With every new version of iOS, Apple generally leaves some legacy devices behind, but with iOS 7, Apple’s only leaving the iPhone 3GS totally abandoned. That’s not to say that every iOS device is equal in the eyes of iOS 7, though: if you’ve got an older device, you’re going to find some of iOS’s features missing.
Our good friend Camillo Miller over at The Apple Lounge put us together this fantastic chart to show how compatible iOS’s varying devices are with iOS 7. And it looks pretty good! B
Basically, the only things you miss out on if you don’t have a device made in the last year is AirDrop, and if you have any iPad, you don’t get Panorama, which is the same as it was. Apple’s doing a pretty good job keeping iOS 7’s features compatible with every past device, don’t you think?
Source: The Apple Lounge
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
19 responses to “The Ultimate iOS 7 Compatibility Chart”
Any idea why Airdrop is not supported on the 3rd gen iPad? Doesn’t Airdrop use Bluetooth 4.0 for handshake/transfers?
Why is the pic so low-res? Y’all want us to go to the source’s website for it?
Most likely because it is discontinued and Apple would rather you buy a new one to get the feature.
Hi Res image:
http://i.imgur.com/iQCE3QK.jpg
Stupid that they dropped filters for iPhone 4 & 4s. We can do this fine with Instagram and Twitter without issues.
3rd Gen iPad suckers (like us right Erfon!) who had their hardware made obsolete after 6 months with the release of a new and improved iPad 4th Gen, get kicked in the teeth again.
I bought the best iPad you could for $889 mf’ing dollars and keep getting reminded what a mistake that was. I’m done trying to keep up with all the updates. iOS6 will do unless they come out with a large screen iPhone….
Relatively good, except for iPad 3. No AirDrop? Obviously, it is powerful enough to handle AirDrop.
Great chart if you didn’t have to strain your eyes to see and read the details.
Airdrop is reliant on wifi, not bluetooth. It’s basically bonjour for file sharing. Not sure why they’re excluding the 3rd gen iPad though.
Filters are available in photos across all of the devices, it’s just the live preview in the camera app that requires the iPhone 5.
I think the bigger question isn’t can I upgrade to iOS7 but rather, do I want to? #badOSdesign
They also cut off all of the iPod Touch 4th Gen users. I have owned mine for exactly 1 year. It has always had iOS 6 on it and it’s the first iPod I have bothered buying since I bought the first one in 2003. Probably the last one too.
It doesn’t have the correct Wi-Fi chip that supports Wi-Fi Direct while maintaining connection to a wireless network. That’s why it and the 4S don’t get it despite not being very old.
The live preview filters require the advanced image processing chips that the 4 and 4S just don’t have.
I don’t get why the iPad mini dose not get the photo filters in camera or the panorama mode. It’s never made sense to me.
I don’t understand why they left out pano and live filters out of the iPad with Retina Display 3rd gen AND 4th gen?! They are fully capable..!?
Actually on iPhone 4S the live filters in camera app work
Looks like a lot of fragmentation to me. I thought that the best thing about Apple’s iOS devices were that there is no fragmentation. I guess Apple’s response would be… Bazinga!
OMG, CoM has also gone for the light, pastel “flat” look of iOS 7. I HATE it!
The chart with this article is terrible and such low contrast I have to strain in order to read the print.
And this does not even include the incompatibility of iPhone 4 that carries over from iOS 6, such as “flyover and turn by turn nav”, Facetime over 3G, made for iphone hearing aid etc.