iPhone iOS Support Matrix: Which iOS Can Your iPhone Run?

Most "which iOS does my iPhone support" pages answer one question: can this phone install the newest release. That's half the picture. The other half — does this phone's current branch still get patched — actually determines whether an old iPhone is safe to keep using, and almost nobody publishes it. This page tracks both, model by model.

How to read your own row

Find your iPhone in the table below. Three things determine what happens to it from here:

• Last major iOS — the newest version number your model was ever eligible for. This never changes after the fact; it's fixed the year Apple drops your chip family from the new release.
• Current branch — the exact build your model is receiving updates on right now, as of this check. For anything iPhone 11 or newer, that's today's shipping release. For older models, it's a numbered point release on the last major version they reached — for example, iPhone 8 sits on iOS 16.7.16, not "iOS 16" in the abstract.
• Still patched — whether Apple is actively posting new builds on that branch. This is the column that matters for day-to-day safety, independent of how old the version number looks.

If your model reads iPhone 11 or later in the table, you're on the current branch and the rest of this page is mostly background. If it reads older, the row tells you exactly which of the four legacy branches you're on and whether it's still alive — check Settings → General → About → Software Version against the build numbers listed to confirm your phone matches.

The full matrix

This is every iPhone identifier Apple's feed currently serves an update to, grouped by branch, verified against build numbers posted August 24, 2026. iPhone 14 and newer are shown as a single row per Apple's naming — see the note below the table for why individual identifiers aren't listed for those models.

A note on the last four rows: we don't have verified internal identifier mappings for iPhone 14 and newer, so they're grouped as one "and later" row rather than listed individually. Every one of those models runs the current release and is first in line for iOS 27 and then iOS 28 in 2027.

Six branches, patched at once

The table above compresses something easy to undersell: Apple isn't maintaining one current iOS and calling everything else abandoned. As of this check, it's shipping updates to six separate iOS branches in parallel, each scoped to exactly the devices a past major release cut loose:

Notice that iOS 17.7.11 carries no iPhones at all — the phones that would have stayed there (iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X) never actually reached iOS 17, so they sit on iOS 16.7.16 instead. That's a reminder that "last supported iOS" and "current patch branch" can diverge, which is why this page tracks both columns separately.

Apple's iPad lineup rides some of these same branches — iOS 26.6.1 alone covers 64 iPad models — but this page is scoped to iPhone. If you're tracking Apple Watch instead, the equivalent watchOS branches (5.3.10 through 11.6.2) were last posted July 27, 2026 on the same feed.

Why these four cutoffs check out

The four legacy cutoffs in the matrix aren't four separate claims you have to take on faith — they confirm each other. Each one says a major iOS release dropped a specific set of iPhones, and each one predicts exactly which branch those phones should be sitting on today if the claim is true:

• iOS 13 dropped iPhone 5s / 6 / 6 Plus → predicts they're stranded on iOS 12 today. They are: iOS 12.5.8.
• iOS 16 dropped iPhone 6s / 6s Plus / 7 / 7 Plus / SE (1st gen) → predicts they're stranded on iOS 15 today. They are: iOS 15.8.8.
• iOS 17 dropped iPhone 8 / 8 Plus / X → predicts they're stranded on iOS 16 today. They are: iOS 16.7.16.
• iOS 26 dropped iPhone XS / XS Max / XR → predicts they're stranded on iOS 18 today. They are: iOS 18.7.10.

That's four historical cutoff dates, drawn from Apple's release notes over more than a decade, each independently landing on the exact branch the live feed shows today. If any one of those four claims were wrong — say, if iOS 17 had actually kept the iPhone 8 — the feed would show it on an iOS 17 branch instead of iOS 16. It doesn't. That agreement between old release history and today's live feed is the whole reason this table can be treated as a reference rather than a guess.

