The iPhone runs smoother with less apps installed

[TheSpaz]

I don't care what you say. I reduced my apps down to one-and-a-half pages and boy does my iPhone feel smoother. Launch times haven't really changed but overall graphics performance on the iPhone have increased. Scrolling through my 2 pages is smoother, launching and quitting apps has a smoother animation to it. I think I may have freed up some memory too. I don't think the iPhone sees 1 home page at a time (you may only see one screen at a time but, I bet all of those icons across all 9 pages are being rendered anyway). Having more apps on your SpringBoard will make SpringBoard use up more memory (RAM).

With only 1.5 pages of Apps, my iPhone feels like the day I bought it (when everything was snappy). It seems as you add more apps, the iPhone slows down a bit, but you probably don't notice because it slows down little by little for each app you add. Also, it seems like now I don't have to create a blank page in Safari anymore to free up memory.

I almost wanna reduce down to 1 screen but, you can't get rid of Apple's stupid apps (Stocks, YouTube, and Weather).

Anyone else notice the difference?

 

[9822679]

i only notice a difference when scrolling form screen to screen ... running safari or any other program i really don't notice a difference


of course anytime you notice that your phone feels fast ( even if it's just scrolling from screen to screen) you will begin to believe that your phone is faster


the only way to truly test this is to run some kind of objective benchmark program ( with or without a ton of apps), everything else will be subjective.

 

[Small White Car]

You can turn off YouTube using the 'restrictions' settings, you know.

 

[firewood]

Sometimes, one can get this effect by just doing a slide-to-power-off reset.

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[davyreins]

A lot of people have mentioned this and it surprises me. Apps do not take up much space on the hard drive, especially compared to music, movies, etc. I usually only think of devices slowing down due to lack of space left on their HD. Any ideas on why it is different with apps?

 

[Consultant]

A lot of people have mentioned this and it surprises me. Apps do not take up much space on the hard drive, especially compared to music, movies, etc. I usually only think of devices slowing down due to lack of space left on their HD. Any ideas on why it is different with apps?

iPhone storage has 2 main partitions. One partition for OS and apps, and other partition for media (music, etc).

 

[dcubed20]

IThe iPhone runs smoother with fewer apps installed

*~*~grammar ninja~*~*

 

[TheSpaz]

Having 100 apps on your springboard is going to take up more RAM than having only a few. The RAM is crucial here... it's a very small amount to begin with and when it fills up, apps start crashing and the interface feels clunky. It *DOES* matter how many apps you have installed.

 

[Small White Car]

Having 100 apps on your springboard is going to take up more RAM than having only a few. The RAM is crucial here... it's a very small amount to begin with and when it fills up, apps start crashing and the interface feels clunky. It *DOES* matter how many apps you have installed.

Yeah, but we're just talking about icons, right? How much space do those take up? I can't imagine that the difference between 20 and 100 matters much. What would that be? 0.4 MB or something? I dunno, just guessing. There's a little over 100 MB of RAM, I don't see that less than 1/2 MB is going to make things noticably different.

 

[KidneyMerchant]

Not quite

The size of your apps does not in any way shape or form affect your phone's preformance while not using the app. SpringBoard's CPU/RAM usage will, and the app icons are on the SpringBoard.

If true, it's very minimal, the same as having a Winterboard theme installed. I stay away from Winterboard/Substrate because of what you mentioned (fade-out animations etc). Thanks for the info, I learned something =)

 

[geekmommy4]

I can only comment about my experience, but I have 174 apps installed on top of what came on the iPhone. There are also lots of other apps installed through Cydia that are running in the background without icons. While I occasionally have slowdowns, it usually seems related to the theme that I have installed. For example, the Nightmare before Christmas theme really seemed to slow it down (but I loved it, so I lived with it! )

Right now, though, I am using the Illuminous theme with Katra's beautiful Weather HD on the lockscreen and I was just noticing earlier that my phone was running incredibly fast today. No lags that I can detect. I did power down and back up earlier today.

Anyway, my personal experience does not show that a larger number of apps cause mine to slow down.

 

[megapopular]

Tests??

Instead of guessing, can someone with a memory meter app on their iPhone test with 9 pages of apps after a hard reset, then go down to a page and a half and also test after a hard reset? I know it's not a perfect test but it's a start! Thanks for whoever may check this out.

 

[Bingbonghoho]

I have problems with safari, 5 pages of app!!
If anybody wants to send me data, I am willing to do a analysis using spreadsheets.

 

[uglydimple12]

I would agree..

my friend got 8 pages of apps and every time he wants to show me something, We actually had to wait for a few seconds, maybe like 5 to 10 seconds at most, for the apps to finally load up..

while I got only 3 pages of apps and mine runs a lot smoother and faster

so I m not gonna fill the pages up, I ll keep it to 4 and thats it..

 

[Delta608]

Its also lighter without all those apps installed...

 

[Warbrain]

How about we consider the possibility that most people are not turning off their iPhones? It needs to power cycle in order to clear memory. At least once a day should work.

 

[TheSpaz]

How about we consider the possibility that most people are not turning off their iPhones? It needs to power cycle in order to clear memory. At least once a day should work.

No it doesn't need to power cycle. The iPhone clears its memory by itself when it gets too low. You shouldn't have to restart your phone once a day. My iPhone has been running fine since I reduced my apps.

 

[firewood]

The iPhone clears its memory by itself when it gets too low.

It should. But developers who have Apple's iPhone SDK Instruments tools to examine memory available to apps on actual devices sometimes find otherwise.

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