iPhone 6(S)/Plus IP6+ on iOS 9 or iPhone 7+ on iOS 11?

[now i see it]

Besides the camera (and RAM), is an iPhone 7 plus (running latest iOS 11.x) a significant upgrade in real world use (not benchmarks) from an iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 9.3.5?

I'm not asking about whether iOS 11 features are an upgrade from iOS 9 since they aren't of any interest to me.

ios 9.3.5 didn't have the throttling and the 6+ runs the same speed it always did. Battery is still in great condition too.

 

[Vermifuge]

It's all about the RAM. Coming from a 6 Plus myself, the 1 Gb is just inadequate for any OS version... It's not just the OS but the apps. More and more apps are becoming far more demanding of system resources... This means loading a demanding app with only 1 GB ram the next app is going to have to reload completely before use. Of you only run one app maybe this isn't an issue for you. i'm always switching between 3 or 4 apps and having to reload each time was killing the experience. And thats when the app wasn't crashing for some reason.

 

[mtneer]

If you can manage not upgrading the 6+ off of iOS 9; then you should be ok. That phone was designed and optimized for iOS 9, so it should perform very well. Otherwise, as mentioned elsewhere, you will face slowing phones as Apple chooses not to invest in optimizing later iOS versions on older hardware. On the other hand, you will also face a pinch of apps dropping support for iOS 9 and will not work anymore, which will compel you to upgrade iOS, and force you to run into Apple's wall.

 

[jav6454]

It's all about the RAM. Coming from a 6 Plus myself, the 1 Gb is just inadequate for any OS version... It's not just the OS but the apps. More and more apps are becoming far more demanding of system resources... This means loading a demanding app with only 1 GB ram the next app is going to have to reload completely before use. Of you only run one app maybe this isn't an issue for you. i'm always switching between 3 or 4 apps and having to reload each time was killing the experience. And thats when the app wasn't crashing for some reason.

iPhone OS 9 down would beg to differ.

 

[Vermifuge]

iPhone OS 9 down would beg to differ.

OS isn't going to prevent apps from demanding more and more RAM

 

[jav6454]

OS isn't going to prevent apps from demanding more and more RAM

Well, it actually will. Newer apps won't run, hence only previous version of apps will, less RAM demand.

 

[newellj]

It's all about the RAM. Coming from a 6 Plus myself, the 1 Gb is just inadequate for any OS version... It's not just the OS but the apps. More and more apps are becoming far more demanding of system resources... This means loading a demanding app with only 1 GB ram the next app is going to have to reload completely before use. Of you only run one app maybe this isn't an issue for you. i'm always switching between 3 or 4 apps and having to reload each time was killing the experience. And thats when the app wasn't crashing for some reason.

Jumping in late to affirm this post. Even if you are willing to keep it on iOS 9, which is increasingly a limit (for me, anyway - I have an iPod Touch gen 5 that's capped on 9), the 1GB RAM issue really slows down the performance that a lot of people would expect.
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Well, it actually will. Newer apps won't run, hence only previous version of apps will, less RAM demand.

For some apps, that's definitely true. For others, the devs have updated and they're going to stress the phone some. And there's yet another issue, which is either apps that have improved functionality that needs a higher version of iOS and/or apps that you want to install but can't because you're on an older version. At the end of the day different people are going to have very different experiences because they use their phones differently or use different apps, but I have personally found this a PITA. (I ran a 4S as a third phone for years...it got old and eventually too frustrating to be useful to me. YMMV!)