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It appears that Apple started offering a storage encryption option on their iPhones since the iPhone 3GS.

However, I am curious as to when the switch happened from encrypting using Full Disk Encryption (FDE) to the better File Based Encryption (FBE). Does anyone know which iOS version switched from FDE to FBE?

According to a semi-reputable source at ScienceDirect:

Apple devices with iOS versions higher than 8 use FBE

I was hoping for more concrete information, as I am using a lot of legacy devices which may also play a role. For example, maybe certain older iPhone models after iOS 8 will still use FDE because they do not support FBE? Any help is welcome!

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I can't dig up an authoritative reference at the moment, but I'm fairly certain it was iOS 10.3 update which was when iOS converted everyone's phones to APFS that this switch was orchestrated.

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  • I personally thought the iPhone 5 using the A6 chip was the last iPhone where FDE was possible, because the A7 chip introduced Secure Enclave which appears to be required for FBE to work? Much like Android 7 introduced FBE, and users without TrustZone could only use Android 7, 8, and 9 but never upgrade to 10 or newer.
    – securityauditor
    Commented Jan 20 at 20:44
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    That lines up very well @securityauditor with the history of A6 devices (5, 5C and 4th gen iPad) being end of the line on 10.3 and only A7 devices getting 11.0 which was the first major version that guaranteed APFS as the filesystem. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#Overview
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jan 21 at 0:31
  • It does indeed. However, I was wondering if there were a way to find a more reputable source of information?
    – securityauditor
    Commented Jan 21 at 3:20
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    I believe Apple stated this explicitly in one of the WWDC videos - have you watched the one linked and read the notes from that year WWDC? Archive.org has the links live last time I checked @securityauditor
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jan 21 at 3:24
  • Sorry but what is WWDC? My link below seems to suggest that iOS and iPad devices use FBE - file encryption - (for some reason Apple calls this Data Protection) whereas only certain Macs using FileVault get volume encryption (which seems like FDE). This is too new, I am looking at legacy products. support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/sece3bee0835/web
    – securityauditor
    Commented Jan 21 at 3:40

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