I love old iOS

I personally am not a fan of modern iOS. So much so that I would rather use a phone with what many people call a worse design, no Touch ID, a worse camera system and most important of all: A significantly worse processor. Or an Android. But that isn't the topic here.

By the way, the phone I was talking about is the iPhone 5C!

I recently got it out of a drawer again and decided to boot it up, after lots of initial charging that is, since the battery health is only 67%. After booting it up, I was greeted by iOS 10, which is the latest version this device supports, and interestingly, the last version before the drastic UI changes for the iPhone X in iOS 11.

What I did, however, is jailbreaking the phone and installing a utility called Coolbooter in Cydia. This app lets you dual-boot any iOS version your device can run, so for the 5C, that is iOS 7.0 'till 10.3.4, and if you have an iPhone 5, you can even go down to iOS 6!

So I did that, I installed iOS 8.3. Now, you might be wondering: Why 8.3? Because iOS 8 is the last version with the app switcher and Helvetica font introduced in iOS 7, and to be more specific, 8.3 is the last version before the Music app gained Apple Music support.

I would've just installed iOS 7, but unfortunately, the App Store is completely broken in that version, meaning I'd have to use IPA files to install every app, which I don't really wanna do.

One of the first things you might notice when comparing this version to iOS 11 and newer is how the lock screen and unlock animation work: In iOS 7, 8 and 9, you slide to the side to unlock your phone, and the apps then fly in from the sides, giving you a smooth and satisfying animation. On iOS 10, the animation is the same, except that the clock now zooms out to reveal the icons flying in, which is also pretty satisying.

On iOS 11 and newer, the Notification Center and Lock Screen have been fused together. Which one one hand, is great, but this also means that there is one little issue: When pulling the notification center (and thus also the lock screen) down or up, the wallpaper gets blurred, showing a clear seperation from the content in the background. However, when you're unlocking to the home screen, this means that the unlock animation doesn't feel as smooth, as some of the top icons are hidden and there's the visible border between the lock and home screen.

Speaking of: The notification center! While I appreciate the simplicity of the modern notification center, the older one has a certain charm to it, and also is more helpful than the modern one considering widgets on the home screen weren't a thing yet, and this was the place for those. And one more thing: The notification center could also do a little bounce, depending on how hard you pulled it down! That's what I call playful design.

The same can also be said about the entire system: The in and out animations for popups are much more noticeable, making it feel less like they're fading in and more like they're flying in. Same thing with the app switcher, which I personally also prefer. Even the modern folder animation lost a bit of fancy for the sake of speed.

Some people might prefer that, but I don't, that's for sure.

There is one thing however, that I do prefer in modern iOS, and that is the app opening animation, with app icons actually moving toward the center after fading out to the app content instead of staying in place, though the iOS 7-10 animation isn't that bad either, with it conveying more of a "going inside the app icon" vibe, especially since you can see the other icons getting bigger as the OS opens the app.

So generally, I mostly find old iOS more appealing because of it's animations that focus more on being beautiful and playful, instead of fast. But like most things, it's a very subjective opinion. Another thing is the issues I've had with modern iOS on the device that I daily drive. Lots of random bugs and most importantly, having to deal with more than 12 gigabytes of space being taken up by the system on a 16 gigabyte phone.

Which is another reason why I'd prefer using the 5C! Less (frequent) bugs and more space! And not to mention that beautiful and smooth polycarbonate shell. But not like it matters anyway, since WhatsApp doesn't even work on iOS 14 anymore! RIP.