iPhone Upgrade 4S or not?

[Lord Hamsa]

The hand-me-down phones we let the kids use as glorified iPod Touches are iPhone 4S (as we upgraded to 5S phones last year). I've been holding off upgrading these devices to iOS8, but it's been out there long enough, I think i's time to ask what the 4S users think of iOS8.

Stable? Sluggish? Battery life?

Upgrade now or wait as long as possible, i.e., to the point where apps no longer get updated?

The main advantage of upgrading would be to get them on family sharing.

 

[saudor]

Unless you really need/use family sharing, don't upgrade. There is also a chunk of space that is lost too

 

[LordQ]

Sure. I don't have any problems with my 4S on iOS 8 besides the ocassional 3 seconds lag when opening some apps. Also, most beautiful phone Apple has ever done.

 

[fardeenah]

don't , its laggy as hell especially when multitasking, even loading the calculator app is slower

 

[Agent-P]

I would say leave it as is unless you meet one (or both) of the two below criteria:

1. The apps your kids use require iOS 8 to function
2. You want to use the new Famiy Sharing features

 

[deluxeshredder]

iOS 8 on a 4S is usable, but not nice. With reduced transparency, it's much more bearable and about as smooth as iOS 5 on a first-generation iPad.

 

[sanke1]

Wait out as long as possible and upgrade to iPhone 6S.

This is an award winning strategy.

 

[atlatnesiti]

Sell it quick, or you will not sell it at all...
That is very old phone and you'll be lucky to sell it a all

 

[oldmacs]

Sell it quick, or you will not sell it at all...
That is very old phone and you'll be lucky to sell it a all

iPhone 4's are still selling well (Well at least around here), so I doubt there would be problems with selling a 4S.

iOS 8 is fine on the 4S - sure its a little slower than iOS 7, but nothing too terrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znzdgdGQx5o

 

[Zxxv]

Sell it quick, or you will not sell it at all...
That is very old phone and you'll be lucky to sell it a all

Or

keep it until there is a trade in offer for old working iPhones. i.e. trade in your old iPhone and get the newest iPhone on XYZ tariff = a good deal

watch for one of those

 

[nordique]

I would say not to upgrade, I regretted doing that on my old 4S

From 7.1.2, I instantly noticed 2 things: 1) Slower performance (more laggy, which was annoying throughout the daily usage) and 2) Worse battery life

I used to get a solid 5 hours or so of battery life in ios7

On iOS8, it went down to around 3 hours. I turned off the background features and optimized the phone, and it still ran barely 20-30 mins more.

iOS 8 has great features, imo, that make it the best iOS yet. But I hold battery life and performance first. That is why I sold that old 4S and will never upgrade my current one (its on ios5)

 

[pacorob]

We didn't upgrade our iPhone 4S devices. Still running 7.1.2 due to all the stories and videos i've seen of 4S devices that do run iOS8. iOS8 runs fine on my iPad mini2 but that has better hardware specs to run it.

 

[l.i. bruce fan]

My daughter's 4s still has 6.x on it. Any way to update it to 7.1.2 now? I probably have the update file in my iTunes from updating my wife's 4s to 7.1.2?

 

[Paddle1]

My daughter's 4s still has 6.x on it. Any way to update it to 7.1.2 now? I probably have the update file in my iTunes from updating my wife's 4s to 7.1.2?

No.

 

[iamMacPerson]

My daughter's 4s still has 6.x on it. Any way to update it to 7.1.2 now? I probably have the update file in my iTunes from updating my wife's 4s to 7.1.2?

No. In fact, I'd think about selling that. Devices running iOS 6 always seem to be in high demand.

 

[Lord Hamsa]

For the record, I went ahead and did the upgrade on my eldest son's device. Went smoothly, and he's having less problems with app crashes since then.

 

[C DM]

No. In fact, I'd think about selling that. Devices running iOS 6 always seem to be in high demand.

Is there really high demand? Or just basically a (essentially very) small subset of some users who might be interested in something like that?

 

[iamMacPerson]

Is there really high demand? Or just basically a (essentially very) small subset of some users who might be interested in something like that?

Well its a small niche really that is willing to pay oodles for a device running iOS 6. Personally I like the iOS 7 interface better but I do wish I still had my old iPhone 4 with iOS 6 for collectable purposes.