I previously wrote about Apple’s support for older iPads. This post is about support for older iPhones. Until recently, I had been using an iPhone 6 Plus which runs iOS up to version 12. It’s already been more than a year since Apple released iOS 13 (September 19, 2019) and iOS 14 (September 16, 2020). Today I was pleasantly surprised to receive notification that Apple released iOS 12.5.
According to the Apple support page, iOS 12.5 provides security updates for iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch (6th generation). However, as shown in the above screenshot, the headline news for iOS 12.5 is that Exposure Notification capabilities are now available for these older iPhone models, whereas previously Exposure Notification was only natively available in iOS 13.5 and above. Apparently this feature is so new that Apple has yet to update its Exposure Notification documentation:
Previously, devices running iOS 12 could only perform exposure notification by installing apps such as SafePass, whereas users of iOS 13.5 and above could simply activate exposure notification directly within iOS, also referred to as Exposure Notifications Express, which is documented here.
Having exposure notification built into iOS circumvents the foreground/background issue that I wrote about here, so I’m excited to see Exposure Notification come to iOS 12.5 and hope that people turn it on. To read more about Apple (and Google’s) approach to preserving privacy with its exposure notification features, visit this website, and also refer to my previous posts about exposure notification and contact tracing.
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