Anyone's iPad 3 Slow?

[marc55]

We have an iPad 3 with the latest IOS, and it is very slow; I've done a reset and reloaded it, but it's still slow.

Is it just too old to run the latest IOS?

Is there any diagnostic I can run on it?

Any insight will be appreciated?

Thank you

 

[mlody]

I got 2 of these along with iPad 2 (non retina). They are all slow, especially in Safari, but still usable if you are somewhat patient. My daughter is also finding that there are more and more games that require at least iPad 4, so these older models are slowly getting on its way out.

 

[Subwaymac]

Yeah my ipad3 I guess the first retina model is really slow. I should have left it on iOS 7 lol

 

[Ih8reno]

Mine has been slow since iOS 8 really. It currently is on 8.3 and will remain there. Using it only for videos and some basic web browsing as anything else works horribly on it.

 

[wingsabr]

My iPad 3 was slow the day I got it...retina was great, speed was NOT!

 

[JamesMike]

My iPad 3 is working fine with new system.

 

[stevemiller]

It is usable, but it is far from pleasant to use. I recently took my 4s back to ios6 and the difference is night and day on A5 hardware. I wish apple would allow old OS installs. I don't need the new features and honestly would be fine just having a smoothly running Netflix/YouTube/safari machine from the iPad 3.

As it stands now, leaving it stranded as a stuttering laggy mess does nothing but remove any desire to be a repeat iPad customer. The fact that A8 hardware is already showing issues a year in convinces me this situation isn't improving anytime soon.

They can force my hand on subsidized phones every 2 years. But this "2-years and then it sucks" approach has only driven me away from bothering with iPads ever again.

 

[pika2000]

Yeah, seems like Apple underestimated the GPU requirements to drive the retina screen on the iPad 3. Also explained why it was short-lived and we saw iPad 4 released soon after.

At this point, the A5 imo is done. It had a good run. A6 is probably minimum, but I believe Apple will pull more switches that are optimised for 64-bit hardware. Current lineup of iDevices are all 64-bit (minus the old Apple TV).

 

[Jetwash]

Yeah, seems like Apple underestimated the GPU requirements to drive the retina screen on the iPad 3. Also explained why it was short-lived and we saw iPad 4 released soon after.

At this point, the A5 imo is done. It had a good run. A6 is probably minimum, but I believe Apple will pull more switches that are optimised for 64-bit hardware. Current lineup of iDevices are all 64-bit (minus the old Apple TV).

My iPad 3 is almost unusable! Everything is slow. Did clean install to no avail. I've been holding out for iPad Air 3, but can't wait much longer. If I see a good price on Air 2 (i.e. $100 or more off) I'm going to go ahead & get one. Don't have the patience for the iPad 3 anymore.

 

[thadoggfather]

really glad I kept my mom's iPad 3 on iOS 6.1 and jailbroke it so it can't be OTA'd accidentally.

She's still happy with it

 

[mtneer]

The iPad 3 is over 3 years old now. It originally shipped with iOS 5, so iOS 9 is 4-generations beyond what it was designed for. Given Apple's track record; I stick by the thumb rule never to update iOS at most one generation beyond what the device shipped with.

 

[mdridwan47]

Anyone's iPad 3 Slow?

Everyone's iPad 3 is slow.

 

[Ggvfvgbffbf]

Writing this on an iPad 3. I remember when I bought it 3.5 years ago on release day and I loved it. I remember my brother coming round and borrowing it and saying "it's so fast!". And it was. It was great.

Everything was fine (for me) until iOS 7. It was a disaster. iOS 6 was great but 7 was too much for the iPad 3 IMO. It crashed to the springboard every single day until 7.1 came out. It was a shambles and dented my faith in Apple.

I have to say that iOS 9 is the best post iOS 6 version. iOS 9 is basically just the finished version of iOS 7. The iPad is perfectly usable but slow... I don't know what's going on with the memory management cos sometimes it will just lose it. I can have just 2 tabs open in Safari and they'll refresh when i switch between the two. This is with no other apps being used.

I do get angry tho with the device having slowed down. I have a cheap Windows PC that's 7 years old. I now prefer to surf the web on that sometimes cos it can do it better than the iPad 3. I barely used the PC back when I bought the iPad.

Anyway. I agree with the guy who say to NOT update your device beyond 1 additional iOS version. I bought an iPhone 6 a year ago and there's not a chance I'll update it beyond 9.4.1 or whatever. I don't care what iOS 10 promises I'm not gonna hobble my device. Ive learnt my lesson.

 

[Cakefish]

My Air 2 is performing poorly for crying out loud. iOS 9 seems very, very unoptimised.

 

[mdridwan47]

My Air 2 is performing poorly for crying out loud. iOS 9 seems very, very unoptimised.

What?? How can that be? iPad Air 2 is insanely fast. What is your storage space?

 

[Cakefish]

What?? How can that be? iPad Air 2 is insanely fast. What is your storage space?

128GB, currently 67.7GB available.

 

[salzrat]

Personally, I felt 7.1.2 still works really well on an ipad 3. However, anything beyond that really sucks. In particular, from 8 on, ibooks is extremely slow, and also Safari. The app switcher on 9.0.2 is totally unusable (although much much better in 9.1).

However, I managed to downgrade my ipad 3 to 7.1.2! Luckily, I had blobs from 7.1.2, and the downgrade using Odysseus worked perfectly!

I can only recommend anybody who has blobs saved to try this. You have to be fast, though, you will need 9.0.2 and that will not be signed much longer!

 

[Ih8reno]

Personally, I felt 7.1.2 still works really well on an ipad 3. However, anything beyond that really sucks. In particular, from 8 on, ibooks is extremely slow, and also Safari. The app switcher on 9.0.2 is totally unusable (although much much better in 9.1).

However, I managed to downgrade my ipad 3 to 7.1.2! Luckily, I had blobs from 7.1.2, and the downgrade using Odysseus worked perfectly!

I can only recommend anybody who has blobs saved to try this. You have to be fast, though, you will need 9.0.2 and that will not be signed much longer!

I thought Odysseus was only for iPad 2 and iphone4s

 

[salzrat]

OdysseusOTA is, but regular Odysseus works for more devices and more firmwares. You need to have SHSH blobs saved for the version you want to downgrade to, and firmware bundles have to be present in Odysseus. Ipad 3 does have them...

 

[Ih8reno]

OdysseusOTA is, but regular Odysseus works for more devices and more firmwares. You need to have SHSH blobs saved for the version you want to downgrade to, and firmware bundles have to be present in Odysseus. Ipad 3 does have them...

Thanks very interesting. Maybe one day I'll try it.

 

[btrach144]

My iPad 3 has slowly been getting slower with each iOS release. It's nearly unusable at this point. I want the iPad Air 3 though so I'm trying to hold out just a little bit longer!

 

[brentsg]

Everyone's iPad 3 is slow these days..