iPod touch Was iOS 5.1 Most Smooth 5.X Version on iPod Touch 4G?

My iPod touch 4g came shipped with iOS 5.1. Using for a week, it was smooth as butter and I don't remember any crashes. I was quite happy because I did some research with many saying lack of RAM made it crash often. Also tested 2 iPod touch units at an Apple Store and seperate electronic shop-seemed fine.

I finally installed 5.1.1 thinking it would be a minor update and not slow the device down. After installing I had my first crash on Safari and I remember my eyes opening wide I regularly close unused programs.

Been using over a month and the device would crash 1-2 times a day only on Safari (also once on Youtube App Store version). I know 4g only has 256MB RAM but 5.1 did not crash on me once. I did not add anything after 5.1.1 as my contents stayed the same.

So for those of you who had an iPod touch during iOS 5.X days, was 5.1 the smoothest version? From what I read it seems to go:
5.1>5.1.1>5.0.1>5.0

BTW I do not have iOS 6 installed as I don't want to deal with even lower free RAM which means less background apps can be used. I must say the past few days I have not had any crashes so that's a good sign.

Interesting. Thanks for the comments guys. I will say 5.1.1 battery life is much better than 5.1 the week I used it. However there was a setting I tweaked in 5.1.1 (general-date and time menu) that resulted in better battery. I found this out by reading a comment from a site.

Before that 5.1.1 battery was the same as 5.1 so I'll never know if I did that tweak in 5.1 the battery would've been improved.

I still do wonder if Apple made the touch run slower but in doing so resulted in better battery and more crashes going from 5.1-5.1.1.

Anyone know the free RAM available in 5.1 compared to 5.1.1?

sracer said:

If you are not jailbroken, then 5.1.1 is the stablest. My 2yr old 64GB 4G Touch (not jailbroken) is running 5.1.1 and it is running BETTER than when I first bought it. The version of iOS 4.x that came with it had bugs that drained the battery.

But obviously that depends upon the application mix as well.

Click to expand...

So 5.1 was not as smooth as 5.1.1? Because these vids show how fast it is on 5.1. Note how fast applications open/close and switching between apps. Mine was also running like these two vids on 5.1:

Watch from 4:05-4:25


BTW I don't jailbreak and probably never will.

Well the iPhone 4 has 512MB RAM so that helps running iOS6. iPod touch 4g only has 256 so the iPhone 4 having double the amount is huge.

Anyways after about a week of somewhat smooth performance, its back to Safari crash-fest. On the Apple website, the iPhone section always crashes when I zoom in. Also google news desktop site always crashes when double tapping to zoom in.

iPod touch 3rd gen and iPhone 3gs users can also chime in about 5.1.1 as those specs are similar to touch 4. I always thought 4g would be faster because it has Apple A4 chip clocked in at 800Mhz while the other two 600Mhz. What I forgot was all 3 are 256MB RAM but touch 4G is retina display (double the resolution) so really touch 4g may be slower.

Knowing I can't restore and set up as new iPod on iTunes without it converting to 6.X, thinking of going to the reset setting on the touch and tap "Erase All Content and Settings" option. However my touch automatically downloaded 6.0 but did not install yet. So if I erase all content will it show up as 6.0 or 5.1.1?

TacticalDesire said:

There are exceptions, but it seems whatever OS ships with the device is the one that runs the best. Buying an iPod with iOS 6 could very well run fine, or it could be a mess. It seems to be a bit of a crap shoot.

Click to expand...

Hmm you may be right. Perhaps the only way to ensure tip-top smoothness is to restore as new iPod with each and every update. Would be annoying but maybe updating leaves corrupt files at times or restoring cleans some of the fragmented files-probably a bit of both.

Also added a poll. Should've added one sooner.