iOS 7.1 Improves Performance for iPhone 4 Users

[viacavour]

I think it would have been relevant to mention that this measures the time of opening apps as perceived by the user.

It doesn't measure how much time it takes for the OS to actually load the app, in the case where the animation (which has a constant length) finishes after the app has already finished loading.

Since animation length as been reduced in 7.1, the lower numbers were to be expected. But that doesn't prove 7.1 is faster in terms of actually loading the app (although I suspect it is). iOS 7.1 could have included absolutely no performance enhancements, but shorter animation length, and we'd still be looking at a similar chart.

That fact is also true if we try to compare iOS 7/7.1 loading times against iOS 6. That whole methodology would make an invalid comparison if iOS 6 animation length is shorter than even iOS 7.1.

Just looking at the chart can be misleading if you don't know the methodology used.

Might be a good idea to edit the article if you want this aspect to be clear.

It's not just shorter animation.

Use 7.1 and you can see Safari is more responsive while it is fetching data. The keyboard is more responsive. No more stutter in animation in general. Overall, the entire environment runs snappier.

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I'm not trying to knock on people who love iOS 7. I'm just mad as hell because iOS 6.1 performance wise compared to iOS 7 was just night and day. The biggest issue with iOS 7 is the performance and you gotta be kidding me apple you take 6months to fix what iOS 7.0 was suppose to be initially.

If they issued a fix for the performance issues maybe two months after sept debut I would've been ok but it dragged on forever and these new figures posted isn't something to be proud of either. You go from a heavy texture driven ui to non textured flat coloring no graphics iOS 7 and you'd expect performance to be better since no texture graphics equals lower memory use but instead it's still slower in iOS 7.

I already have given up on iPhone since I have a note 3 now and even though a dual core a7 is better vs the Qualcomm quad cpu the small screen and pathetic iOS is just too weak.

If not for the great iPad apps that android just doesn't have or even compare I'd already sold off my iPads.

This whole iOS 7 is just a mess. If Steve jobs were alive you know he'd flip his dome and fire off everyone responsible for iOS 7.

iOS7 is a lot more than performance though. The article only talks about iOS7 performance on iPhone 4.

On newer hardware, iOS7 runs faster than iOS6 because of optimization in the run-time for these newer CPUs. It is also more secure than iOS6, and have many more features (e.g., Touch ID, M7, ...)

I remember iOS6 folks were asking for a lot of the improvements in iOS7 (e.g., shortcut to turn on/off Wifi).

Also the textures are not the only factor affecting performance. The UI widgets like the scrollwheel are 3D poly in iOS7. Perhaps they are preparing for future 3D screens ? The text kit in iOS7 also supports OSX style advanced font and layout features for book authoring and presentation. The apps are also partitioned into modules (for better security), and there are also features for large scale enterprise management.

iOS7 is laying the foundation for a very rich but tiny computing environment.

The pathetic OS is the one running on your note. It's not even faster than iOS7 when it lacks all these advanced features. Only bloated by samsung apps. You even have to pay extra for Knox when security is built into iOS7. Malware is rampant on your note too.

 

[BrettApple]

As a 3GS owner can I please go back to iOS4 while we're at it? After refusing to "up"grade to 5, I upgraded to 6 by accident. It's no longer my primary phone but still works great as a 2ndary camera, alarm, weather checker, etc, and it was much better on iOS 4 than 6.

Apple's decision makes sense for them though. By making upgrades insidiously easy and backgrades impossible, nerfing older products will virtually force users to buy new iDevices. It's kind of like micropayments. "Give us $200 or this app will get exponentially tedious."

All the more reason MacOS > iOS.

If it interests you, as far as I am aware apple is still signing ios 4.1 so you could manually restore to 4.1 on your 3GS. 4.2 is a little faster and it's what I run on my 4th gen touch for speed, but without blobs 4.1 is the best it'll get performance wise. Much faster than 5 or 6 for sure though.

I just finished doing a fresh restore of 6.1.3 on a 32 iPhone 4 I got on eBay to use as a backup. I considered moving to 7.1, but I just figured 6.1 will always be smoother anyway. Thanks to iFaith I'm free to switch between the two though.

