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Disappointed with iPad Air (1) on iOS 8

M

MacRazySwe

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 7, 2007
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Hello all,

I just bought the iPad Air 1 today. I got it for a great price, but still, I'm a bit disappointed. Swiping through webpages in Safari is horrible. The frame rate drops far below my level of comfort. Not only that, but it reloads Safari even with only one tab open, together with Settings.

Coming from an iPad Mini 1 I figured this would be an upgrade, but other than the Retina display it hardly feels much faster. Before anyone asks, I set it up as a new iPad. I waited half an hour or so while iCloud was syncing. Still lagged. Decided to do a complete wipe again, also installed iOS 8.4. This time I turned off iCloud so that it doesn't sync photos or such. Still, it lags terribly. I've turned on "reduce motion", but I find it sad that I should have to, on a rather new device. Mind you, I haven't installed even one App as of yet.

I mostly bought this iPad for browsing the web, but I'm sad to say it's not an enjoyable experience.

I will leave it during the night, in case it's still indexing something, but if it's just as bad tomorrow I'm thinking of returning it. Any advice?
 
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Do you have all unnecessary services and features turned OFF? The Air 1 runs just fine with the latest OS. Sure, Safari is limited with the number of tabs you can have open before refreshes occur but it's more than 1 tab! Background app refresh is off, etc, etc?
 
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s2mikey said:
Do you have all unnecessary services and features turned OFF? The Air 1 runs just fine with the latest OS. Sure, Safari is limited with the number of tabs you can have open before refreshes occur but it's more than 1 tab! Background app refresh is off, etc, etc?
Click to expand...
Is the culprit more so ios8? You'd think an iDevice with an a7 that hasn't been released more than 2 years ago could keep up with most of the basic stuff you throw at it.

Me... I'm still on ios8.2. I browsed a bit at a motel, and noticed only minimal web tab refreshes, but my browsing has been limited with it. When I'm at home, I much prefer to use my desktop for internet. The rest of it is used for gaming, which I could swear some of it does seem like it's lagging (like Gasketball), although I haven't ruled out it may be something with the apps themself.
 
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Upgraded to Air 2 from Air 1 last month (annual work corporate upgrade), and the sheer speed, fluidity, and responsiveness of the Air 2 is incredible.

I didn't find the Air 1 a slouch, but there were noticeable frame drops in certain areas of the UI, namely where any kind of blur/translucency effects are present.

In terms of app performance however both tablets are near identical, for now. However if you're looking for longevity from your iPad I would suggest if you can return the Air and spend the extra on an Air 2.

It is THE optimal iOS experience right now.
 
I have an iPad Mini 2 and, even though it is not as absolutely responsive as my iPad Air 2, is very good. Yes, some times there are some frame drops (for example when opening Spotlight), but other than that, I think it's perfectly capable, even for browsing the web. Maybe yours has some hardware issue. Anyway, iPad Air 2 is much better.
 
MacRazySwe said:
Hello all,

I just bought the iPad Air 1 today. I got it for a great price, but still, I'm a bit disappointed. Swiping through webpages in Safari is horrible. The frame rate drops far below my level of comfort. Not only that, but it reloads Safari even with only one tab open, together with Settings.

Coming from an iPad Mini 1 I figured this would be an upgrade, but other than the Retina display it hardly feels much faster. Before anyone asks, I set it up as a new iPad. I waited half an hour or so while iCloud was syncing. Still lagged. Decided to do a complete wipe again, also installed iOS 8.4. This time I turned off iCloud so that it doesn't sync photos or such. Still, it lags terribly. I've turned on "reduce motion", but I find it sad that I should have to, on a rather new device. Mind you, I haven't installed even one App as of yet.

I mostly bought this iPad for browsing the web, but I'm sad to say it's not an enjoyable experience.

I will leave it during the night, in case it's still indexing something, but if it's just as bad tomorrow I'm thinking of returning it. Any advice?
Click to expand...
Just buy the Air 2. Air 1 had performance issues from the very beginning. Apple killed iPad performance (with the exception of air 2, although even the air 2 isn't perfect) with all the transparency in iOS 7-8.
iOS 9 so far shows no performance/smoothness improvements (I've been using it since the first public beta).
 
I am too, it's really soured me on Apple. I'm tired of paying a premium for bare minimum specs in hardware so good it should last a decade. I was an early adopter of the original iPad, which was quickly outclassed and basically functioned as an app crashing machine until I got my Air. Less than two years later my Air regularly crashes almost as much as the original iPad, and it's already missing out on major features of the next iOS. All so Apple could save some pennies on RAM.
 
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Thanks for all the replies so far. I borrowed my grandparents iPad Air today. It's the exact same version, running iOS 8.4 as well, bought a month ago. While it still suffers from some slight frame rate drops, it's nowhere near as bad as my unit. This, while having plenty of apps installed, as well as using background app refresh.

Will give it another day, but my unit shouldn't be this slow.

I paid around 269 dollars for the Air, don't really want to pony up for the Air 2, seeing as the Air 3 is probably around the corner and the Air 2 is still full price in the same store.

Love the big-screen experience however, coming from the Mini.
 
