Will the iPhone XR, or iPhone XS, or iPhone XS Max, receive official support for the next major version of iOS, to be released in 2025, presumably called iOS 19?
Nuances:
If any iPhone with the A12 SoC receives official support for iOS 19, even if not all of them do, I will consider the answer to be "Yes"
If no new major version of iOS is released in 2025, then if any iPhone with the A12 SoC is able to receive the latest available version of iOS at the year's end, I will consider the answer to be "Yes"
I will judge this as earliest as WWDC 2025, if I can install any iOS 19 Beta version on an iPhone XR, XS, or XS Max.
1,000Most people believe that new OS releases need faster computers, and that’s generally not the case at all (see how well recent Windows releases work on computers as old as 15 years when the secure computing stuff is bypassed). Also Apple typically goes the extra mile on supporting old devices (usually 7 years of releases, but occasionally 8, which of course is what this bet is over).
Unfortunately, “Apple Intelligence” has effectively bifurcated their ecosystem into one set that has The New Shiny, and another that does not. Now that a cheap device (iPhone SE 4) that can run AI is on the horizon, it’s going to be in Apple’s best interests to get the legacy devices cleared out ASAP just for the sake of keeping their ecosystem coherent.
In fact, I think the iPhone 11 might get axed too, and the 12 and 13 dropped next year. That would be only five years of updates for the 13, but the iPhone 6 only got four, so such a short lifespan isn’t unheard of.