I'll stay on 7.0.4 + SSL patch with my 4s though, too many tweaks I use from cydia. That and I love my theme

Too bad it can't be like Mac OS, or any full blown OS the user has control over. I'm still running snow leopard on an 08 black book simply because lion is so laggy and it won't run ML or Mavericks.

On a final note, it does seem to be doing pretty well on my OG iPad mini. We'll see about our iPad 3 soon enough, that thing is soo laggy with the animations it's not even funny.

 

[rtdunham]

I'd like to see that same table but with times for the iPhone5S.

 

[japanime]

First time ever, i want to go back to last version, ios6. Seriously, ios7 feels like vista when i was still using PC... Did bill gates take over the ios roadmap?

No, the much vaunted Jony Ive did.

 

[luckydcxx]

i know the best solution for iPhone 4 users to get great performance. GET A NEW PHONE! it's nearly 4 years old, time to trade up!

 

[Gudi]

Better Headline: iOS 7.1 Makes the iPhone 4 Slower

– What is the opposite of improvement?
– iOS 7.​

 

[viacavour]

If it interests you, as far as I am aware apple is still signing ios 4.1 so you could manually restore to 4.1 on your 3GS. 4.2 is a little faster and it's what I run on my 4th gen touch for speed, but without blobs 4.1 is the best it'll get performance wise. Much faster than 5 or 6 for sure though.

I just finished doing a fresh restore of 6.1.3 on a 32 iPhone 4 I got on eBay to use as a backup. I considered moving to 7.1, but I just figured 6.1 will always be smoother anyway. Thanks to iFaith I'm free to switch between the two though.

I'll stay on 7.0.4 + SSL patch with my 4s though, too many tweaks I use from cydia. That and I love my theme

Too bad it can't be like Mac OS, or any full blown OS the user has control over. I'm still running snow leopard on an 08 black book simply because lion is so laggy and it won't run ML or Mavericks.

On a final note, it does seem to be doing pretty well on my OG iPad mini. We'll see about our iPad 3 soon enough, that thing is soo laggy with the animations it's not even funny.

I got an iPad 2 and mini running smoothly on 7.1. iPad 3 should be fine.

 

[4jasontv]

How did they make the iPhone 4 faster without improving the 5(s/c)? Or is the improvement only noticeable on the 4?

 

[sualpine]

How did they make the iPhone 4 faster without improving the 5(s/c)? Or is the improvement only noticeable on the 4?

The 5/5C are far improved also, just that the iPhone 4 improvement is VERY noticeable.

 

[viacavour]

Better Headline: iOS 7.1 Makes the iPhone 4 Slower

Image

– What is the opposite of improvement?
– iOS 7.​

Well, we also know iOS7 does a lot more than iOS6.

e.g., The cold boot now supports activation check, plus tighter sandbox around apps, multitasking, etc.

Load time is only one measurement.

 

[Gudi]

The 5/5C are far improved also, just that the iPhone 4 improvement is VERY noticeable.

Please don't call it an improvement, when you get some (but not all) of the iOS 6 speed back. All you can say is, that iOS 7.1 is less of a regression than iOS 7.0 was.

 

[viacavour]

How did they make the iPhone 4 faster without improving the 5(s/c)? Or is the improvement only noticeable on the 4?

The 5/5C are far improved also, just that the iPhone 4 improvement is VERY noticeable.

Yep, 5s, mini, iPad 2 all saw noticeable improvement in responsiveness and smoothness.

Don't have a 4 but I was surprised iPad 2 runs well.

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Please don't call it an improvement, when you get some (but not all) of the iOS 6 speed back. All you can say is, that iOS 7.1 is less of a regression than iOS 7.0 was.

It is an improvement because iOS7 does so much more. But there is only so much you can do for a 4 year old hardware to keep up with new features.

I think iPhone 4 is the oldest one that supports iBeacon on iOS7 too.

 

[sualpine]

Please don't call it an improvement, when you get some (but not all) of the iOS 6 speed back. All you can say is, that iOS 7.1 is less of a regression than iOS 7.0 was.

Yes, it is an improvement. It has even better RAM compression, it has far faster JavaScript execution, it is far more secure across the board, it has better OpenGL support, LLVM improvements, a million important API's, I could go on...

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https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewIniOS/Articles/iOS7_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013916-SW1

 

[JerryCards]

Just change to 7.1. One thing is clear, the fingerprint sensor is much easier to unlock my phone.

 

[blueroom]

So far 7.1 is good on my 4 albeit Simpsons Tapped Out won't load. All work and no beer make Homer something, something.

 

[Gudi]

Well, we also know iOS7 does a lot more than iOS6. e.g., The cold boot now supports activation check, plus tighter sandbox around apps, multitasking, etc. Load time is only one measurement.

When your phone or tablet is already on the brink of being too slow, speed is the only important measurement. And what does the phone app do new, that it needs three times as long to start?

 

[sualpine]

When your phone or tablet is already on the brink of being too slow, speed is the only important measurement. And what does the phone app do new, that it needs three times as long to start?

It's running the new UIKit without OpenGL ES 3.0 support.

 

[viacavour]

When your phone or tablet is already on the brink of being too slow, speed is the only important measurement. And what does the phone app do new, that it needs three times as long to start?

Nope. Security is also important. Some features like activation check of course will lengthen boot time.

3 times longer for phone app sounds like a lot but it's slight more than 1 second longer. I don't know what's in the new phone app. May be Contact database is locked down more securely ? It's instant on 5s.

In iOS7, there are also management features like per-app VPN that's essential for enterprise apps.

As someone pointed out above, JavaScript is much faster in iOS7. That one load time measurement is merely a very very limited look at the picture. After all, after you load an app, you don't go and load another app. You use the app.

That's where other features come in.

 

[3282868]

I find this ironic. Mod's are quick to "punish" commentators for the [overuse] of the old "snappier" joke, and yet here - well, I've made my case.

 

[Mtmspa]

I love iOS 7.1 on my 5s and air. it is fast, stable and just works. That us what I care about, not the shade of green on a app.

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Just change to 7.1. One thing is clear, the fingerprint sensor is much easier to unlock my phone.

noticed that right away.

 

[Gudi]

Yes, it is an improvement. It has even better RAM compression, it has far faster JavaScript execution, it is far more secure across the board, it has better OpenGL support, LLVM improvements, a million important API's, I could go on...

So not impressed. Apple taught us to buy a usage experience, not a long feature list. The quality of the experience on an iPhone 4 is going down with iOS 7 being noticeably slower than before. Too slow to be comfortable.

But there is only so much you can do for a 4 year old hardware to keep up with new features.

Than don't keep up with features and preserve the experience. Just do nothing and it will continue to just work. Changes for the worse, don't do them.

 

[sualpine]

So not impressed. Apple taught us to buy a usage experience, not a long feature list. The quality of the experience on an iPhone 4 is going down with iOS 7 being noticeably slower than before. Too slow to be comfortable.
Than don't keep up with features and preserve the experience. Just do nothing and it will continue to just work. Changes for the worse, don't do them.

The performance of a clean install of 7.1 for all of Apple's iPhone 4 users far outweighs the backlash you and your brethren would have given Apple for not updating it if that had been the case.

 

[viacavour]

So not impressed. Apple taught us to buy a usage experience, not a long feature list. The quality of the experience on an iPhone 4 is going down with iOS 7 being noticeably slower than before. Too slow to be comfortable.
Than don't keep up with features and preserve the experience. Just do nothing and it will continue to just work. Changes for the worse, don't do them.

That's your opinion focusing on just 1 dimension, not necessarily universal.

The new features benefit the users in many ways, with just up to 1 second additional load time in 7.1 for iPhone 4. Many people will think it's worth it for the added security, faster JavaScript, iBeacon detection for better shopping deals, and faster way to find seats in the stadium, etc., etc. etc.

After you load an app, you can keep it in the background anyways. Should be faster to reopen those apps.

 

[i.mac]

Well, we also know iOS7 does a lot more than iOS6.

e.g., The cold boot now supports activation check, plus tighter sandbox around apps, multitasking, etc.

Load time is only one measurement.

Yes, we'll said, but you cannot expect every one to understand that.

 

[sualpine]

Yes, we'll said, but you cannot expect every one to understand that.

Sure you can. You just need to explain it to people. This is definitely a scenario where ignorance is NOT bliss.