A few reasons to wait before installing iOS 18.2 public beta on your iPhone

iOS 18.2 Public Beta is now out, notably bringing the next round of Apple Intelligence features such as Genmoji, Visual Intelligence and Playground Image on devices that can run them. If you own an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Proyou can start using these before most people.

But before you start that download, I’m here to remind you of the “beta” part of “public beta.” The pre-release software is unfinished, and while a public beta means Apple is confident enough to use it on a few thousand iPhones, the goal is to see how the update will perform before rolling out to millions of iPhones. And although the iOS 8.2 developer beta has been pretty stable, no one knows what bugs they might run into.

For more on what iOS 18 is bringing to iPhone, be sure to check out all Apple announced at its September “Glowtime” event and how Apple Intelligence will affect the way we use Apple devices.

A positive word for installing iOS 18.2 public beta

The public beta is more stable than the developer betas, which Apple has been releasing continuously since early June and are meant for… developers.

But “more durable” is not the same as “rock solid.” Apple is still adding and changing features in iOS 18.2 beta versions ahead of the expected release of iOS 18.2 in December.

If you decide to install the public beta version of iOS 18.2, I recommend that you do it on a separate iPhone that does not use your personal primary phone. iOS 18.2 will work with models as old as the iPhone SE (2nd generation) and the iPhone XR, so grab the back of your tech drawer and put that forgotten iPhone to work.

Also, make sure you have a backup of your data. And if things go sideways, learn how to roll back to iOS 17.

The bugs are part of the iOS 18.2 public beta

Now, to discuss why upgrading to the iOS public beta might be a bad idea.

Software problems in the development phase are to be expected — in fact, that’s kind of the point. Now is the time for the bugs to be brought to light so that developers can catch them and Apple can fix them before the final release. Opening the public beta to more testers helps eliminate awkward interactions with a much larger set of iPhones and third-party apps.

When it comes to defects, they can vary across the spectrum. You may encounter Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection issues, or end up with third-party apps that crash every now and then. Features that work perfectly in iOS 18 may not be equal to iOS 18.2, even if they are not necessarily related to the new features of iOS 18.2. And lagging processes can keep the system running hotter than normal, reducing not only how long the phone runs on a battery charge, but potentially stressing the life of the battery itself. To be fair, I’ve never run into any show-stopping and phone-stopping beta bugs — usually they’re a series of annoyances that can get annoying after a while. But this is all perfectly normal in developer and public beta versions.

But if you don’t want to deal with bugs and other issues that can make your phone harder to use, you probably don’t want the iOS 18.2 public beta on your primary iPhone.

Battery life may deteriorate

Have you recently purchased a recommended portable charger for your iPhone? Expect to use it more during the beta software run. Power efficiency is usually the last thing Apple developers optimize, because the priority at this point is to make sure functions work and bugs are eliminated.

An iOS update also triggers a bunch of internal indexing, which consumes a lot of power for hours or days after installation. The Photos app, for example, updates its database of known people, scans images for newly recognizable objects or scenes for search purposes, and looks for duplicates.

Performance can take a hit

Due in part to reindexing the gigabytes of data on your phone, the public beta version of iOS 18.2 almost certainly won’t deliver the performance you might expect. Processor-intensive apps and games also need to be tuned to work with the new iOS, so stuttering and glitches are normal.

Game Mode is a new feature for iOS (first appeared in macOS Sonoma) that redirects resources to improve frame rate and Bluetooth latency, so the most demanding games can perform better than in iOS 17 or iOS 18. However, Game Mode works at a low level and may be interrupted by beta components.

Not all of the new iOS 18 features are there yet

We already know that many of Apple Intelligence’s amazing features won’t be available right away, although iOS 18.2 gives us a few more to play with.

Such is the development life cycle: some features are put on the back burner so that others can be completed. Last year Apple announced two exciting media features, Shared Playlists in the Music app and AirPlay in Hotels, which didn’t appear until January and April 2024, respectively.

I know it’s hard to be patient when the next features are just a download away. But I also don’t want you to get burned (as I have in the past).

For more on iOS 18, see how the new Passwords app will work across all your devices.