My Month With iOS 14 Beta

Every year, when Apple drops a new iOS, I can’t wait to get hold of the Beta version. This is sometimes to my own detriment, as a few times I’ve not owned an iPhone when the new software was announced.

And this year, it was no different. iOS 14 was announced, and as soon as it was available, iOS 14 Beta was on my iPhone 11. And within a week or so, iOS 13 was back on my iPhone.

Safe to say, it was a rocky road to start- but it wasn’t all Apple’s fault.

The reason for this quick jump back was due to my carrier; I had recently switched to Visible, of which I’d heard good things (and of which those “good things” appear to be few and very far between), and once I upgraded to iOS 14, I could no longer send SMS messages over 160 characters.

Correction: I could send those longer messages all day long. But if I typed just one character past 160, my recipient would not receive the text. It took several conversations that felt like every other message wasn’t getting responded to, and several long conversations with Visible support (read: a joke) to come to the conclusion that their network just didn’t play well with unreleased software.

So I downgraded my phone back to iOS 13. And when my month with Visible was over, I switched to Ryan Reynold’s carrier (Mint) and upgraded myself back to iOS 14. And now……