iPhone X Is Now a Vintage Device – What Does That Mean for CarPlay Users

Phone makers across the Android world copied this design idea, and while some of them mocked Apple for this approach (I mean you, Samsung), they ended up adopting it in their smartphones anyway.

The iPhone X was also the first Apple smartphone to launch without a Home button and Touch ID for fingerprint scanning. It introduced Face ID, a feature we all use today to unlock our phones or make payments by scanning our faces.

The iPhone X was a fantastic device, but it’s time for Apple to add it to its list of classic products.

Vintage products are typically old devices that Apple stopped selling between five and seven years ago. These devices no longer receive updates, but Apple continues to offer replacement parts and services for another two years until they become obsolete. At that point, Apple devices are completely abandoned and no longer receive any repairs or services.

The iPhone X becoming a vintage product doesn’t change much about how people use the device. While the iPhone X making it onto the list brings it one step closer to its eventual demise, the device has been abandoned for a while from a software release perspective. The iPhone X doesn’t support iOS 17 (Apple’s latest software update), it won’t get the upcoming iOS 18 (so owners won’t be able to use all of its AI-powered features), and it won’t get any further updates in the future.

The latest version of iOS available was iOS 16.

CarPlay users won’t get the new improvements, but that hasn’t changed since iOS 16. Since the iPhone X no longer receives new iOS updates (aside from critical security updates that Apple sometimes sends to unsupported devices), all of the newer CarPlay features integrated into the latest software versions won’t be available to users of this iPhone model.

However, CarPlay has undergone virtually no major changes over the past few years, and aside from a few improvements to Apple Maps, the experience on Apple’s car-optimized platform is essentially the same.

The iPhone X will continue to function normally in the car, so you can continue to use CarPlay on that device if you don’t want to update. You won’t get the latest features, but considering you still have a seven-year-old smartphone, I don’t think that’s your priority.

The next update to the iPhone operating system is iOS 18, which is already in beta with a few subtle changes to the CarPlay experience. It’s due out in the fall and won’t be available for iPhone X.