Ask Slashdot: Is iOS 7 Slow?

New submitter PopHollywood writes "Is iOS 7 slower than version 6? After upgrading, myself and a few others notice slow, choppy experience when scrolling, changing apps, etc. Is this common?" For those using iOS in general, what's been your experience with the new upgrade?

Comments

Yep

[AdamHaun]

There seem to be two different kinds of slowdown. The first is due to the new animations for things like going back to the home screen. The second is more intermittent, and happens mostly when task switching. Both of them are annoying. The whole reason I went with iOS over Android was the snappier UI.

The disappearing Safari toolbar also drives me crazy. I wish I had held off on upgrading. Hopefully Apple will have some tweaks and patches out soon.

Re:Yep

[FuzzNugget]

The whole reason I went with iOS over Android was the snappier UI.

This may have been true a few years ago with Android handsets generally being underpowered, but the hardware caught up a while ago already.

I have a Nexus 4 and, aside from the rare hangup which happens on any OS, everything is just instant. Transitions are smooth and clean, apps load effortlessly, scrolling is incredibly responsive.

My dad's iPhone feels sluggish and cumbersome by comparison.

Re:Yep

[TyFoN]

The N4 (which has been out for about a year) does not have this issue at all. In fact, I've not seen it on any android phone that came out the last year.
The last time I experienced a small UI lag on times was with the 3 year old HTC Desire. It kind of helped that 4.0+ went with HW accelerated UI.

Almost seems purposeful

[incom]

Since the iphone 3g, apple has been pushing updates that slow down older phones.

Of course it's slower on older hardware

[Golden_Rider]

iOS7 should be fine on an iphone 5 or 4s, but there definitely should be a noticeable slowdown on an iphone 4. That hardware is a bit old by now, and iOS7 is designed for the newer hardware. E.g. the iphone 4 still has a single core A4 CPU, while the 4s already has the dual core A5. The newer phones (5 and up) also have twice the RAM. Still, upgrading to iOS7 is a user option, and it's better to have that option than not to have it. Not many 3 year old Android phones still get OS upgrades.

Re:Of course it's slower on older hardware

[Smerta]

FWIW, and I know this is anecdotal, but I upgraded my iPhone4 to iOS7 and found the moderate slowdown to be acceptable. Personally, I really enjoy & appreciate many of the changes.

One thing in particular that I appreciate, now when I take a photo, the screen isn't unresponsive for a couple seconds after taking the photo. Said another way, the camera feels much "snappier" (no pun intended), even for taking single photos. I found this surprising and a bit odd, since some other things are actually a tad less responsive after the udpate.

I'm not a moth that's drawn to bright lights, but iOS7 looked interesting enough that I figured it was worth a try. (That, and the fact that I'll replace my 3-year-old phone soon enough anyway, be it an iPhone or something else.)

Mind you, I've been around the block, and I was burned badly when I upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS4 a few years back. Talk about an update bringing the phone to its knees! There were times when I'd press a button (usually while typing on the keyboard) and the phone wouldn't respond for 20 seconds. Talk about fucking the dog, that release had no business running on the 3G. Sure, it might have been a ploy to force people to upgrade their phones, but it really soured me.

Anyway, caveat emptor and all that, but if you've got an iPhone4, and you are on the fence about upgrading to iOS7, I would recommend you go for it. Just understand that certain things might not be quite as fast (power up being one of the most obvious, I haven't timed it but it's noticeably slower).

Re:yawn

[immaterial]

I think you're forgetting how much animation there was in iOS 6 just because you got used to it, whereas the iOS 7 ones are different and are therefore noticeable. Other than the parallax effect and the translucence/blur, which I'd already mentioned, where else are there animations/eye candy where there weren't before? Folders opened with an animation (slide up rather than zoom in), the springboard loaded with an animation (swoop in from the sides rather than fall in from above), views slid from one to the next before just as they do now. And you're forgetting the subtle skeumorphic animations in certain controls that are now gone altogether, like the shine on the metallic volume slider knob that tracked the motion of the phone.

It's not that I don't think ios 7 puts more strain on the hardware - it does, especially with the translucent blur (which is why the blur is disabled on the iPhone 4). I just don't think it qualifies as "more eye candy." Mostly *different* eye candy, the worst of which is disableable if you need to improve performance.

iPad 3

[pbjones]

Feels a little faster in some areas like web browsing, generally about the same, but I prefer the old UI.

Re:yawn

[_Shad0w_]

My iTunes just tells me there's an update for my iPhone and asking if I want to install it, with the option of doing it now, doing it later (which is just "bother me next time I sync"), or never ask me about this again. I'm not sure how that's a forced update.

Liar

[arcite]

I downgraded my iPad back to 6.1.3.... It's perfectly doable.

Re:Dude,

[quacking duck]

My (i)phone (4) hung in the middle of the upgrade, so I ended up having to do a clean install.

It took all night, but it feels less laggy than iOS 6 was at the end. Also, some have complained about the useless animations, but if my actions are acknowledged immediately, I don't end up assuming the phone ignored my input, trying again, and taking eleven pictures of the floor in front of me while trying to start the camera.

Protip: Consider doing a clean install.

That's the thing, I installed iOS7 on my test/backup iPhone 4S, so I could explore it before installing on my iPhone 5. The overall UI remained smooth as I used the browser, various apps, etc for a couple hours... no appreciable stuttering or lag, which was impressive.

However, the feel of the UI itself is definitely slower. The lockscreen fade-in and fade out, while nicer than the instant on/off in earlier iOS, takes too long. The animation that happens after exiting the lockscreen to Homescreen, which while running prevents me tapping on an app to launch it, is over 1 second, whereas my iPhone 5 on iOS6 is half that.

Also, after pressing the home button in iOS6 it's about 1/4 second before an app exits, which still allows time for starting double- or even triple-press functions. In iOS7 this delay is a full second! This is the epitome of actions NOT being acknowledged immediately, and there's no obvious good reason why this additional delay was put in.

It's not just because it's installed on an older device or because it wasn't a clean install, I verified iOS7's longer, built-in UI response times on an iPhone 5S in the store.

I can get used to the visual changes, I really don't appreciate the additional lag times that seem to be built-in to the OS itself, since the whole idea was to simplify and improve the interface!

Brief window where both 6 and 7 can be installed

[perpenso]

I downgraded my iPad back to 6.1.3.... It's perfectly doable.

Its temporary. When new iOS versions are introduced there is generally a brief window of time where Apple's servers approve both versions for installation. After a little while the previous version will be removed from the approved list and only the new version will be approved from that point forward.

If you with reinstall iOS 6 do not delay.