iPad Air 1: Bad Idea to Upgrade from iOS 7 to iOS 10?

[darkarn]

Hi, I am thinking of upgrading my iPad Air 1 from iOS 7 to iOS 10 for the following reasons:

1. One of the games I want to play is available in iOS 9 onwards. I won't be surprised if more games I am playing now will have such restrictions.
2. I am currently investigating lag issues when using the iPad with a Lightning to HDMI adapter. I understand that the adapter has its own FW but it can get updates from the host device depending on what version of iOS it has. I want to see if upgrading will help
3. I am seeing strange crashes in some of my apps, especially Chrome. I have an iPhone 5 on iOS 9 that still gets updates; idea is to see if such updates help.

So far, the potential issues I see is that it will be significantly harder to back up or restore apps due to the App Slicing mechanism. I will need to test iMazing seeing that it is marketed as the only solution in the market, but has anyone here have any experience with that?

Note that I am also expecting a new 12.9 inch iPad too, but it will all depend on how long Apple will take to release the new one (no, I don't like how the current 12.9 inch iPad does not have the features of the 9.7 inch iPad Pro)

I hope to hear from you all soon about all these and whether is it a bad idea to upgrade iOS or not, thanks!

 

[gobikerider]

Hi, I am thinking of upgrading my iPad Air 1 from iOS 7 to iOS 10 for the following reasons:

1. One of the games I want to play is available in iOS 9 onwards. I won't be surprised if more games I am playing now will have such restrictions.
2. I am currently investigating lag issues when using the iPad with a Lightning to HDMI adapter. I understand that the adapter has its own FW but it can get updates from the host device depending on what version of iOS it has. I want to see if upgrading will help
3. I am seeing strange crashes in some of my apps, especially Chrome. I have an iPhone 5 on iOS 9 that still gets updates; idea is to see if such updates help.

So far, the potential issues I see is that it will be significantly harder to back up or restore apps due to the App Slicing mechanism. I will need to test iMazing seeing that it is marketed as the only solution in the market, but has anyone here have any experience with that?

Note that I am also expecting a new 12.9 inch iPad too, but it will all depend on how long Apple will take to release the new one (no, I don't like how the current 12.9 inch iPad does not have the features of the 9.7 inch iPad Pro)

I hope to hear from you all soon about all these and whether is it a bad idea to upgrade iOS or not, thanks!

Definitely upgrade you will enjoy it, performance impact small if any at all on the Air. You will hear the usual people saying it sucks and their iPad was ruined but if you just do a fresh install and don't update from settings app you will have a much smoother experience. This is how I update and I've never had ios update issues unless it was just a small bug specific to iOS, but never any issues caused by updating itself. Anyway my method is to connect to iTunes and do a restore, let it backup but when it finishes updating and restoring, do not restore your backup but rather set up as new. Yes I know it will probably take you longer to set up your iPad again with all your apps, but its worth it for a nice fresh copy of iOS 10. Also once you get it updated I recommend going into settings and turning off both Background App refresh and Spotlight Search for all apps, do these after installing all your apps that way they will all be there enabled for you too turn off in one go. This whole process should only take about a hour, of course depending on how quick your internet can download iOS 10 and how many apps you have to reinstall. Best Wishes and let us know how it goes, I am very interested to hear your own opinions on iOS 10

 

[Virtua1]

Hello darkarn, I have an iPad Air 1, and I did a standard install by plugging it into a mac, through iTunes, and from a restored backup, unlike what gobikerider did (although I like their idea, and may have to try it sometime.) I have not regretted it. Sure every so rarely there is a stutter while switching apps, or rotating from landscape to portrait, but overall the experience is still very snappy, with some neat functionality added. It may be a couple of gens older, but it still feels like a very modern machine and I am very happy with it. I am interested in the new pro with pencil support, but will wait to see what apple does in its next pro announcement. Also - I'm still on iOS 10.1.1, and have not upgraded to 10.3.1 yet.

Long story short: iPad Air 1 on iOS 10 = good in my experience

 

[gobikerider]

Hello darkarn, I have an iPad Air 1, and I did a standard install by plugging it into a mac, through iTunes, and from a restored backup, unlike what gobikerider did (although I like their idea, and may have to try it sometime.) I have not regretted it. Sure every so rarely there is a stutter while switching apps, or rotating from landscape to portrait, but overall the experience is still very snappy, with some neat functionality added. It may be a couple of gens older, but it still feels like a very modern machine and I am very happy with it. I am interested in the new pro with pencil support, but will wait to see what apple does in its next pro announcement. Also - I'm still on iOS 10.1.1, and have not upgraded to 10.3.1 yet.

