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Greetings MacRumors!

I own an apple Iphone 5 and according to apple technicians is in perfect condition minus the chip on the top left corner. Sadly i dropped it the first time right before my apple care + ended. Other then that since i traded in my damaged on the battery and the guts are perfect.

However since ios 6, ive noticed longer boot times and some lag here and there when using applications. I found IOS 6 smooth. IOS 7 had its bugs at first but near the end they cleared up. IOS 8 i find more lag..

So what im asking.. To those out there who installed 8.3 how is the experience on an Iphone 5?

I dont want to sacrifice more speed. Thanks

8.3 runs very well on my iPhone 5 32GB. Definitely better than 8.2.
 
8.3 runs very well on my iPhone 5 32GB. Definitely better than 8.2.

That is true across the board on any device. 8.3 is far better than 8.2.....but it isn't better than 7.1.2
Scrolling stutter, lag, freezing and less responsive touch (whether intermittent or not) were not features of any version of iOS before 8.0
Whilst it's true that 8.3 is the best version of iOS8 to date, it still has issues which were not present in 7.1.2
 
I created a thread about it and it gained a fair amount of traction with users seeing similar issues. If you don't see it, then that's simply nothing that's going to bother you.

The auto-scrolling does drop frames. Try any app. Preferably something with a long list. Scroll down to the very bottom of the top charts (app store), then tap the upper part of the screen. 4/7 instances you'll see frames dropping. It has to be said though that things like these aren't what regular users care about, I simply notice it because I know how smooth it used to be, and the fact that I consume content with a high frame rate.

Use the auto-scroll and do it where it will automatically try to get back to the top as fast as it can. There needs to be a fair long list though. 15-20 items is not enough.

Did you experience no issues with the weather app?

I can't comment on mail since mine are only synced for 2 weeks.

The only app that is ridiculously smooth when auto-scrolling a very long list is Google Translate. That is pretty much constantly between 50-60 fps.

You are right on my friend. I miss my old 5 with iOS 7.1.2. Everything was buttery smooth and Safari performance was better than my 6! Things got weird with iOS 8! Still seeing hiccups that weren't present in 7.1.2. I think they added so many features at once and are having a hard time settling down all of those new added different processes and daemons running in the background. Maybe it's somewhat the ram but I think it's mostly the coders can't keep up with everything.
 
You are right on my friend. I miss my old 5 with iOS 7.1.2. Everything was buttery smooth and Safari performance was better than my 6! Things got weird with iOS 8! Still seeing hiccups that weren't present in 7.1.2. I think they added so many features at once and are having a hard time settling down all of those new added different processes and daemons running in the background. Maybe it's somewhat the ram but I think it's mostly the coders can't keep up with everything.

Yeah. I don't believe RAM is the issue, seeing as low amount of RAM and the way iOS handles memory management would simply result in the termination of other apps running in the background. This is strictly related to performance between the OS and the CPU/GPU.

Hopefully things will improve with iOS 9, but so far there are only rumours about Apple mainly focusing on optimisation.
 
I created a thread about it and it gained a fair amount of traction with users seeing similar issues. If you don't see it, then that's simply nothing that's going to bother you.

Is it a 6 or a 6 Plus you're using? You have to remember the 6 Plus has hugely increased the number of pixels compared to the iPhone 5 or 6.

That's going to potentially cause slower scrolling just because the hardware is doing far more work, never mind the OS differences.

Even the 6 has reasonable increase over the 5, although in that case you'd think the GPU is improved enough to compensate.

It's also possible that the issue lies with the apps you're using - when they were ported to handle the larger screen sizes, perhaps the developers didn't do a great job of optimising the drawing performance of their UITableView cells. Or they migrated the app to use Auto Layout, which makes things easier for developers but is potentially slower.
 
Is it a 6 or a 6 Plus you're using? You have to remember the 6 Plus has hugely increased the number of pixels compared to the iPhone 5 or 6.

That's going to potentially cause slower scrolling just because the hardware is doing far more work, never mind the OS differences.

