Faster animations on iOS 26 make older iPhones look like new

The design revamp made with iOS 26 brings all sorts of new animations along with Liquid Glass visual wizardry. With Beta 6, Apple has overhauled its Springboard app launch animation for the first time in years.

Apps now launch in full screen mode much faster than before, accompanied by a slight warping effect reminiscent of how Mac windows minimize to the dock. A faster animation speed makes a big difference. It’s as if iOS 26 made your iPhone faster, even on older models that are several years old…

Users love operating system updates that optimize the system and improve performance. Although the actual performance of your iPhone is unchanged on iOS 26, the perception is what matters. The illusion created by the new animation is that your phone is a lot faster. This will undoubtedly have a huge boost to customer satisfaction.

Immediately after the update this fall, users will tap the app icon on their home screen and instantly feel like their phone is faster and more responsive. iOS 26 with Liquid Glass is a complete overhaul and the changes will be controversial in some areas, but it will be difficult to muster negative user sentiment if the belief is that the update made their phones look like new, too.

The funny thing is that the actual change in overall animation timing is relatively small. It’s only about 150ms faster. The biggest difference is the pace, which greatly affects how you feel.

In iOS 26, apps jump out of their icons much more quickly, so they expand to almost full size faster than in iOS 18. iOS 18 is more spring-loaded, and scales incrementally. If you compare the two iPhones side by side, the app on iOS 26 expands to 90% of the screen while the app on iOS 18 is about halfway there.

This change has been much welcomed, and looks especially great on recent iPhones with higher refresh rate ProMotion displays.

It actually somewhat follows the trend set by Android. Most Android launchers use much faster animation speeds than what Apple introduced with iOS 18. iOS 26 bridges the gap.