Long story short: iPad Air 1 on iOS 10 = good in my experience

Awesome someone that didn't even set up as new and saying it performs well except a stutter from time to time, don't feel bad as my Air 2 will have the same stutters time to time. Also I highly recommend getting 10.3 as they have fixed some of the stuttering issues Ive had mainly in multitasking menu. Cheers

 

[darkarn]

Definitely upgrade you will enjoy it, performance impact small if any at all on the Air. You will hear the usual people saying it sucks and their iPad was ruined but if you just do a fresh install and don't update from settings app you will have a much smoother experience. This is how I update and I've never had ios update issues unless it was just a small bug specific to iOS, but never any issues caused by updating itself. Anyway my method is to connect to iTunes and do a restore, let it backup but when it finishes updating and restoring, do not restore your backup but rather set up as new. Yes I know it will probably take you longer to set up your iPad again with all your apps, but its worth it for a nice fresh copy of iOS 10. Also once you get it updated I recommend going into settings and turning off both Background App refresh and Spotlight Search for all apps, do these after installing all your apps that way they will all be there enabled for you too turn off in one go. This whole process should only take about a hour, of course depending on how quick your internet can download iOS 10 and how many apps you have to reinstall. Best Wishes and let us know how it goes, I am very interested to hear your own opinions on iOS 10

Interesting, you guys are the first few who told me of good experience with the new upgrade; I always have the impression that upgrades tend to eat up more computing power as we go, which means poorer performance on the iPad Air 1.

Let me get iMazing up and running first to backup/restore apps properly

Hello darkarn, I have an iPad Air 1, and I did a standard install by plugging it into a mac, through iTunes, and from a restored backup, unlike what gobikerider did (although I like their idea, and may have to try it sometime.) I have not regretted it. Sure every so rarely there is a stutter while switching apps, or rotating from landscape to portrait, but overall the experience is still very snappy, with some neat functionality added. It may be a couple of gens older, but it still feels like a very modern machine and I am very happy with it. I am interested in the new pro with pencil support, but will wait to see what apple does in its next pro announcement. Also - I'm still on iOS 10.1.1, and have not upgraded to 10.3.1 yet.

Long story short: iPad Air 1 on iOS 10 = good in my experience

That's something I will pay closer attention to, thanks!

Awesome someone that didn't even set up as new and saying it performs well except a stutter from time to time, don't feel bad as my Air 2 will have the same stutters time to time. Also I highly recommend getting 10.3 as they have fixed some of the stuttering issues Ive had mainly in multitasking menu. Cheers

I am given only 10.3.1, hopefully that too will help with the stuttering issues

 

[gobikerider]

Interesting, you guys are the first few who told me of good experience with the new upgrade; I always have the impression that upgrades tend to eat up more computing power as we go, which means poorer performance on the iPad Air 1.

Let me get iMazing up and running first to backup/restore apps properly



That's something I will pay closer attention to, thanks!



I am given only 10.3.1, hopefully that too will help with the stuttering issues

Yes it will the .1 update was to fix a wifi vulnerability

 

[darkarn]

Yes it will the .1 update was to fix a wifi vulnerability

Thanks! I hope the jump to iOS 10 will be good for my iPad, or at least, not make anything worse. Some of my apps are a bit laggy; I hope this won't make this worse at least

 

[Patcell]

Good luck with the update! For what it's worth, I have an iPad mini 2 running 10.3.1, and the experience is smooth overall. Certainly does not affect usage of the tablet. The mini 2 is running the same A7 SoC as the iPad Air 1.

 

[darkarn]

Good luck with the update! For what it's worth, I have an iPad mini 2 running 10.3.1, and the experience is smooth overall. Certainly does not affect usage of the tablet. The mini 2 is running the same A7 SoC as the iPad Air 1.

Thanks, let's see how this goes. Gonna do some backups first just in case

 

[snow755]

Thanks, let's see how this goes. Gonna do some backups first just in case

you wont be able too go back too IOS 7 if you dont like IOS 10 so if you upgrade your stuck with IOS 10.3.1 has you can not downgrade back

 

[darkarn]

you wont be able too go back too IOS 7 if you dont like IOS 10 so if you upgrade your stuck with IOS 10.3.1 has you can not downgrade back

This is indeed a concern of mine though

 

[gobikerider]

This is indeed a concern of mine though

I don't see why you would want to go back to iOS 7 considering how limited it was as a operating system, iOS 8+ made iPad a much more viable computer replacement and I wouldn't be surprised if iOS 11 furthered that. Let us know how the update goes

 

[Codeseven]

I've been doing the standard updating of my 16Gb Air 1 through Settings and it's been running 10.3 without any problems. Ive always updated to the latest version of iOS for security and performance reasons alone.