Even the 6 has reasonable increase over the 5, although in that case you'd think the GPU is improved enough to compensate.

It's also possible that the issue lies with the apps you're using - when they were ported to handle the larger screen sizes, perhaps the developers didn't do a great job of optimising the drawing performance of their UITableView cells. Or they migrated the app to use Auto Layout, which makes things easier for developers but is potentially slower.

I'm using the 6. While I understand your point, it's worth remembering that the advancements of the GPU are supposed to compensate for the higher amount of pixels we have in these devices. The 6 Plus does suffer from an unusual amount, which I guess could be because of the constant downsampling.

I didn't actually mention third party apps for the obvious reasons you mentioned. The problem is I find these issues from Apples own core apps.

Spotify is absolutely atrocious when it comes to auto-scrolling, but Apple can't really be held accountable for how Spotify created their app.

Whatever the initial issue is, the problem is that exists. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the software doesn't warrant the performance issues we have as I believe it isn't as sophisticated or advanced as the tremendous advancements we've seen in CPU and GPU performance. I obviously say that without being a software engineer at Apple, but I believe the power (hardware) is more than good enough, but the coding has lately been subpar.
 
Can we focus on one thing here..

iOS 7.1.1/7.1.2
V/S
iOS 8.3

ONLY ON
iPhone 5

(Atleast for this thread of old iPhone 5 users :) )
 
Last edited:
Can we focus on one thing here..

iOS 7.1.1/7.1.2
V/S
iOS 8.3
ONLY ON
iPhone 5

(Atleast for this thread of old iPhone 5 users :) )
It's more or less the same. Perhaps iOS 7.1 is slightly smoother/faster than iOS 8.3 (very soon to be 8.4), but the difference isn't that much. If newer features of iOS 8 aren't desired, I can potentially see staying back on iOS 7.1, but aside from that particular scenario, going to iOS 8.3 (or probably 8.4) seems like it should be just fine. That said, as with most upgrades, no matter what version, there are always people that run into some sort of issues, be it some battery problems perhaps or something else, so it's hard to say for sure how things will behave across any and all devices.
 
It's more or less the same. Perhaps iOS 7.1 is slightly smoother/faster than iOS 8.3 (very soon to be 8.4), but the difference isn't that much. If newer features of iOS 8 aren't desired, I can potentially see staying back on iOS 7.1, but aside from that particular scenario, going to iOS 8.3 (or probably 8.4) seems like it should be just fine. That said, as with most upgrades, no matter what version, there are always people that run into some sort of issues, be it some battery problems perhaps or something else, so it's hard to say for sure how things will behave across any and all devices.

I am sorry.. But I respectfully disagree. If thread subject is iOS 8.3/ 8.x performance on a older 1.5/2 year old hardware then people posting their iPhone 6/ Plus (less than an year old) hardware experiences bear no resemblance.

The latest hardware will always do decently well. The older models, we need to take 'finer' judgement calls.

So, it would be nice for iPhone 5/ users/ owners to share their experiences / comparisons to past OS releases on the "same" hardware.
 
I am sorry.. But I respectfully disagree. If thread subject is iOS 8.3/ 8.x performance on a older 1.5/2 year old hardware then people posting their iPhone 6/ Plus (less than an year old) hardware experiences bear no resemblance.

The latest hardware will always do decently well. The older models, we need to take 'finer' judgement calls.

So, it would be nice for iPhone 5/ users/ owners to share their experiences / comparisons to past OS releases on the "same" hardware.
Certainly everyone has their own experiences. But with my dealings of a couple of iPhone 5 phones running iOS 7 and then iOS 8 what I described applies.
 
Certainly everyone has their own experiences. But with my dealings of a couple of iPhone 5 phones running iOS 7 and then iOS 8 what I described applies.
Everyone has their experiences. And if you are posting experience of iPhone 5 with iOS 7 & 8, that is PERFECT for this thread.

I am bothered when people with iPhone 6 post here when the subject is "iPhone 5" and its ability to handle iOS 8.x and how the experience changes.
 
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