What the Tech? Why You Need to Update Some iPhones Now
If you’re still hanging on to an old iPhone 5, it won’t work after Saturday unless you install a new update to iOS 13.
iOS 13.2 was released this week by Apple with new features for the latest iPhones but it also includes a critical update for the iPhone 5.
According to Apple, those iPhones will no longer be able to connect to the internet, check email, or connect to the App Store and iCloud.
There’s an interesting reason that makes one think of Y2K, at least I do. GPS enabled products suffer from a time rollover issue in that it cannot understand dates up to a certain point. GPS counts time as weeks and cannot count past 1,024. So when week 1,024 comes up the date resets to 0 and GPS cannot function without an accurate date.
Apple says iPhone 5 users must update those phones to iOS 13.2 before 8 PM ET on Saturday, November 2nd. The actual time is 12:00 AM UTC on November 3rd.
iOS 13.2 was released this week and includes new features that are especially helpful to owners of the new iPhone 11 and iPhone Pro. Apple’s ‘Deep Fusion’ photo processing will greatly improve the quality of images shot with the new cameras on the new phones.
The new update also includes the latest emoji additions approved earlier this year. Over 60 new emoji (actually over 400 if you count the many variations) will appear on the phone’s emoji keyboard. These include the new yawning face, gender-neutral characters, a drop of blood (to represent a woman’s period), new foods and animals (sloth, flamingo). iOS 13.2 also includes
some bug fixes.
Who should update right away? iPhone 5 users, of course, owners of new iPhones who want to take advantage of the image processing upgrades, owners of Apple’s HomePod and new Airpod Pro as well as anyone who’s having an issue with the most recent update.
Some users have reported their phone keyboard stopped appearing while using certain apps and others reported to Apple that their phones were shutting down apps in the background. If you are experiencing any issues, iOS 13.2 may fix the problem.
You can download the new operating system within the settings menu.
