I updated my iPhone 16 Plus to the third beta of iOS 27 without any particular expectations. I just wanted to see what was new and roll back if things got really bad. But after just a couple of days, I caught myself thinking that the smartphone had become noticeably faster. Not at the level of “seems a tiny bit snappier,” but genuinely noticeable. And this is on an early beta, where usually the opposite happens.
iOS 27 definitely made my iPhone better
How Animation Speed Changed in iOS 27
The first thing that caught my eye was the animations. Opening apps, swiping into multitasking, returning to the home screen — everything became sharper and shorter in duration. Previously, there was a pause between tapping an icon and the interface appearing — microscopic, but noticeable. Now it’s gone.
It got to the point of being funny. At one point, I seriously thought that Apple had increased the screen refresh rate on my smartphone. The feeling was exactly as if I had picked up a Pro model with ProMotion. Of course, this is physically impossible: the iPhone 16 Plus display can’t output more than 60 Hz, and no firmware update will change that. Hardware is hardware.
The smartphone works noticeably faster
So it’s all about the software. Apple clearly reworked the animation timings and how the system handles transitions between screens. At the same 60 frames per second, the picture feels smoother simply because the system hesitates less before starting an animation and doesn’t stretch it out unnecessarily. A small thing, but it works.
App Launch Speed in iOS 27
I’ll separately mention app launch speed. Heavy apps like Telegram with hundreds of chats, Safari with a dozen tabs, banking clients — all of these open faster than on iOS 26. I didn’t measure with a stopwatch, but the difference is felt in practice. Especially on a cold start, when an app has been unloaded from memory.
The iPhone 16 Plus has 8 GB of RAM, and previously the system was quite aggressive about unloading background processes. Now apps stay alive in memory longer. I return to the browser after half an hour, and the tab doesn’t reload. I return to a messenger, and it doesn’t show a white screen with a spinner. For everyday use, this is arguably more important than raw benchmark numbers.
The keyboard has also improved. Input lag has been reduced, letters appear instantly. Previously, on long messages there would occasionally be a micro-freeze — now I haven’t experienced it even once.
iPhone 16 Plus Battery Drain on iOS 27
This surprised me most of all. Usually an early beta drains the battery by midday. The system indexes data, sends reports, optimizations are disabled. That’s normal for a beta — everyone is used to it.
Days with the highest battery drain
Nothing like that happened here. My iPhone 16 Plus lasts exactly as long as it did on iOS 26. Same usage scenario: work, messengers, music, some YouTube, navigation on the way home. By evening, roughly the same percentage remains as before. A margin of a couple percent I attribute to varying daily workloads.
For a beta — and the third one at that — this is an excellent result. Usually battery life evens out by the fifth or sixth build, and sometimes only by the final release. Here, energy consumption has been normal from the start, and this indirectly suggests that the system has genuinely become more optimized, rather than just appearing faster due to shortened animations.
Should You Install the iOS 27 Beta on Your Main iPhone
It wasn’t completely without glitches, unfortunately
It wasn’t entirely without a fly in the ointment. There are moments that are annoying in everyday use: minor visual bugs, strange behavior of certain interface elements. Nothing critical, but they do wear on your nerves.
So my conclusion is this. If you’re worried specifically about performance, then there’s nothing to worry about. Performance has genuinely improved, and on my device it’s noticeable every day. If you need a stable, reliable smartphone without surprises, wait for the release this fall.
And yes, I acknowledge that I may have simply gotten lucky with my particular unit. A beta is a beta, and someone else’s experience could be completely different. But for now, here’s the picture: the iPhone 16 Plus on iOS 27 works better than on iOS 26, and doesn’t ask for anything in return.
