OrbitalMartian

iOS 26 Has Released - Is It Worth The Hype

📆 15 Sep 2025 20:10 UTC +01:00 📕 723 words ⏳ 6 min. 🏷️ #Apple #iOS26 #iOS #Review

Today is the long awaited iOS 26 release date. As an iOS user (for now), I was quite excited for the update; what with the new design language and the cool new look to things. Let’s take a first impressions look at the OS and see what’s new, what’s good and what’s not so good.

The Install

Installing this update is just as easy as every other iOS update. Simply go to Settings > General > Software Update and then select Upgrade to iOS 26, rather confusingly, there was an iOS 18.7 update also in there (which released at the same time), I had to scroll past this update to get to the fancy new version.

The install took just under an hour from start to finish. Not too bad in the way of an update. During the downloading stage of the update, there was one of my first gripes with this thing. The time remaining had no baring on how long it actually was taking. One minute it is showing 18 minutes remaining, the next it jumps to an hour remaining. My dad and mum did the update at roughly the same time and one of theirs’ even jumped up to 7 hours remaining. I honestly think that Apple is just plucking a random number out of thin air randomly, some sort of random number generator.

Welcome Screen

After the update finished and the black screen and white apple had faded into the welcome/information screens. This was useful to show a couple of the new features and looks of iOS 26. I didn’t pay too much attention to the information, but it looked like it could be useful to some people.

The Looks

I have to admit that the new aesthetic looks actually quite nice. There is a very satisfying look to it. Some people won’t like it, it’s not for everyone, but it does look very “modern”, almost futuristic; if that’s what modern aesthetics are.

There is a lot of animations involved, it seems that everything moves, which brings me to one of my biggest problems with the new update. The animations are quite long, slowing down every action that you do. It is quite annoying. ALSO… the only way I can tell to stop the animations is to use the Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion setting but this doesn’t “reduce” motion, it stops it, which then just makes things jump from point A to point B. “Reduce” according to Dictionary.com means “to bring down to a smaller extent, size, amount, number, etc..”. There should be 2 settings, Reduce Motion which tones the animations down a bit, and then a Disable Motion which would disable them completely. This setting is quite useless (I mean it’s probably useful for some people), does more than it says on the tin, but does it in a horrible way.

Another cool new thing with iOS 26 is the Liquid Glass keyboard, which looks absolutely amazing. HOWEVER… this also has an issue. With it being a Liquid Glass design, the keyboard only has this new look in Liquid Glass applications (so all the Apple ones), any non Apple software have the old style keyboard which I am not a huge fan of, even before seeing the new one. This makes it feel highly inconsistent.

One more thing, is that all the labels saying what all the buttons did are gone, nowhere to be seen. What’s worse is that the icons have changed, so you have no clue what the button does until you press it and see what it does, not ideal; it might be something you don’t want to do.

Conclusion

Was It Worth The Hype?

No, absolutely not. Although it looks great and there was a decent install experience, there are a load of inconsistencies which overrule the good experiences, it’s a shame, I really wanted to like it but there are just too many little things that I have problems with for me to like it. I like the look of it but there are a few things that I don’t like, which really need to be worked on.

And with that short and sweet conclusion, that’s the end of this blost, hope you enjoyed. BYEEE!!!