iOS 8 Beta: The worst beta?

[NickPP]

For what you're considering to be the "worst" beta, I'm quite disgusted at such an accusation. While yes there are hiccups here and there, they're no where near anything majorly impacting.

What I think most people are nitpicking at is the fact that third-party apps don't work, and by default people run to the megaphones to shout and voice the fact that it's garbage and whatnot. Just remember when running something beta, you can't expect things to work, nor should you really expect it to work.

 

[nfl46]

iOS 7 Beta 1 was way worse...because everything was so new.

 

[DoctorKrabs]

iOS 7 beta 3 was the worst. It had wallpaper issues and FaceTime caused kernel panics.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

It doesn't add a lot of new features, just a few, and it's completely unestable on my iPad Air and on my iPhone 5s


More than a beta it seems an alpha

You must of never used iOS 7 beta 1. I lasted 6 hours before pulling it. I installed iOS8 beta when it launched and still have. There is definitely glitches but nothing that's a deal breaker for me. The few apps that fail or crash don't Kill me.

 

[jclardy]

Nope iOS 7 beta 1 was worse. Springboard was constantly randomly crashing. I have gotten one on iOS 8.

There seems to be more app incompatibilities with 8 though so far.

 

[darngooddesign]

That's what happens when you install a really early beta.

 

[jrswizzle]

I've only used the last two beta 1s (iOS 7 and 8), but iOS 7 was less stable IMO. Even though I didn't have as much of a problem with it as most.

I feel iOS 8b1 is actually pretty good. The bugs I've found are mostly within the apps that have seen the biggest updates - namely Mail.

 

[WordMasterRice]

I feel like it should be mentioned that the difference between an alpha and a beta has nothing to do with bugginess and everything to do with feature set. An alpha is not feature complete, a beta is, regardless of the bug level. In theory alphas could be far more stable than betas.

 

[Tyler23]

I feel like it should be mentioned that the difference between an alpha and a beta has nothing to do with bugginess and everything to do with feature set. An alpha is not feature complete, a beta is, regardless of the bug level. In theory alphas could be far more stable than betas.

I'm not sure that's true either. And if it is, Apple doesn't follow it, as many of their betas are not feature-complete.

 

[sniffies]

iOS 8 really feels like a... what's the letter before alpha?

 

[tkmcguire1]

I have a developers account,I installed ios8 on my air,then promptly downgraded back to 7.1. Right now it sucks,nothing is working,half the shortcuts don't work,safari barely works. I would recommend for at least,beta 2 or 3,because of right now it's the buggiest I've ever used! I really didn't have hardly any problems with ios7 betas,not like I've had with 8.

 

[ajay96]

Tried on my daily phone (5s) and not bad for beta 1. It's usable. Went back to 7.1.1 for lack of app compatibility. Tried on my old 4s, and it is really slow.

 

[kmj2318]

I don't know, as far as first betas go, iOS 8 is incredibly good to me. People must be forgetting iOS 7's first few betas, or I'm just lucky.

 

[demure84]

iOS 7 Beta 1 was way worse...because everything was so new.

Absolutely agree and stills felt unpolished until recent 7.1 when it finally eliminated that most annoying what they call is low memory/multitasking crashing.

I've been using 8 and it's by far a lot more solid than any if the 7 betas ever were... Agree 7 was an entirely redesigned iOS. 8 on the other hand I've come across some silly glitches and occasionally resprings. Most frequently apps performed really well such as iMessage and Safari and even maps. Can't say that about the Mail app though. I believe Settings could use a little work as well, it does act up.

I'm sure it will all work "as advertised" this fall when the new iPhone rolls out. There's a lot at stake to get the Android users back on board.

 

[FelixDerKater]

Aside from a few random lags of about 4 seconds after touching the screen and the Settings app predictably crashing on the first launch each use, everything else seems to be working alright. The lag points also seem to be correcting themselves with use.

 

[MarcusCarpenter]

iOS 7 betas were far worse then 8, i think it was beta 4 that would miss calls repeatadly and i'd end up with like 10 voicemails by the end of the day.

iOS 8b1 has been amazing so far in terms of beta

 

[Bacong]

I had more problems with 8b1 than 7b1, iirc. More weird problems. But 8 is a pretty big change.

 

[rwilliams]

I haven't used iOS 8 Beta 1, but I do remember people here being HEATED about how awful iOS 7's first beta was. I think it'll be hard to top that one.

 

[mcfly88]

I haven't used iOS 8 Beta 1, but I do remember people here being HEATED about how awful iOS 7's first beta was. I think it'll be hard to top that one.

iOS 8 has its ocassional issues, but iOS 7 beta 1 was pretty much unusable.. actually 1-3 were all pretty bad.

 

[boobie12]

Honestly this beta has been amazing for me. its really stable apart from a few minor bugs even whatsapp is working perfectly fine For me.

 

[Delorean2006]

It doesn't add a lot of new features, just a few, and it's completely unestable on my iPad Air and on my iPhone 5s


More than a beta it seems an alpha

iOS 8 has been extremely stable for me, it actually runs as good and sometimes to me better then ios 7 ever has, much more stable then ios 7 beta 1 and better battery life for me then ios 7.1.1 and I have ios 8 on a 5S

 

[navodwickra]

unlike iOS 7 beta 1 (not that I am complaining) with iOS 8 beta 1 I haven't had a Spring board crash or hot reboot.

 

[Wiesenlooser]

It is literally (no im not exaggerating) unusable on the iPhone 4S... kind of surprising

 

[Jarvichi]

iOS 8 is more stable than any of the first betas I've previously experienced.

I'm surprised that anyone is really complaining; iOS betas are really only for development and testing, you should expect instabilities as Apple knock the bugs out of their new APIs and work on optimising their operating system (Apple even explain this on the developer download site). I'd go so far as to say that the iOS betas are probably largely running code that has been compiled with the debug switch turned on; if you are a software developer you'll appreciate that this will have impacts on performance and stability. This operating system is not intended for day to day use, that said, it does get frustrating when trying to bench test an application on real hardware and the thing doesn't do what it's supposed to... But then again thats something I'd worry about if the operating system persistently had a problem days before official release... But we're not quite there yet are we (maybe in 8-10 weeks time - i'd be a little more worried if the OS kept crashing)?

 

[redpandadev]

I actually think iOS 8 b1 is quite good. 7 was barely usable on and OS level (most apps worked ok though) and 5 was the absolute worst... I don't think any third party apps worked until post-release. 8 is fairly stable and just about every third party app works.