Apple’s iOS 11 2 2 Spectre patch probably won’t slow down your iPhone, but here’s what to
0Apple’s iOS 11.2.2 Spectre patch probably won’t slow down your iPhone, but here’s what to do if it does.
Last week Apple pushed out iOS 11.2.2, which seeks to mitigate the risks associated with the Spectre chip flaw via a security update to Safari and Webkit. Since a Spectre attacker is most likely to attack your system via a Javascript vulnerability, Apple has addressed the issue in iOS 11.2.2 to make your system more secure.
The patch doesn’t actually fix the issue, however, and it’s unlikely Apple will ever release an iOS update that will. While researchers and programmers are actively working on ways to reduce the likelihood that your iPhone will ever be exploited using the Spectre flaws, Apple and others have made it clear that these are merely mitigations and not outright fixes.
Apple has warned that that there may be an impact on your iPhone’s performance. They shouldn’t be severe, but in some cases, they may be noticeable. Security researcher Melvin Mughal created a bit of a stir recently after he posted iPhone 6 benchmarks (since removed) showing a hit as high as 40 percent, but those results shouldn’t be common.
We tested an iPhone 6 with an original battery both before and after installing iOS 11.2.2, and the results were much more in line with what Apple told us. Here are the Geekbench 4 numbers we got, before and after installing iOS 11.2.2: