I'm still on 7.1.2... Is 8.1.2 worth it?

[Act3]

stick with 7.1.2, my air 2 and iphone 6 still buggy with the current ios 8."whatever we are up to now" release.... the bugs do not out weigh the features that look cool but you may find yourself not using many of them... I do like the SMS relay but other than that, 7.1.2 fit all my needs.

 

[pacorob]

I've yet to see a single bug that isn't app related on iOS 8.1.2 on both my iPad and my iPhone

There are still quite some bugs in Apple's 8.1.2 in regards to 3rd party keyboards which are a problem for all 3rd party keyboards (e.g. write a review in the App Store after you logged in with the Apple keyboard)

 

[sanke1]

I personally didn't think iOS 7 or 6 were that bad. I didn't notice any performance hick-ups with any of those on the lead platform, which we have on the 6 and 6 Plus. I remember iOS 7 having slow animations, but they were still 60 fps with no real visible lag.

That was unfortunately not the case with iOS 8 when it was released. It still has its problems in the weather app and sometimes through auto-scrolling a list of 50 or more items within the core apps.

Hopefully 8.2 will solve some of it, if not all of it.

My thoughts exactly. iOS 7 animations ran perfectly at 60 fps even on iPhone 4S. But same animations feel terrible on 8.1.2. Even my 5c does not do 60 fps all the time on 8.1.2.

What did Apple add to the code to make it more graphics intensive is beyond me. In next iOS 9, maybe they will add God Rays, Pixel shading and SGSMSAA 16X on older devices to intentionally make them appear slow.

My major (and only) problem with iOS 8 is lack of fluidity of animations or what we call stutter. The stutter happens even on latest iPhone 6 models. I have seen it with me own eyes. Lag is another problem where there is a delay of few seconds in opening certain apps compared to 7.1.2

So keep your device on 7.1.2 till possible and hope iOS 8.2 or 8.3 do something to fix the random stutters.

 

[mangomind]

Hey MacRumors! My iPhone 5s is currently on 7.1.2, and I'm pretty happy with it. However, iOS 8.x has some pretty cool features that I would want as well. My main concern over upgrading is experiencing worse battery life (it's already pretty bad in 7.1.2), and the ability not to install apps outside of the App Store via provisioning profiles (think GBA4iOS and the like). Apparently, you can't even view the profiles in iOS 8 anymore, which in my opinion is a step back.

With those concerns in mind, is iOS 8 worth the upgrade?

It is worth the upgrade. Every action performs faster, and the new features are good as well. I really noticed that touch ID takes much less time, and the Safari UI and features are much faster. The battery life is great. I am 100% satisfied with my decision to update from 7.1.2 to 8.1.2 a few weeks ago.

iOS 8 automatically manages provisioning profiles. When you install profiles, they are deleted when they expire. iOS 8 no longer exposes provisioning profiles through the user interface.

 

[nilk]

Seems like the 5 and 5S are worth upgrading (4S is a different story). My wife is running 8.1.2 on her 5S and hasn't had any major complaints. There are enough features to make it worth it.

Also, I'd worry about security vulnerabilities when running an outdated iOS versions. Though maybe you could jailbreak and apply patches (I remember that being the case way back when there was a PDF vulnerability, not sure about the current situation).

I have a 6 and have had frequent random crashes with every version iOS 8, but that might be defective hardware. Not sure if anyone is having that issue with the 5S.