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iOS 7: Disabling 'Increase Contrast' causes some animation lags

C

CallOfDuty

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 23, 2012
330
2
First to start off and clarify, this is not a thread about the animation speed in question. I am not talking about how fast the icons fly into the home screen when u unlock you phone.

I don't know about you guys, but on iOS 7 on my iPhone 5 when you disable 'Increase Contrast' under the accessibility settings, it seems to cause minimal but quite noticeable lag. When you disable 'Increase contrast', you're adding the eye candy blurs and transparency effects to ur phone which I like. When you enable it, you essentially remove all of it.

Try disabling the option first. Go to messages, tap on the icon to compose a new message. Did you notice that small stutter as the keyboard springs up? Then, go to photos. Tap on collections and simply tap in and out of collections. I noticed there is some stutter too. Next, go click on any photo you would like to set as a wallpaper. When you tap on the options, the photo zooms out to reveal a set of options. Again, I noticed there are some stutters there. The small animation lags in photos is even more apparent if u have lots of photos.

Now, to bring my point across, go back to settings and enable 'Increase Contrast'. Now, your phone loses the transparency effects and the blurs. Repeat the entire test. Go to messages, then photos. Absolutely 0 lags.

Perhaps this is just an isolated case, but to be sure, I created this thread. Did you guys notice the same issue on your iPhone 5 running iOS 7? I know the lag might be too subtle for some to notice, but yes I noticed it on mine. What are your thoughts to this? I really apologize if you think this is a small issue to care anyways, but just wanted to bring this up.
 
This is by no means a small issue! I think that I have noticed the same lack of lag by disabling all of the effects. I might try it for a day to see if it has any significant impact on battery life.

EDIT: I am also using an iPhone 5. The lag before changing the settings was not extremely bad, but it was noticeable.
 
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I'm on an iPhone 4... to be honest it looks the same with or without pretty much since the transparency is really not obvious.

I have high contrast mode on always now, makes it smooth even on an iPhone 4
 
Im trying to follow what you're saying but I'm lost. Increase Contrast is OFF by default. I run mine like that. It runs smooth.
 
Armen said:
Im trying to follow what you're saying but I'm lost. Increase Contrast is OFF by default. I run mine like that. It runs smooth.
Click to expand...

Yup! That setting is off by default and allows compatible devices to have the frosted glass, transparency effects, etc. The OP is saying that turning ON increase contrast will disable all of these effects and make animations more smooth. Like I said in my previous post, the animations are pretty smooth by default, but at least for me, there was still a little stuttering occasionally. All of this is eliminated once you increase contrast (turn ON the feature). :)
 
snowman1 said:
Yup! That setting is off by default and allows compatible devices to have the frosted glass, transparency effects, etc. The OP is saying that turning ON increase contrast will disable all of these effects and make animations more smooth. Like I said in my previous post, the animations are pretty smooth by default, but at least for me, there was still a little stuttering occasionally. All of this is eliminated once you increase contrast (turn ON the feature). :)
Click to expand...

Why did I read that backwards as turning it off slows it down? Ah just tried it with contrast on. It is faster
 
Wow, the keyboard rotation is buttery smooth again. This actually does solve most of the stutters.
 
Armen said:
Why did I read that backwards as turning it off slows it down? Ah just tried it with contrast on. It is faster
Click to expand...
Just did it in mine too, and there is some improvement as well. I might end up going with this as the default (along with turning on Reduce Motion, and in a slightly related note probably also turning off Background App Refresh more for battery related reasons).
 
Using iPhone 5. Couldn't detect anything in Messages but I do detect the difference on Photos.

I would say though, I'm not sure what I experience was lag, just dropped frames. i.e. with contrast off, it completes in the same time but the animation isn't as smooth.

I'd rather have contrast off and have the transparency as these minor stutters don't bother me.
 
You are right. My increase contrast is disabled and i noticed many lags in transition animations
Then i turned it on and the transitions work smooth. Apple should work on this ios 7 issue.
 
JaneRenee said:
I can't tell any differences aesthetically with the contrast on or off. What should I look for?
Click to expand...

Perhaps the easiest thing to notice is the keyboard on the home screen.

Go to the home screen and swipe down to bring up Spotlight.

Compare the keyboard with "Increase Contrast" switched on and off.

The same differences are noticeable on the iPhone 4, where these effects are disabled for performance reasons.
 