MacRazySwe said:
Thanks for all the replies so far. I borrowed my grandparents iPad Air today. It's the exact same version, running iOS 8.4 as well, bought a month ago. While it still suffers from some slight frame rate drops, it's nowhere near as bad as my unit. This, while having plenty of apps installed, as well as using background app refresh.

Will give it another day, but my unit shouldn't be this slow.

I paid around 269 dollars for the Air, don't really want to pony up for the Air 2, seeing as the Air 3 is probably around the corner and the Air 2 is still full price in the same store.

Love the big-screen experience however, coming from the Mini.
Click to expand...

You can try to return it and get another one.
 
I think something's wrong with your unit. I have a 64 GB Air on 8.4 and it run fine, probably like your grandparents' Air.
 
I switched off iCloud syncing for Safari, and it actually made a positive difference. Very much so! I'd say it's now functioning as well as my grandparents Air.

That said, I'm concerned about the longevity of this tablet. I don't really care about the split-screen option for the Air 2 in iOS 9, but I've started seeing it as a nice bonus of going with the newer device. We'll see. I have 30 days to decide. By then, we may know more about a possible Air 3.
 
Glad you found a way to make your Air better. Still, I would have a hard time keeping a new two-year-old (technology-wise) iPad. The price of the Air 2 should be lowered when the Air 3 is released. I would recommend the Air 2 if not springing for the 3.

And if you decide to keep what you have, you've got a good iPad. I bought my Air in April 2014 as a refurbished model from the Apple Store. I plan to keep using it for at least two or three more years.
 
Had iPad 1, 2, 3, rMini and Air 2. Of those, imo, only the 2 and Air 2 were/are truly well balanced devices in terms of performance/ram/display. I never had an iPad 4, I assume that was also one of the "better" iPads.

1,3,rMini/Air 1 were all compromised unfortunately. The 3 had it's critics, and rightly so, but I personally found it a better experience than my rMini . Sure, it was a lot slower, but was so much more stable thanks to it being 32 bit. Apple never should have released any 64bit devices with only 1gb of ram. It remains my only annoyance with my 6+, it'd be a much better device with 2gb of ram like the Air 2. I'm not just talking about Safari tabs, I'm talking about general stability and user experience, the constant app refreshing on the 1gb devices seriously degrades the experience.
 
I recently upgraded my Air(1) to iOS 8; needed compatibility with apps. Safari is very laggy and you get awful frame rate from time to time. That said, Safari has barely crashed on me at all, compared to near-hourly Safari crashes with iOS 7 there towards the end. Whoever did the error-handling and memory management should get an ice cream or something, it's much better than the previous Safari. I'm kind of hopeful that iOS 9 helps with the stuttering and such, but no way in Cupertino am I going to be an early adopter.

Basic things like Safari should *always* work well on any supported device, but "fancy shmancy newfangled features" should probably be either togglable or reserved only for the newer hardware. I approve of things like making 2-window multitasking available only on units with 2GB RAM, rather than really hamstringing older devices. Maybe Apple is hearing the complaints of people with older devices running like dogs after updates.
 
Agent-J said:
Basic things like Safari should *always* work well on any supported device, but "fancy shmancy newfangled features" should probably be either togglable or reserved only for the newer hardware. .
Click to expand...

This is a thing I never understood, how can a device that can retina display and run HD games has problems with a simple software like a browser. Browsers run on the most simple hardware.
 
That may be, but the simple fact is that there is a distinct difference in how safari worked in version 6 and how ios7, 8 and up works. At least from my POV.

I would have kept my iPad 2 on ios6 if I could, but had to go to ios7 and it refreshes much more frequently now.

MacBH928 said:
This is a thing I never understood, how can a device that can retina display and run HD games has problems with a simple software like a browser. Browsers run on the most simple hardware.
Click to expand...
 
MacBH928 said:
This is a thing I never understood, how can a device that can retina display and run HD games has problems with a simple software like a browser. Browsers run on the most simple hardware.
Click to expand...

It's safari, IMO. That's why high end games and other apps run perfectly awesome on the Air but a few tabs opened and suddenly things struggle. Makes no sense to me at all. I blame safari and lazy coding or it's simply a resource hog in general. The Air 2 does work better with the extra RAM but that doesn't solve the issue it just placates it or whatever you want to say. Safari needs to be optimized in a big way.
 
I just found a brand new iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi/4G for a fantastic deal and took the chance to upgrade. All good now! :D

Let's just say the difference in performance is HUGE!
 
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MacRazySwe said:
Hello all,

I just bought the iPad Air 1 today. I got it for a great price, but still, I'm a bit disappointed. Swiping through webpages in Safari is horrible. The frame rate drops far below my level of comfort. Not only that, but it reloads Safari even with only one tab open, together with Settings.
Click to expand...
Odd, my wife has an iPad Air 1 and does not have that problem, especially with only one tab open. I have an ipad pro 9.7 and there is not a huge difference in speed between the two.
 
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MacRazySwe said:
I just found a brand new iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi/4G for a fantastic deal and took the chance to upgrade. All good now! :D

Let's just say the difference in performance is HUGE!
Click to expand...
Congratz! It's why I dumped my Air 1 and kept the Air 2 even when the 9.7 'Pro' came out. The difference in performance (with today's apps at least) between the Air 1 and 2 is much more noticeable than going from Air 2 to 9.7 pro.
 
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