Why support follows the chip, not the sale date

It's tempting to assume support length tracks how recently Apple sold a phone. It doesn't — it tracks which chip is inside it. The clearest example in the lineup is the SE family, since Apple has built three of them and each one borrows a numbered iPhone's internals wholesale:

• iPhone SE (1st generation) — sold in 2016, but built on the iPhone 6s's A9 chip. It shares the 6s's fate exactly: both stranded on iOS 15 today.
• iPhone SE (2nd generation) — sold in 2020, but built on the iPhone 11's A13 chip. It's still current today for the same reason the iPhone 11 is.
• iPhone SE (3rd generation) — sold in 2022, on the iPhone 13's A15 chip. Same story: current for as long as the 13 is.

Two of those three SE models are separated by only four years of sale dates, yet one is frozen on iOS 15 and the other is running this week's release. The SE's own release year tells you almost nothing; the numbered iPhone whose chip it borrowed tells you everything. For the full generation-by-generation breakdown, see will the iPhone SE get iOS 28.

The same logic explains oddities elsewhere in the table. iPhone 8 and iPhone X shipped the same year and both carry the A11 Bionic, so both dropped off in iOS 17 and both sit on iOS 16.7.16 today, despite the X launching as the flagship and the 8 as the base model. Price tier and marketing position don't enter into it; the silicon does.

What "last supported iOS" actually costs you

Landing on a legacy branch doesn't turn a phone off. It changes three things, in this order of how soon you'll notice them:

New apps and app updates stop matching your OS

Developers set a minimum iOS version for new releases, and that floor rises over time. An iPhone frozen on iOS 15 or 16 will see more apps marked "not compatible," and apps you already have will stop pushing feature updates to versions that old, even while they keep working as-is.

iOS-level security patches stop on a fixed day

This is the column tracked in the matrix above, and the one that matters most for actual safety. As long as your branch shows Yes, Apple is still closing newly discovered flaws in iOS itself — Safari's WebKit engine, the kernel, the messaging stack. The day that branch goes quiet for good, that stops, even though the hardware keeps working.

New iOS features never arrive, even small ones

This is the most visible cost and the least important one. No new Control Center layout, no new Photos tool — cosmetic compared to the security question, yet it's the one most "is my iPhone still supported" articles focus on exclusively.

None of this means replace the phone the day it drops off the current release. Treat the "still patched" column as your actual safety indicator, and budget a replacement once your branch has visibly gone quiet — no build posted for a full cycle or more — rather than reacting to the version number alone.

What this table looks like after iOS 28

Everything in this section is a projection, not a confirmed fact — Apple states iOS device requirements at WWDC, and WWDC 2027 is projected for around June 7, 2027, with iOS 28 following in mid-September. Based on Apple's usual six-to-seven-year support window, and on iOS 27 breaking pattern by dropping no iPhone at all this year, the site's working expectation is:

• iPhone 13 and newer — expected to make iOS 28's supported list, keeping the current branch row.
• iPhone 12 — genuinely uncertain. It turns seven by iOS 28's release, right at the edge of Apple's usual window, made more uncertain by iOS 27 not cutting anything this cycle.
• iPhone 11 and iPhone SE (2nd generation) — most likely to be cut, which would open a fifth legacy branch on top of the four already in this table.

See the full case, including the chip-headroom argument and its counter, on the iOS 28 supported devices page, and the iPhone-12-specific version at will the iPhone 12 get iOS 28. Until Apple publishes iOS 28's requirements, treat this section as a forecast — the matrix above is the record of what's confirmed today.

How we got this data

Every build number, branch, and device mapping in this matrix comes from Apple's own software-availability feed at gdmf.apple.com/v2/pmv — the same public endpoint an iPhone itself contacts to check for updates. It isn't a leak, a rumor, or a tracker's guess; it's the list Apple's own devices read from. We checked it on September 2, 2026, reflecting the build round posted August 24, 2026, and we don't round or estimate any figure above — what's in the table is what the feed returned.

This isn't a one-time snapshot. We re-check whenever Apple's feed changes and update the table, the "checked" date, and the branch list accordingly.