Many of the issues, such as overheating, buggy/jittery animations (e.g. lockscreen swipe), and poor readability have been (mostly) fixed with the latest betas.
My biggest complaint was, when swiping down to see notifications, the lock screen background would not show up until it was fully swiped down. The notifications are still adjusted for the dark lock screen background, however, so the notifications are unreadable if I have a light background app running (e.g. a website). This has been fixed with the latest betas as the lock screen background appears right when you swipe, meaning notifications are still readable. Hooray!
The control center is less transparent, so it’s readable now. My phone still heats up a bit more than normal, but it’s a lot better than the first beta, where it got very toasty. The 3D “spatial” effect for photos is pretty cool but it’s the kind of thing where you use it once and forget about it. I’ve got a “spatial” photo set as the lockscreen, which looks pretty neat. It will definitely suck up battery life though, I’ve noticed that I needed to charge more often than before.
I like that the app store now has the search bar at the bottom, and so does the mail app. The camera app is pretty cool with a sleek design, but I always accidentally swipe to portrait mode and it’s really annoying. Swiping between the camera options might be a bit too sensitive? My previous complaint of how the clock app’s menu icons become yellow when you half-hover over them is now fixed, and the weird orange bits at the top and bottom are also gone. I still think the bubble between the menu buttons on all the apps is very overdone.
Liquid Glass with the latest updates isn’t all that bad. Some bits are overdone, yes, my phone gets hotter than normal, yes, battery life is worse, of course, but I think Apple did fix most of the issues I had with iOS 26. There are still plenty of bugs to squash though.
I’ve been running the developer data since it came out. I love it! There have been some bugs with HomeKit, but they’re mostly ironed out now.
iOS 26? When did this happen?
I feel like it was just yesterday I was solving fractional scaling issues on the iPhone 6 pro on iOS 8.
Now I feel really out of the loop.
though i totally feel you, ios 26 will be a major step in design changes to many many experiences across devices, i feel like this will lead more into the apple idea of a streamlined design
I went ahead and installed the beta. I thought I’d hate it, but I’m honestly very surprised how beautiful and clean it looks. No problems with readability or whatsoever. I’m on the latest public beta and I don’t notice any phone breaking bugs. If they manage to fix the small things, it might just be a very stable release this year.
This is the most stable beta I’ve used, and I’ve used every x.0 beta since iOS 10.
I think it was iOS 11’s beta that had the prompt to update iOS every time you unlocked the phone. That was fun. So was waiting 1-2 weeks for them to fix it. And honestly that’s about as bad as it gets.
Pro Max (16) so I’m not worried about battery life. It is worse with the beta, but that’s to be expected.
Liquid Ass is gorgeous and I love it, but I’m not going to stop calling it Liquid Ass. It’s funny and I saw the YouTube thumbnail.
Well, less battery time is a big no-no. Hope it’s because the beta is unoptimized and runs with debut compilation settings Instead of production settings .
In the first beta, battery drained like crazy (I’m talking over 40% lost after about an hour or so of casual use) and my phone became a hand warmer. It’s much better in the newer betas, but making everything translucent is going to take a toll on battery life.
This is fairly common for ios beta’s ive used.
Just let your phone chill for 2 days after install, and battery and heat will be normal.
it’s common after any major ios update, beta or not.
So in other words, the non-existent problem they tried to fix it still not fully fixed. The gold bar donation to the dictator, the lying under oath in court, the screw up at Apple Intelligence, not to mention the mountain of bugs they could’ve fixed first. I really wish there was a better alternative for Apple.
If this would ever get support from banking apps I’d give it a shot.
Specifically referring to paying with qr-codes.
In practice, can you turn off everything liquid glass or apple intelligence? We’re in this weird cycle where apple is just using customers as beta testers. Yeah, the company has no leadership in machine learning or interface design. How is this my fault?
I don’t have an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, so can’t test that at all. The liquid glass effect can be toned down with a “reduce transparency” toggle, but you will still have the bubbly effects and such.
I am quite excited with iOS 26, but I will wait until the final public release.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Thanks for the write-up!
I’ll still probably wait to 26.1. I wait even longer to upgrade macOS. I’m not necessarily a good example, though. Back in the paid days I’d often skip an entire year.
