Can your iPhone and iPad run iOS 11?

At WWDC 2016, Apple gave the world its first look at the upcoming iOS 11. And the world saw that it was good.

You can peruse, in detail, 11 reasons why iOS 11 is likely to transform your mobile life right here, but in short, we’re talking a streamlined experience all-round thanks to a revamped Control Centre, smarter-sounding Siri, redesigned App Store, a phone that automatically recognises when you're driving to limit distracting notifications, and Apple Maps actually becoming something you might want to use.

Lots of lovely to get excited about, basically.

But if the announcement also had you worrying that your aging iPhone, iPad or iPod touch model might not be able to handle all the new bells and whistles, we’re here to allay your fears – or confirm them, perhaps.

Here’s the deal, straight from the horse’s mouth: according to Apple, to run iOS 11 you’ll need:

Anything older than that and you’re out of luck, we’re afraid. So to anyone who’s still out there rocking an iPhone 5… you enjoyed a good run, but if you want to try the latest flavour of Apple Maps, it’s high time to retire your creaking handset in favour of a newer model.

If you’re lucky enough to own one of the compliant devices, you’ll be able to download the full, finished version of iOS 11 sometime in the autumn. If you’re itching to get your hands on it before that, you can either become a registered iOS developer and download a preview edition of it RIGHT NOW, or sign up here for access to the public beta test.

One thing we’d strongly urge you to do before firing up the preview or beta is to back up your iPhone or iPad. And we’ve already written a guide on precisely how to do that, just to make sure you don’t lose anything precious in your rush to experience the latest and greatest mobile platform Apple has to offer.