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Is there any reason to put iOS6 on the iPhone 4?

I

IJBrekke

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 24, 2009
648
754
Long Beach, CA
I'm trying to discern why I would want to "upgrade" at all.

I gain very few (if any) features, I lose Google Maps, my battery life may get worse, the phone may become laggy/slower (which definitely happened when I upgraded to iOS5)...I just don't get it.

The current drawback of 5.1.1 is that I cannot restore my phone without upgrading, so the first time I have a problem I will be stuck. Also, OTA updates has downloaded iOS6 onto my device and is currently taking up 800mb of space.

So am I missing something here? Why upgrade?
 
Beeplance

Beeplance

macrumors 68000
Jul 29, 2012
1,564
500
IJBrekke said:
I'm trying to discern why I would want to "upgrade" at all.

I gain very few (if any) features, I lose Google Maps, my battery life may get worse, the phone may become laggy/slower (which definitely happened when I upgraded to iOS5)...I just don't get it.

The current drawback of 5.1.1 is that I cannot restore my phone without upgrading, so the first time I have a problem I will be stuck. Also, OTA updates has downloaded iOS6 onto my device and is currently taking up 800mb of space.

So am I missing something here? Why upgrade?
Click to expand...

Your concerns are all very legit, the most important one being the lack of google maps, as well as the possibility of a decline in performance, no matter what ppl say.

I'd say stay on 5.1.1 on your iPhone 4 as long as possible. Stay away from iOS 6, the benefits of upgrading to it are very minute & not really that important.
 
Grolubao

Grolubao

macrumors 68000
Dec 23, 2008
1,579
582
London, UK
Beeplance said:
Your concerns are all very legit, the most important one being the lack of google maps, as well as the possibility of a decline in performance, no matter what ppl say.

I'd say stay on 5.1.1 on your iPhone 4 as long as possible. Stay away from iOS 6, the benefits of upgrading to it are very minute & not really that important.
Click to expand...

Basically it's this. I will never upgrade to ios6 with my iPhone 4, period, there's nothing that could value it, plus I would lose the jailbreak which is a show stopper for me
 
I

Idefix

macrumors 6502a
Jul 10, 2012
523
72
Stay on 5.1!!!

As for being able to restore, you've got it unlocked from ATT, right? (*if you're on ATT?)

If so, jailbreak it, get your blobs set aside from Tiny Umbrella, you should be able to restore to 5.1.
 
brylliant

brylliant

macrumors regular
Jul 18, 2012
193
1
United Kingdom
I thought about my answer and want to give it another go.
In ios 6, there seriously isn't a compelling reason that would make you want to upgrade. There was Maps, but we all know what happened with that. Although, Maps is fine for me.

The removal of the YouTube app in ios 6 is a bummer, but its something you can live without. The replacement app is ok, but you can even get that on ios 5.1.1.

Stay with ios 5.1.1 for now, until you see a compelling reason to upgrade in the future.
 
I

IJBrekke

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 24, 2009
648
754
Long Beach, CA
Wirelessly posted

Thanks for the detailed responses everyone, I will stay on 5.1.1 until I see a legitimate reason to upgrade.

As for unlocking, I'm on Verizon. But if I jailbreak before trying iOS6 I can still go back.
 
A

avanpelt

macrumors 68030
Jun 2, 2010
2,956
3,877
Before I upgraded to the iPhone 5, I used iOS 6 on an iPhone 4 for a few days. I personally didn't notice the battery life taking a hit. My wife has run iOS 6 for the past month and a half on her iPhone 4 and hasn't complained about battery life. She has, however, complained about the lack of accuracy with Apple Maps.

The main reason I wanted iOS 6 on my iPhone 4 was for the Do Not Disturb feature. On an iPhone 4, you basically get revamped Privacy settings, Passbook, and Do Not Disturb. You don't get Siri or the "Flyover" stuff or turn-by-turn directions with Apple Maps. If none of the things iOS 6 gives you on an iPhone 4 are compelling to you, I'd say stay with 5.x and keep the traditional Google Maps app.
 
Beeplance

Beeplance

macrumors 68000
Jul 29, 2012
1,564
500
IJBrekke said:
Wirelessly posted

Thanks for the detailed responses everyone, I will stay on 5.1.1 until I see a legitimate reason to upgrade.

