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  "path": "/forum/ios-ipados/old-iphone-4-better-voiceover-voice",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-23T14:58:56.000Z",
  "site": "https://applevis.com",
  "textContent": "Has anyone noticed that some VoiceOver voices actually sound worse today than they did years ago? (Example: Flemish Ellen)\n\nI've been wondering for years whether I'm the only one experiencing this.\n\nLast week I powered up my old iPhone 4 out of curiosity. To my surprise, the Flemish Dutch VoiceOver voice \"Ellen\" sounded noticeably better than the version available on my current iPhone running iOS 27 beta.\n\nThe difference wasn't subtle. The older version sounded richer, clearer and more natural. The current version sounds more compressed, flatter and less detailed. That is quite shocking when you realize we're comparing a 16 year old device to a modern flagship smartphone.\n\nI've had the feeling for several years that Apple made a deliberate change somewhere along the way. It almost feels as if a software update replaced a high quality screen with a lower quality one. If Apple shipped an update that made displays visibly worse, people would immediately notice and complain. Yet when it comes to speech quality, it feels like this happened gradually without much discussion.\n\nI was really hoping iOS 27 would finally address this, but to my ears the Flemish Ellen voice still sounds significantly worse than older versions.\n\nI'm particularly curious whether users of less common or \"smaller\" languages have noticed something similar. Have any of you compared current VoiceOver voices with older iOS versions and found that quality has actually decreased?\n\nI'd be interested to hear if others have observed the same thing, especially if you've compared devices side by side.",
  "title": "Old iPhone 4, better VoiceOver voice?"
}