Don’t Install the iPadOS 27 Beta on your iPads just YET

Screen-shots and videos attached.

There is ZERO doubt about the stability of the iOS 27 Beta on some of the iPhones and GoldenGate’s performance and battery management but iPadOS 27 struck me out.

I was closely watching the WWDC26 the night it happened, and I was just pleased enough with the presentation. But I was agreeably excited to try it out on a few of the devices that I have.

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You see, my phone, iPhone 12, is pretty old. And the iOS 26 was a disaster for my phone. My battery health dropped from 92% to 80%. I was eagerly waiting for a change.

After refreshing the Software Update screen for about 26 times, around 12:30 AM, the iOS 27 Beta option became visible under Beta updates. And I hit the update on my iPhone, the first.

8 GB. I deleted WhatsApp to make space in my old phone. 29 GB cleared.

And I started downloading the update.

Installed it. And boom. It was magical from the get-go.

The scheduler drastically reduced the app-start-time. The app switch became so fast, my phone usage became evidently higher than usual.

Seeing how successful this adventure with my old iPhone was, I thought of upgrading my M2 MacBook Pro — 32 GB — 512GB.

And this adventure was a little different. After upgrading to GoldenGate, everything was working as is. But a few things started happening.

My MacBook abruptly shut down and restarted with a few blinks of the pink-screen. This happened twice. On the first day that I upgraded. Nothing since that night.

Also, there is this weird animation that comes up when I switch between apps. When the app transitions to full-screen, that animations is just weirdly slower than the others. It’s just a jarring experience.

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Other than that, it has been a pleasant experience with GoldenGate’s battery performance.

That’s how many hours my MacBook powers through the day.

I was almost happy with this first update considering it’s just the very first Developer Beta. It’s bound to have some flaws. And you’re agreeing to install it on your own risk.

So, I decided to go to next milestone.

My old 4th generation iPad Pro — 12.9 inches — 256 GB.

Just after the install, my iPad experience felt a little jittery. But it’s okay given the years of abuse its experienced. Then I managed to try running for 5 days and the experience was just a tad bit below the stable iOS 26 Update.

Nothing extraordinary to call it a bad upgrade.

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And then suddenly my iPad went batshit crazy. It frozed. No feedback. No response on touch.

My heart skipped a beat, because I imagined this update to be just fine like the other devices. I would have to erase and install the OS again.

Then suddenly the iPad came to life but it was like wounded in a war. Moving so slow. All responses gave the same output. A lag.

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And then the iPad went dead. I gave it a few seconds and it restarted again. Very slow.

No feedback in response to touch, now lasting 1–2 minutes. I kept the iPad active to see if there’s any chance of retrieval of data before I erase it using disk-utility.

Finally after a 1–2 hours, the iPad was back to its normal silly jittery phase. And I relaxed a little bit.

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I was about to fall back to stable updates, but then I got the low battery alert for 20%. And the iPad went back to its no-feedback-to-touch state. It was testing my patience, to say the least.

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My iPad is suffering from the same illness even after 1 week of installing the iPadOS 27 Developer Beta.

The first two experiments were great. The last experiment failed. I would advise against installing it.

How well are the M series iPads working out for you with the 27 Developer Beta? And has your iPhone and Mac experience been the same?

Thank you for giving me the time for reading this small piece. Hopefully see you next time.