I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass, mostly because I've read that it causes performance degradation on older devices (I use an iPhone 13 Mini because I have zero interest in using a larger phone). So, it looks like I'll be using iOS 18 for the foreseeable future.
I made the mistake of upgrading (13 Mini) and it is very clear that the new UI was not tested at all on smaller screens. The rounded buttons take up so much extra margin that actual usable space is greatly diminished.
Same here - on a 12 Mini. My wife and my mother have the same phone, and I have recommended that they hold back on upgrading.
I really hope Apple will address this in a dot-upgrade later this year, but I am afraid that the market share of the 12 and 13 models are too low for them to justify this.
I have the standard iPhone 13 (not mini) and the battery longevity is probably the best of any phone I've ever owned. At over 3.5 years old it still reports 89% battery health and lasts much longer than I need. Previous iPhones I owned were all pretty much on their last legs by that age.
I haven't upgraded it to iOS 26 / Liquid Glass, though, and given what I'm seeing/hearing, I don't plan to.
I just replaced it before the 26 upgrade. It was at 76% by then. With the new battery, I haven’t faced any issues. It lasts a whole day easily, unless I do things like tethering etc.
I regret upgrading my 13 Mini so much. Performance is terrible and it's chugging power.
Yesterday, for the first time since I bought the phone, it died on me before 18:00 with regular usage. I used to charge everyday when I go to bed with around 15-25% left, now I can't even finish the work day.
I have an iphone 13 pro max. On many screens, the UI now stutters when it was smooth before. I have a very strong dislike for the new transparency changes. It absolutely makes things harder to read. And it comes at a cost of making the UI stutter. For example I just scrolled down the notifications, they are all a little harder to read because the the phone is trying to show the background through the notification area?
On iPhone 12 mini, the battery life is incredibly worse. I was charging once a day, 30 → 70% usually, and now I’m charging all the time I have a chance. I’m not very active user, but each session of screen time reduces the battery significantly. Before that I felt that despite the small battery, the device works forever. Now, I’m back into my iPhone 4S times, when I upgraded to iOS 7.
For what it’s worth, I upgraded to 26 on a 3rd gen SE and perf is totally fine. I do hate most of the UI changes though. I really hope they do a dot release that lets me turn off the “safari viewport is big but we draw crap on top of it” stuff. I keep cursing at the title bar and url bar obscuring important things.
I actually feel a warm computer now, something that I have never experienced in five years of having this M1 MacBook.
This takes amazing hardware and degrades it to Windows laptop slop.
In the Jobs days, at least one VP head would roll for this, and Apple would be far better off for it. I don't think Tim Cook is strong enough for that though.
I just think that Apple should go down to biannual phone updates and major OS versions. I really don’t understand the urgency behind forcing this kind of velocity for such a mature system. It seems perpetually rushed.
This removes drop shadows on Chromium / Electron, and removes an autofill overlay that people reported heavy battery use on. I took this from somewhere on the internet.
It was running well on my 13 pro as in there was no lag on anything, but I can’t speak for battery life. It was bad before and it was still bad after, but maybe it got worse?
iOS .0 releases tend to be this way, even on brand new devices. I noticed some big perf improvements on the 26.0.1 release. If I were you I'd wait til 26.1 or 26.2 and reassess then. It still may not be optimal for a mini tho for non-perf reasons, as iOS26 assumes a larger average device size.
It's functionally tolerable when you disable transparency and increase contrast in accessibility settings.
Of course it makes everything look dull and primitive. Crammed and misaligned controls are even more obvious when elements have borders. You still have unhelpful animations.