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zbarvian said:
Wow, the keyboard rotation is buttery smooth again. This actually does solve most of the stutters.
Click to expand...

Good catch by the OP. I just tried toggling contrast on and off and it does run smoother with it "on". I can't say I've noticed where I've seen the difference but I leave it on as I like a little higher contrast.
 
I haven't noticed and lag with it turned off. But I'm not going to look any farther because I'll be annoyed if I now notice it. But I'm not going to increase contrast to reduce lag in something I perceive to be lag free.
 
Why didn't Apple just say that's what it does in the options?

Like for Parallex..."Reduce motion"... just flipping put "Disable Parallax".
 
Daveoc64 said:
Perhaps the easiest thing to notice is the keyboard on the home screen.

Go to the home screen and swipe down to bring up Spotlight.

Compare the keyboard with "Increase Contrast" switched on and off.

The same differences are noticeable on the iPhone 4, where these effects are disabled for performance reasons.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
Yeah, I've noticed it and it sticks out like a sore thumb to me.

My old iPhone 4 used to stutter a bit in iOS 6. When I upgrade to the 5, iOS 6 ran smooth as butter and there wasn't a single trace of stutter or lag.

Now with iOS 7 on my 5 I can see the little stutters you're talking about. I can only hope this is down to iOS 7 not bring fully optimised and it'll be fixed in the next few iterations, more so seeing as they've launched a new phone with the same internals.

I see it most when going into Spotlight, opening up keyboard in Messages for the first time in a whole, and going from multi tasking into an app.

Just have to wait and see. I don't want to use the Increase Contrast setting though, NC looks horrible with that enabled.
 
Transparency is causing all the lag issue

Hi guys ,like the op said the transparency effect cause all the lag ! I just installed ios 7.1 beta ,on ipad air all the animations are faster and smooth , they fix the ugly lag on gesture to close the app with your 5 fingers , now if you toggle on the function "increase contrast" actually it is disables all the transparency effect but your system will run butter smooth again,like no lags at all ,rotation with a keybord is buttery smooth again and it feels like old good ios ,i think the devs didnt optimize the transparency effect very well , without it it runs ,i am telling you ,i was so glad when i discovered bevause my iphone and ipad air are super fast and smooth now! I really like the transparency effect but only on notification center and control center ,they should make an option to enable transparency only there as we had a jailbreak tweak in the past ! So all the lags will gone if you toggle "increase contrast" i hope they will fix it ,
 
Papcyrill said:
Hi guys ,like the op said the transparency effect cause all the lag ! I just installed ios 7.1 beta ,on ipad air all the animations are faster and smooth , they fix the ugly lag on gesture to close the app with your 5 fingers , now if you toggle on the function "increase contrast" actually it is disables all the transparency effect but your system will run butter smooth again,like no lags at all ,rotation with a keybord is buttery smooth again and it feels like old good ios ,i think the devs didnt optimize the transparency effect very well , without it it runs ,i am telling you ,i was so glad when i discovered bevause my iphone and ipad air are super fast and smooth now! I really like the transparency effect but only on notification center and control center ,they should make an option to enable transparency only there as we had a jailbreak tweak in the past ! So all the lags will gone if you toggle "increase contrast" i hope they will fix it ,
Click to expand...

Yep I couldn't agree more.
But even in 7.1b1 the transparency effects were still not optimized. With that option enabled you will notice a lot of drops in frame rate, such as when you tap "+" in photo app to add an album, press "sign in" in app store to login with your ID, and also return to some Apple apps from multitasking tray.. The drop is more significant with older device like my old 4S, but still noticeable even on my brandnew mini retina.

The functions worked well but please optimize graphic effects as well Apple. I truly dont want my devices to be Android-like with lots of skips and frame drops!
 
There's a HUGE difference when turning ON the "Increase Contrast" option. A lot of you are saying you're not experiencing lag with it OFF but I'm pretty sure cause all of you have now been accustomed to iOS7 "speed" already. Turning the option ON gives ya iOS6-like snapiness especially in Messages when rotating the screen with the keyboard on display. Since there is zero transparency on the keyboard with the option ON, typing definitely seems a lot more fluid and in sync with each stroke. I'm loving it.

----------

Just bringing down the notification shade seems so much more fluid and snappy with the option ON.
 
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