Imagine someone opens a box with a new iPhone 12 inside. Out of box it came with iOS 14. When the phone gets upgraded to the latest software, does it automatically gets updated to the latest one, or will the software get upgraded incrementally (14 to 15 then to 16…..)?
In: Technology
Apple maintains 3 delta patches for the current version, meaning you can patch up if you are 3 minor versions behind, for example the current version is 14.1.1 and previous 3 releases are 14.1, 14.0.2, 14.0.1, Apple will prepare different patches to update those 3 versions straigh to 14.1.1. Anything more than that will require a full download of the entire system image but the phone can handle it like a normal update, it just takes slightly longer time.
(This is how they implement OTA delta updates when it first came out around maybe iOS5, not sure if they still do it now.)
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