upgrade iPad 2 from iOS5.1 to iOS7.1

[wim.v]

In 2011, I bought an iPad 2. I did an upgrade to iOS5.1, jailbroke it and left it this way until now. Lately, apps are crashing all the time. (facebook, safari, …).
Upgrading these crashing apps isn’t always possible because a newer iOS version is sometimes necessary for those upgrades.

So what to do now? I’m afraid to upgrade to 7.1 because I think it will be a lot slower and there’s no way back. But in the end it will be inevitable if I don’t want to lose compatibility with a lot of apps. So should I do it right now or postpone the iOS7 upgrade and upgrade to iOS6.x instead?
A jailbreak isn’t necessary. All games I play / apps I use are bought or free.

Can anybody share their experience with their iPad2 on iOS7.1?

Also, is there a way to keep my progress in games when doing a restore? I had no luck with other devices and lost my progress after installing my games again.

 

[wordoflife]

So should I do it right now or postpone the iOS7 upgrade and upgrade to iOS6.x instead?

You can only update to the latest version that they released because they're not signing iOS 6.x anymore. So your options really narrow down to sticking to what you have or going to iOS 7.1.

I don't have an iPad 2, but I saw a post somewhere saying that 7.1 made their iPad 2 feel like new. My suggestion would be to upgrade it regardless, because I think it's better to have a slower but functional iPad compared to what you have now with the apps crashing.

 

[thedeejay]

As the above poster said 7.1 is quite stable on my iPad. It's way better than 7.0.6.

 

[Mlrollin91]

iOS 7.0.4 ran great on my iPad 2, 7.0.6 was an absolute disaster. Everything was constantly crashing. 7.1 is pretty much flawless, and a lot better than 7.0.4 was for me. With 7.0-7.0.4 I had to turn off parallax and the animations because they were so choppy on my iPad 2, but with 7.1, I was able to turn them back on.

 

[ecschwarz]

I'll also chime in - so far iOS 7.1 has been pretty good on my iPad 3. As for the iPad 2, it'll handle iOS 7 just fine (same hardware as the non-retina iPad mini).

 

[pdxa4]

Good post, I was also interested in finding out how iOS7.1 runs on a iPad2, I've kept my ipad on 6.1.2 for some time.

I'm finding now that apps are looking for updates and no longer being supported for iOS6, might be time to update ?

 

[cRuNcHiE]

A guy at my work is a noob and only
Just updated his ipad 2 to 7.1 from 5.x today

Seems to run fine

 

[MisakixMikasa]

If you have jailbroken iPad 2, you need go to cydia install open SSH... read the instruction on iDownloadblog... use Semi-Restore (only available on Windows so far), you can restore back to iOS 5.1... No way to update to iOS 6 at this time... you can only restore to your current firmware.

 

[wim.v]

Thanks to all for the replies so far.
@MisakixMikasa: nice to know I can go back to 5.1 if I want.
So updating seems the way to go.

Is there also anybody who can tell me if there's a way to save the progress in games?

I did a few restores ealier and after reinstalling the games I lost all progress.

 

[MisakixMikasa]

Thanks to all for the replies so far.
@MisakixMikasa: nice to know I can go back to 5.1 if I want.
So updating seems the way to go.

Is there also anybody who can tell me if there's a way to save the progress in games?

I did a few restores ealier and after reinstalling the games I lost all progress.

If you choose to update to iOS 7.1, you cannot up back to iOS 5 anymore. My method only allow you roll back to your current jailbroken firmware. Meaning if you are on iOS 5.1 then you can only do iOS 5.1 restore