16 pro on iOS 26.4.2 and 26.5 has been running terribly for weeks, suddenly snappy

I just had a weird experience. I had the dreaded spotlight search bug where it would hang and become otherwise useless. Apps would slow down and I would have to reboot a lot. This persisted through the update to 26.5 a couple weeks ago.

Suddenly today, everything is working at light speed. Spotlight search is working right and apps are running like they should. My phone feels comparatively new. I’m not sure what happened, and I probably shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but I’m genuinely shocked. Has this happened to anyone else?

The evil seems to have been transferred to my media pc, unrelated to my phone but karma has made sure to maintain balance in the universe.