iPhones with their original firmware

[Beeplance]

Not sure how to say it, but i was referring to iPhones with their original version of iOS (eg. iPhone 3GS on iOS 3.0, iPhone 4 on iOS 4 and iPhone 4S on iOS 5)

The question is: is it true that iPhones will always be the fastest (also mean best performance) on the original OS that it was shipped with? I always had this mentality that this is so. Then for some users, whenever they upgrade to a new iOS (eg, iOS 5 on iPhone 4), they may experience so lagginess and such.

What do you guys think?

 

[sentinelsx]

There is probably a little merit to this. While iOS 5.1 worked flawlessly on my iPhone 4, performance wise 4.1-4.3.3 were better in my experience. Was it a placebo effect? I don't know. One needs to do a scientific comparison to be sure. That shows that the performance difference is quite small if it exists.

 

[Beeplance]

There is probably a little merit to this. While iOS 5.1 worked flawlessly on my iPhone 4, performance wise 4.1-4.3.3 were better in my experience. Was it a placebo effect? I don't know. One needs to do a scientific comparison to be sure. That shows that the performance difference is quite small if it exists.

Yeah maybe the additional features and codes that new software updates carry will have an impact on the phones performance, although not significant at times. I still think they're better off with their stock OS.

 

[mattopotamus]

Yeah maybe the additional features and codes that new software updates carry will have an impact on the phones performance, although not significant at times. I still think they're better off with their stock OS.

this. That is the main reason why certain OS's are only supported by certain devices. Same thing goes for pretty much all technology. A mac that is 4 years old will not handle lion as well and it would handle an early OS.

 

[sentinelsx]

this. That is the main reason why certain OS's are only supported by certain devices. Same thing goes for pretty much all technology. A mac that is 4 years old will not handle lion as well and it would handle an early OS.

While this is true in general, some times a new software update can actually run better.

For example, windows 7 seems to run much smoother than windows xp on my old laptop. Not to mention i have not experienced lock ups i did on XP. Strange but i love it lol.

Also jellybean on a nexus S runs quite a bit smoother than gingerbread.

I would say if the OS was already optimized for the launch device, further iterations might seem to make it slow. iOS is pretty much well optimized and it is hard to keep making it smoother because it already is.

On the other hand if the launch software was not as optimized and smooth, a newer update could actually make things better as in the examples.

 

[mattopotamus]

While this is true in general, some times a new software update can actually run better.

For example, windows 7 seems to run much smoother than windows xp on my old laptop. Not to mention i have not experienced lock ups i did on XP. Strange but i love it lol.

Also jellybean on a nexus S runs quite a bit smoother than gingerbread.

I would say if the OS was already optimized for the launch device, further iterations might seem to make it slow. iOS is pretty much well optimized and it is hard to keep making it smoother because it already is.

On the other hand if the launch software was not as optimized and smooth, a newer update could actually make things better as in the examples.

Very true. I actually am surprised about the XP and windows 7 Comparison b.c XP performed really well. You are 100% right about JellyBean on the nexus though. Made 2 year old technology run just as fast, if not faster, than anything on the market by updating the software. Generally though, it can make your system feel even more out dated.

 

[Menel]

Very true. I actually am surprised about the XP and windows 7 Comparison b.c XP performed really well. You are 100% right about JellyBean on the nexus though. Made 2 year old technology run just as fast, if not faster, than anything on the market by updating the software. Generally though, it can make your system feel even more out dated.

It's not really surprising, all the benchmarks showed it as well. Vista as well. Their UI's were hardware accelerated on the GPU. If you had the processing power and memory in your rig to support it, Vista/7 were faster, if you did not, then XP was faster.

iOS... The only real metrics we have are browser based Sunspider, and GLBenchmark which show gains with each new iOS iteration, and doesn't jive with user opinion.

I think later versions of iOS feel slower because people are reloading backups. Backups that have lots of apps, and configurations, and generally gunked up over time. I've found that disabling most of spotlight search; settings -> general -> spotlight search, kills a lot of the indexing of all this user added junk that bogs it down. I noticed a huge speed improvement having only contacts indexed for search, rather than every note, mail, messages, etc etc etc. actively indexed.