Is a clean install of iOS recommended or better than simply 'updating'? Or is this a myth?

Emphatically, yes.

Just last week New York Times technology reporter Brian X Chen recommended clean resets for curing a host of ills with new OS releases (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) in an article entitled A New Phone Comes Out. Yours Slows Down. A Conspiracy? No. (published 11/15/2017, at https://nyti.ms/2hDdk0j).

The article says, amazingly, that most new OS releases are tested on devices with clean installs. Which of course begs the question: why doesn't Apple test devices with their default over-the-air upgrade method? Or at least publicly recommend clean installs for their devices, especially when users experience issues? I've been having all sorts of issues with iOS 11 on my iPhone 6s since its release, and so has just about everybody I know.

FWIW the article suggests an alternative to the clean install to try first, if you like: A Settings reset (Settings / General / Reset / Reset All Settings) as well. Be warned though, that although stuff in your keychain will be saved, pretty much every setting (sounds, locations, alarms, etc. etc.) will be wiped clean. I did a Settings reset a week ago, and the multiple-times-a-day complete phone freezes (requiring a hard reset to bring the phone back from the dead) and many other issues seemed to go away... Until today, when it bricked up on me again. I used to think so well of Apple... (sigh).

I just did a clean install myself. I'll report back here if I continue having issues.

I've always done a regular update and have never had any problems.

I am kinda wondering how you can do a "clean install." It's not like a computer where you can wipe a disk clean and boot from a CD or a jump drive.

The only reason you'd do a restore is to install a fresh copy of iOS. Updating also installs a fresh (and newer) version of iOS. If your end goal is to update, then doing both would be redundant, and the latter does not cause temporary data loss.

jrozo92 wrote:

Thanks for the reply. By clean install I mean plugging into iTunes on a computer and clicking 'Restore'... Which downloads the latest iOS file from Apple's servers and reinstalls the system on the phone. 🙂

I don't know why you call that "clean." As SJF indicated, it's the same as updating.

I'm not sure, but I think the OP is talking about restoring as new as opposed to restoring from a backup. But of course that just means you lose your data and then would have to restore again after setting up as new to get it back, which serves no benefit.

It won't do anything that a normal update doesn't do. Glitches caused by "old system files" are virtually unheard of. The culprit is almost always either user data that has been added, or a hardware issue, but not iOS.

I should put it another way. There is absolutely no benefit or reason to restore your iPhone as new in order to update. Just use the normal update mechanism, and only use the "Restore as New" facility if you encounter a problem, rather than anticipation of one.

User data = anything you download/install on top of the base iOS system. Mainly third party apps. If one or more such apps frequently crash, for example, that could cause performance issues. That's not caused by iOS but by those apps.

If you're running iOS 10.3 or later, go to Settings > Privacy > Analytics > Analytics Data to view current crash and diagnostic reports.

This is what the NY Times has to say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/technology/personaltech/new-iphones-slow-tech -myth.html

A New Phone Comes Out. Yours Slows Down. A Conspiracy? No. - The New York Times

Resetting your device's intention is to reset it to the factory settings much like when you got the phone. Sw updates will remain however