You may recall that we warned you not to update your current iPhone to the first beta of iOS 12.1 if you were expecting a new iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max today. You can forget about that now, as Apple has now released beta builds of iOS 12.1 for both new iPhones.
This comes at the perfect time for customers eagerly receiving new iPhones today, as it is impossible to restore a new phone from a backup of a newer version of iOS. So, if a user’s current iPhone was running iOS 12.1 beta, there is no way to restore from a backup of that device, running that version of the operating system until the new iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max is updated to the beta as well.
Apple released the first beta of iOS 12.1 to developers on Tuesday, just one short day after the official release of iOS 12 to the general public. The iOS 12.1 beta, which contains the ever popular “bug fixes and improvements,” also includes the ability to make group FaceTime calls, a feature that had been pulled from iOS 12 during its beta testing period.