iPhone 4S - GUI often SLOWER than iPhone 4! Video!

[randfee2]

Hi guys,

ever since I got my iPhone 4S 64GB (white) on friday, I've been amazed by the the app-related performance. What I found strange though was, that I "thought" it's reaction time was not that much better.

After comparing with my brothers' iPhone 4 (32GB) I was stunned to see. Many GUI actions like:

• returning to Homescreen
• opening the mulitask-bar
• Unlocking the phone (waking up the phone from sleep state!)

actually take almost twice (measured) as long as on the iPhone 4. This is reproducible! Booting the phone, killing all running apps, restoring the firmware, nothing affects this behavior.

We've created a video to demonstrate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdwz1w47HqE

We've only discovered that waking up (unlocking) the phone causes the very same delay, takes twice as long, after we had made the video, but this is also repeatable.

Granted, many might think this is micrological, BUT, since it affects functions that you use all the time and that only serve to access something else, I find it unacceptable, the the phone is noticably slower than its predecessor.
I've restored the phone yet it still does it!

Any ideas?

 

[Intell]

It could be that iOS 5.0 isn't full optimized for the 4S yet. Try iOS 4.0 on a 3Gs and 4. You'll probably see similar results.

 

[randfee2]

possibly... but whatever it is, it shouldn't be the case! The snappiness of the GUI is the most important performance indicator. Couldn't care less for slightly lower game performance... but waiting on the device to unlock and show me if I got messages even slightly longer.... nope.... shouldn't be the case!

 

[docalex007]

It could be that iOS 5.0 isn't full optimized for the 4S yet.

How could that be? The 4S and iOS 5.0 were essentially released in tandem. Apple appears to have delayed the 4S so that it could launch with iOS 5 and iCloud. It just doesn't make any sense. Apple had all the time in the world to optimise the new software with the new hardware.

 

[docalex007]

Hi guys,

ever since I got my iPhone 4S 64GB (white) on friday, I've been amazed by the the app-related performance. What I found strange though was, that I "thought" it's reaction time was not that much better.

After comparing with my brothers' iPhone 4 (32GB) I was stunned to see. Many GUI actions like:

• returning to Homescreen
• opening the mulitask-bar
• Unlocking the phone (waking up the phone from sleep state!)

actually take almost twice (measured) as long as on the iPhone 4. This is reproducible! Booting the phone, killing all running apps, restoring the firmware, nothing affects this behavior.

We've created a video to demonstrate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdwz1w47HqE

We've only discovered that waking up (unlocking) the phone causes the very same delay, takes twice as long, after we had made the video, but this is also repeatable.

Granted, many might think this is micrological, BUT, since it affects functions that you use all the time and that only serve to access something else, I find it unacceptable, the the phone is noticably slower than its predecessor.
I've restored the phone yet it still does it!

Any ideas?

Head-scratching find. Either faulty flash memory in just your 64GB model or all the 64GB 4S models aren't "optimised". Could it be an oversight by Apple? I sort of doubt it!

 

[Intell]

The 2011 Air's and Mini's where designed to be together. But there are still some graphical and other problems on them.

 

[docalex007]

The 2011 Air's and Mini's where designed to be together. But there are still some graphical and other problems on them.

Well I've compared the 4S 32GB model with a 32GB iPhone 4 and they had the same speed when it came to double-tapping to multi-task and closing an app and going back to the home screen. This clearly isn't the case in the video (which uses the 64GB version 4S).

Why would it just be the 64GB version with the slower interface issues? Unless of course this was a faulty model used in the video.

 

[Intell]

Why would it just be the 64GB version with the slower interface issues? Unless of course this was a faulty model used in the video.

I've found that bigger sized USB flash drives, 16/32Gb, operate at slightly slower speeds than otherwise identical 4/8Gb ones.

 

[docalex007]

I've found that bigger sized USB flash drives, 16/32Gb, operate at slightly slower speeds than otherwise identical 4/8Gb ones.

Hmmm. Well, interesting nonetheless. Still waiting to hear whether or not this decease in speed is inherent to all 64GB 4Ss or just the one used in the video.

Can anyone here confirm this?

 

[randfee2]

I've found that bigger sized USB flash drives, 16/32Gb, operate at slightly slower speeds than otherwise identical 4/8Gb ones.

Yeah, that happens BUT, I don't see how the GUI performance could be linked to the Flash Memory. Reading speed on any of the flash version is by far large enough.

Hmmm. Well, interesting nonetheless. Still waiting to hear whether or not this decease in speed is inherent to all 64GB 4Ss or just the one used in the video.

Can anyone here confirm this?

I can only second that question.

 

[KFujiwara]

Based on the video you made, it almost looks like there's something wrong with the Home button rather than the phone as a whole. I'm not ruling out the possibility of a different problem, but how different is the speed of unlocking the devices when using the Lock button?

 

[Matthew Yohe]

Uh.. the "GUI" is slower? Or any action that uses the Home button is slower? Because it seems to be related to just the home button (from your video anyway).

Probably just a bug related to pressing the home button, and firing Siri, or not firing Siri.

Good thing we don't have to wait for a carrier for a software update.

 

[randfee2]

well basically you're right... any input to the Home-Button is slower!
Since this is mechanical, and the mechanical input can't have a "delay" (all measured framewise from the last click via 30fps videocam), I still guess it's a software issue.