iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 Compatibility and Feature Updates

If you’re using older iPhone or iPad hardware and you’re hoping to keep running Apple’s latest operating systems, this year’s releases bring mostly good news. The iOS 27 update will run on all iPhones that can run iOS 26, all the way back to the iPhone 11 and second-generation iPhone SE. The iPadOS 27 update is slightly less generous, dropping support for the 3rd-generation iPad Air, 8th-generation iPad, and 5th-generation iPad mini (all of these devices used an older A12 Bionic chip; supported devices now use an A13 or better). Apple says owners of older devices should see performance improvements in iOS 27, thanks in part to an updated CPU scheduler. This scheduler was apparently already included with newer iPhones but has been ported back to older devices with this release. But many of the new features Apple mentioned require support for Apple Intelligence, which remains confined to newer devices with at least 8GB of RAM. Apple Intelligence still requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, an iPhone 16 or newer, or an iPhone Air. On the iPad, support requires an iPad Air or iPad Pro with an M1 or newer. And the more capable local models Apple announced have even more restrictive system requirements. They need a newer Apple Silicon chip and at least 12GB of RAM, which means they’ll only work on the iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone Air, the recently introduced M4 iPad Air, or the M4 or M5 iPad Pro. The first iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 developer betas are available now, and a version aimed at public beta testers will follow in July. The final releases will land in the fall, as they typically do.