 

[darkarn]

I don't see why you would want to go back to iOS 7 considering how limited it was as a operating system, iOS 8+ made iPad a much more viable computer replacement and I wouldn't be surprised if iOS 11 furthered that. Let us know how the update goes

Only reasons I can think of is how app backups work (I have some offline apps that are not on App Store anymore and also have exclusive online content that cannot be gotten anymore. I will like to keep them as is hence my experimenting with iMazing) and the usual performance concerns that comes with any upgrades.

We shall see

I've been doing the standard updating of my 16Gb Air 1 through Settings and it's been running 10.3 without any problems. Ive always updated to the latest version of iOS for security and performance reasons alone.

Thanks, glad to hear that!

 

[gobikerider]

Only reasons I can think of is how app backups work (I have some offline apps that are not on App Store anymore and also have exclusive online content that cannot be gotten anymore. I will like to keep them as is hence my experimenting with iMazing) and the usual performance concerns that comes with any upgrades.

We shall see



Thanks, glad to hear that!

Any app that isn't even on the App Store anymore cannot possibly be worth keeping

 

[flowave]

I'm not 100% sure HDMI will be fixed. I am having issues on Youtube outputting HDMI time to time. It lags and freezes on latest IOS. I think the hardware is getting bottlenecked as the new iPad 2017 works swiftly.

 

[gobikerider]

I'm not 100% sure HDMI will be fixed. I am having issues on Youtube outputting HDMI time to time. It lags and freezes on latest IOS. I think the hardware is getting bottlenecked as the new iPad 2017 works swiftly.

An A7 should be more than capable of outputting a 1080p HDMI feed, that's very surprising, it might be Youtube itself

 

[flowave]

An A7 should be more than capable of outputting a 1080p HDMI feed, that's very surprising, it might be Youtube itself

Yes I do believe it is Youtube app specific issue. Other videos from broswer have no issues.
It seems to happen often on longer videos (20min), which might mean lack of ram.

 

[darkarn]

Any app that isn't even on the App Store anymore cannot possibly be worth keeping

I know where you are coming from given the (usual) online nature of apps (e.g. Facebook, Youtube), but just for this particular set of apps (THE iDOLM@STER SHINY FESTA iOS), I can't agree

I'm not 100% sure HDMI will be fixed. I am having issues on Youtube outputting HDMI time to time. It lags and freezes on latest IOS. I think the hardware is getting bottlenecked as the new iPad 2017 works swiftly.

Thanks for the heads up, do you have any similar issues with games?

 

[gobikerider]

Yes I do believe it is Youtube app specific issue. Other videos from broswer have no issues.
It seems to happen often on longer videos (20min), which might mean lack of ram.

Hmm try in safari see if it lags with a long video and report back, we may have a bug to report to google

 

[darkarn]

Hmm try in safari see if it lags with a long video and report back, we may have a bug to report to google

Am hoping that this is just Youtube's problem too haha

Test this in Chrome too?

 

[cambookpro]

Just to echo what most people are saying, I'd go for it. I've upgraded from the original Air firmware right through to whatever we're on now - 10.3.something - without ever starting afresh and it's been fine.

I'm sure the modern iPads would be a bit faster and not reload Safari tabs as much, but that's about all I notice. It's still a really pleasant device to use, and one I use every day without frustration.

I'm interested in using a Pencil for note taking and sketching diagrams, so might keep an eye out for the Pro refresh his year, but I'm in no real rush to upgrade. If the Air could use the pencil, I honestly would just keep it until it no longer received software updates.

 

[darkarn]

Just to echo what most people are saying, I'd go for it. I've upgraded from the original Air firmware right through to whatever we're on now - 10.3.something - without ever starting afresh and it's been fine.

I'm sure the modern iPads would be a bit faster and not reload Safari tabs as much, but that's about all I notice. It's still a really pleasant device to use, and one I use every day without frustration.

I'm interested in using a Pencil for note taking and sketching diagrams, so might keep an eye out for the Pro refresh his year, but I'm in no real rush to upgrade. If the Air could use the pencil, I honestly would just keep it until it no longer received software updates.

Thanks, I am holding out for the new 12.9 inch iPad too; I find 9.7 too cramped for my games

Should be able to make the jump to iOS 10 soon, just need to convince myself that I won't need the app backup ability (i.e. the ability to make ipa files)

 

[gobikerider]

Thanks, I am holding out for the new 12.9 inch iPad too; I find 9.7 too cramped for my games

Should be able to make the jump to iOS 10 soon, just need to convince myself that I won't need the app backup ability (i.e. the ability to make ipa files)

Just do it please app backups are handled by iCloud now for any decent app that cares, any thing else isn't worth your time.

 

[darkarn]

Just do it please app backups are handled by iCloud now for any decent app that cares, any thing else isn't worth your time.

I did it... for my (spare) iPhone 5. It works as nicely as iOS 9 so far, but had practically all apps having the 32 bit warning as the phone is a 32 bit device.

I see your point now, going to work on the update for the iPad Air in a while