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iPhone 4 - Still Fast?

I

IFRIT

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 15, 2012
840
137
Hi, i'm due an upgrade next month and want to stay on a cheap £21 2 year contract and the iPhone 4 seems the best phone that i can get without any cash down. And just wanted to know how the 4 is holding up after almost 3 years, does it still run smooth and function well after all the updates?

This is just for a spare phone as i'm an Android guy and my main phone phone is a Note 2 so i don't really care the the new iphone might be out in a few months.
 
I wouldnt buy an iPhone 4 purely because of the size restriction (8gb) and also due to the fact that it is not even speech to text capable. Along with that most phones are LTE now a days so I would wait for the new phone to come out and buy an iPhone 5 if Apple does what they usually do and drop the price of the older model. The phone functions fine but it will likely not receive any new features from software.
 
Yea its still fast.

iOS 6 hasn't ruined like what iOS 5 has for the iPad 1.

I'm sure its been slower than what it was but my iPhone 4 which I got in Feb 2011 is still going strong.

Some graphic intense games might run slower.

Anything else it runs great.

Might not be as fast as Galaxy Note 2 though. iPhone 4's have A4 chip, its not even dual-core.
 
I've still got mine and I'll keep it until the iPhone 6 comes out. As long as you don't go jailbreaking it, it's still plenty fast enough for everything but the heaviest processing loads.
 
I have an iPhone 4 running iOS 6.1.3. I primarily use it as an iPod Touch gym music player after retiring it for the iPhone 5.

After using the iPhone 5, the limitations are very apparent. Buying a new iPhone 4 means it will likely ship with at least iOS6 - the transition to iOS 6 has not been very kind to the iPhone 4.

Safari is passable in normal browsing, but when viewing pages with lots of image and HTML5 content, the browser slows to a crawl. Even simple animated gifs choke up the iPhone 4 when scrolling/typing on a webpage. Lots of checkerboarding when scrolling, and the 512MB ram gets eaten up fairly quickly after a few open tabs.

Speaking of the ram, cached apps go through the memory very quickly. Many apps in their suspended state will be restarted after a little bit of inactivity.

The keyboard responsiveness is also lacking. If you type too fast, the keyboard will freeze and hang on one letter before catching up.

The iPhone 4 can still handle many of the graphics intensive games available on the App Store, but at reduced/choppy framerates.

If you're happy with just basic functions, like light browsing, music, email and messaging - it works. But at this point, the A4 is very underpowered for the amount of pixels it needs to push. It wasn't so apparent with iOS4, but it really shows its age now.
 
If you could put together the $100, I mean you have a month.

4S is speech to text Compatible, and you have a dual core processor. I got a 4 on launch day for Verizon, and by the time the 4 got up to iOS 6 it just felt not as snappy as 4.2. But then again, I guess that is expected.
 
The iPhone 4 runs great. Sure its not as fast as the iPhone 5 or 4s, but we are talking seconds here in terms of speed difference, there realy isn't a huge difference in speed, you can watch youtube videos that compare the three. the only signifigant slow downs you'd notice would be for the higher end games out there. The iPhone 4 is a great phone don't let anyone tell you otherwise. :D
 
IFRIT said:
Hi, i'm due an upgrade next month and want to stay on a cheap £21 2 year contract and the iPhone 4 seems the best phone that i can get without any cash down. And just wanted to know how the 4 is holding up after almost 3 years, does it still run smooth and function well after all the updates?

This is just for a spare phone as i'm an Android guy and my main phone phone is a Note 2 so i don't really care the the new iphone might be out in a few months.
Click to expand...

It still works but isn't nearly as smooth as the 5 or even 4s on top of that the new updates for the phone will be unavailable in the year to come. And you won't get the wonderful siri! Up to you though.
 
A iPhone 4 is better then a mid-range Android or Windows 8 phone though surely, especially since phones in that bracket usually have a low res screen.
 
Maybe I was just spoiled but after using the Nexus 4, droid DNA, 4s and iPhone 5, the 4 just feels dog slow. Keep in mind you'll be stuck with it for 2 years. I'd at least spend $50-100 for a better phone.
 
TacticalDesire said:
Maybe I was just spoiled but after using the Nexus 4, droid DNA, 4s and iPhone 5, the 4 just feels dog slow. Keep in mind you'll be stuck with it for 2 years. I'd at least spend $50-100 for a better phone.
Click to expand...

As i said i have a Galaxy Note 2 which i bought SIM Free which i don't plan on changing anytime soon as i love it. But my contract ends next month and i can get a free upgrade i might as well use it right? And the iPhone 4 seems the best available especially when it comes to screen resolution from the free selection i can choose from.
 
IFRIT said:
A iPhone 4 is better then a mid-range Android or Windows 8 phone though surely, especially since phones in that bracket usually have a low res screen.
Click to expand...

Not really. Even low end Android phones quite handily beat the iPhone 4 in most cases. Most low end phones are shipping with a dual core processor, 1gb of ram, and at least Android 4.0. And run quite well I might add. The iPhones great for what it is but let's not make it out to be more than it is.

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IFRIT said:
As i said i have a Galaxy Note 2 which i bought SIM Free which i don't plan on changing anytime soon as i love it. But my contract ends next month and i can get a free upgrade i might as well use it right? And the iPhone 4 seems the best available especially when it comes to screen resolution from the free selection i can choose from.
Click to expand...

I don't think I'd waste a subsidy on an iPhone 4.
 
As a backup phone, sure why not - especially since you say it's no cash down. If the Note 2 is your primary I imagine the iPhone will be just a phone? In that case I would be too worried about performance.
 
This late in the game, the iPhone 4 may receive one more OS upgrade to iOS7.

However, with the age of the phone and its mediocre performance on iOS6, the iPhone 4 may not fare any better. If you will be stuck with the phone for several years on a subsidy, at least consider moving up the 4S. The 4S has performance much better than the 4 and is guaranteed at least two more years of iOS upgrade support.
 
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