Apple seeded iOS 13 Beta 3 for the first time to all developers two weeks ago on Tuesday, and although it’s a huge improvement over the very first beta we received in the first week of June, I wouldn’t consider Beta 3 to be better than Beta 2. In fact, while I thought Beta 3 was less laggy, glitchy, and overall better, there were a couple of elements that made me want to revert to Beta 2.
Once again, crashing was the biggest fault with me for Beta 3. But the time it’s a little different. I had one overall crash, which forced me to reboot the entire system again. This is nothing compared to Beta 1, where a crash would occur approximately 5-10 times a day. However, my biggest issue this time was once again with the apps. Continuing from the previous betas, Fallout Shelter still isn’t functional (it should be noted that a recent update from Bethesda did make the app much more stable than before, but it still crashes quote often for me), however, since Beta 3, I have found both Twitter and Messages to be crashing constantly. Twitter crashing doesn’t really bother me, but Messages does. That’s quite an important element to a phone, so I had to message from my Mac for the two weeks of this beta. Interestingly, Messages crashing was not an issue on my iPad, which is running iPadOS Beta 3. I found this incredibly frustrating for the first 6 days of this beta, but the revised beta that Apple released on the 8th of July made a huge improvement to Messages. Yes, it would still crash, but nowhere near as bad as it was prior to the revised beta.
Battery Life has received a huge improvement in Beta 3 over both Beta 1 and 2. I felt as if the battery life in this beta was release-standard. I could use my phone for a full day and I didn’t experience battery drain at any stage. It should be noted that prior to downloading the beta for iOS 13, I would get about two days on a single charge with my iPhone XR, but I wouldn’t expect that length of battery life during a beta.
Performance definitely received some improvements in Beta 3. Clocking in at about 11,000 for the multi-core score, this is around what you would normally get for a regular release of iOS 12.
In conclusion, I’m really happy with Beta 3, but not as happy as I would like to be. Yes, it’s so much better than Beta 1 and is far smoother than Beta 2 but I would love if Apple were able to resolve the whole crashing area. Beta 4 should 100% fix these issues, so I’m super exited for that release.
If you are considering installing the iOS 13 beta, I wouldn’t recommend it for your personal devices. If you have a spare iPhone lying around that you don’t use anymore – sure, give it a go. On your main iPhone – no way. Or at least not yet. While Beta 3 is a huge improvement over Beta 1 and 2, it’s still not stable enough to be used reliably. I rely heavily on my main iPhones and iPads, so I install the betas on secondary devices that I use quite often. But of course, you might be a thrillseeker, so in that case, go ahead! Have a blast! (Just don’t forget to file your bugs using the Feedback app!)
iOS 13 Beta 4 is expected to be arriving soon, so we’ll see how that update performs compared to this! Anyways, how have your experiences been with iOS 13 beta 3? Let me know in the comments below!