As for unlocking, I'm on Verizon. But if I jailbreak before trying iOS6 I can still go back.
Click to expand...

Yeah that should be good. But I think you should stay there until you retire your phone or the phone disintegrates. I highly doubt iOS 6.1 would bring any groundbreaking feature to the 3GS & the 4, so might as well stay on 5.1.1.
 
Grolubao

Grolubao

macrumors 68000
Dec 23, 2008
1,579
582
London, UK
avanpelt said:
Before I upgraded to the iPhone 5, I used iOS 6 on an iPhone 4 for a few days. I personally didn't notice the battery life taking a hit. My wife has run iOS 6 for the past month and a half on her iPhone 4 and hasn't complained about battery life. She has, however, complained about the lack of accuracy with Apple Maps.

The main reason I wanted iOS 6 on my iPhone 4 was for the Do Not Disturb feature. On an iPhone 4, you basically get revamped Privacy settings, Passbook, and Do Not Disturb. You don't get Siri or the "Flyover" stuff or turn-by-turn directions with Apple Maps. If none of the things iOS 6 gives you on an iPhone 4 are compelling to you, I'd say stay with 5.x and keep the traditional Google Maps app.
Click to expand...

You can get No Disturb functionality with Jailbreak
 
LordQ

LordQ

Suspended
Sep 22, 2012
3,582
5,653
Staying on 5.1.1:

You keep the trustworthy Google Maps, avoid the terrible wifi bugs which are not fixed on 6.0.1, keep the phone and music app UI which is cool.

Updating to 6:

Beautiful but useless Apple Maps (unless you live on a big, important city, they suck in Mexico), the cool multicolour status bar, remove the outdated YouTube app, better privacy controls, passbook, new share sheet. You don't get Siri or panorama mode though.

So yeah, go on and update if you don't use maps and you rely on carrier network instead of wifi.
 
R

RoboCop001

macrumors 68000
Oct 4, 2005
1,561
451
Toronto, Canada
Passbook for sure. Actually it seems to run much better than iOS 5 in my experience. It's extended my iPhone 4's life for sure. I was worried about the performance on iOS 5, so I was really hoping to get an iPhone 5. But now I don't really care as much, iOS 6 works great on it!
 
L

Lara F

macrumors 6502a
May 5, 2005
853
10
Montreal, Quebec
Passbook works very nicely for Starbucks, but I've yet to find another business I'd use at all regularly. YMMV. Do Not Disturb is indeed a nice feature, as is Tab sync in Safari. And agree performance hasn't degraded.

But unless you're in an area that's decently served by Apple Maps (which I'd hope Long Beach is), probably not worth the tradeoff. I'd also add the App Store to the list of negatives - it's much buggier compared to before iOS 6.
 
N

NedBookPro

macrumors 6502
Feb 13, 2011
334
0
Beeplance said:
Your concerns are all very legit, the most important one being the lack of google maps, as well as the possibility of a decline in performance, no matter what ppl say.

I'd say stay on 5.1.1 on your iPhone 4 as long as possible. Stay away from iOS 6, the benefits of upgrading to it are very minute & not really that important.
Click to expand...

This is good advice.

I'd give ANYTHING to roll back on my phone, but that's not possible.

For me it's the annoyance of something broken in mail for Exchange Server when on Wi-Fi.

.
 
T

TWD98j

macrumors 6502
Sep 14, 2010
264
49
I have a 4S but I'm still on 5.1.1 and intend on staying there for as long as I can.

Bugs aside, this was the first iOS release where, upon its unveiling at WWDC I just thought to myself "meh".

No "gotta have it" features this time. Nothing on the caliber of multitasking, iMessage, notification center, mms, the app store, etc from past iOS releases.

My 2 cents.
 
g-7

g-7

macrumors 6502
Feb 14, 2006
403
100
Poland
IJBrekke said:
the phone may become laggy/slower (which definitely happened when I upgraded to iOS5)
Click to expand...

For me iOS 6 is actually faster than iOS 5, even though I have restored my iPhone 4 from backup, not set up as a new one.
 
Sedrick

Sedrick

macrumors 68030
Nov 10, 2010
2,596
26
I would agree. Stay on 5.1.1. 4S, maybe go to iOS6 (though I'm not), but definitely no point on a straight 4.
 
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