 12.5 Apple brought the exposure notification system to older iPhones. A month later, on January 11, Apple released iOS 12.5.1 which fixes some bugs and improves security. Now, as usual, Apple has stopped signing the previous version, so if we restore our iPhone, for example, we will install the most recent compatible version.
The truth is that seeing this kind of retroactive support for versions of the operating system that have been on the market for years is welcome. It is clear that, in this sense, the iPhone are one of the longest-lived products in terms of the software cycle. Let’s keep in mind that we are talking about updating an iPhone that was released eight years ago.
As we’ve mentioned on other occasions, software updates go way beyond new features. They bring much more important and at the same time unknown news: the bug fixes.