how to update an iphone

If you have an iPhone 6 as your tag line suggests, you have an 11 year old iPhone, which cannot be updated past iOS 12.5.7. Since you are apparently are already on iOS 12, you are on the latest version your very old, no longer supported phone can run. There are many apps, which app developers no longer support for such old phones as yours. If you need or want these apps, then you need to buy a new iPhone at this point.

The App Store does not check to see whether

• You can update the version of iOS on your phone far enough to meet an app's minimum requirement, or
• You will need to go out and buy a newer phone.

When it tells you that you need to update iOS, all it is saying is that the version of iOS you are running right now doesn't meet the minimum requirements for the app. It's not guaranteeing that the update is one that you can perform without buying a new phone.

The Software Update function in Settings does check to see if your phone is running the highest version of iOS that's compatible with it. If you are running the highest compatible version, Settings will say that the iOS on the phone is up to date, even if there are many newer versions of iOS that you cannot, and will never be able to, run.

Perhaps the wording could be better, but better wording would not change the bottom line.

The iPhone 6 cannot update past iOS 12 – and many developers have now chosen only to support more recent versions. If you want to run modern apps, it is past time to replace the iPhone 6 with one which can run iOS 18, such as an iPhone 15-series or 16-series phone that might have many years of future updates ahead of it.