Why do iPhones slow after a year

[LaCosta]

After purchasing iPhones, they slow after a year....after the iOS updates and especially when a new release is install.

I had that experience with my iPhone4...and with my family's 5s and 6s. For me...I hate to say but I defected to a Samsung and I have had it for 2.5 years and it is just works as fine as day one.

Why do iPhones slow down so severely? I really want to get back to an iPhone but that is preventing me.

 

[emilioestevez]

The newer OS is to blame.

Planned obsolescence.

 

[C DM]

Because of conspiracy theories.

 

[ABC5S]

Mine hasn't run down after a year. It's all the garbage you put on it not optimized for the phone. Do a clean wipe and start fresh. Ya, go to Android and see what they are saying on there forums.

 

[bufffilm]

After purchasing iPhones, they slow after a year....after the iOS updates and especially when a new release is install.

I had that experience with my iPhone4...and with my family's 5s and 6s. For me...I hate to say but I defected to a Samsung and I have had it for 2.5 years and it is just works as fine as day one.

Why do iPhones slow down so severely? I really want to get back to an iPhone but that is preventing me.

If anything, android devices are said to slow down (more) over ios.

Frankly, any phone might slow down because most people put junk on their phones...planned obsolescence (the 2nd post) has nothing to do with it.

 

[nia820]

It has nothing to do with the OS. I've owned quite a lot of iphones and iPads none of them have slowed down after a year. It's usually after the 2 year mark that they start to stutter. But it is nothing that makes it unusable.

Maybe it is the amount of apps or files you have on your device. Smartphones run like computers where if you have a lot of stuff on it, it will start to slow down.

 

[eyoungren]

After purchasing iPhones, they slow after a year....after the iOS updates and especially when a new release is install.

I had that experience with my iPhone4...and with my family's 5s and 6s. For me...I hate to say but I defected to a Samsung and I have had it for 2.5 years and it is just works as fine as day one.

Why do iPhones slow down so severely? I really want to get back to an iPhone but that is preventing me.

Sorry, I wouldn't know. I've never experienced what you describe.

 

[Skika]

After purchasing iPhones, they slow after a year....after the iOS updates and especially when a new release is install.

I had that experience with my iPhone4...and with my family's 5s and 6s. For me...I hate to say but I defected to a Samsung and I have had it for 2.5 years and it is just works as fine as day one.

Why do iPhones slow down so severely? I really want to get back to an iPhone but that is preventing me.

When did this happen?

 

[MacDawg]

Why do iPhones slow down so severely? I really want to get back to an iPhone but that is preventing me.

Your question implies this is a truism, that iPhones do in fact slow down after a year
Hard to answer the question when my experience runs contrary to your basic assumption
I (and many others) have never experienced such a slowdown

 

[macfacts]

After purchasing iPhones, they slow after a year....after the iOS updates and especially when a new release is install.

I had that experience with my iPhone4...and with my family's 5s and 6s. For me...I hate to say but I defected to a Samsung and I have had it for 2.5 years and it is just works as fine as day one.

Why do iPhones slow down so severely? I really want to get back to an iPhone but that is preventing me.

You need to shake it ... I mean restore as new regularly to keep it snappy. But seriously, if you know what is slowing it down (the updates) then don't update.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Familiarity breeds contempt? The honeymoon is over? The blush is off the rose? Everything is downhill? You have to maintain (the relationship)? I've grow accustomed to her face?

It's all human nature. I've owned very few products that seemed to be "as good as new" a year into ownership, even though nothing about them changed.

Not to say that a person can't find ways to over-burden a computer (and these are computers). It can take a while to fill the thing with background apps/tasks and arrive at near-zero storage capacity (maybe a year??), but once you're there.... It's a shared responsibility - Apple can do what it can to create a low-maintenance environment, but if you expect "good as new," you probably have to do a bit of straightening up around the house.

The second year can be the toughest in a romance, too. It's always easy in the beginning. After a while, those little annoyances that were there all along begin to loom larger in your perception, and good traits are taken for granted. Eventually, if the relationship lasts, you learn to love despite the flaws, and may even find them endearing.

 

[biracialfamily91]

After purchasing iPhones, they slow after a year....after the iOS updates and especially when a new release is install.

I had that experience with my iPhone4...and with my family's 5s and 6s. For me...I hate to say but I defected to a Samsung and I have had it for 2.5 years and it is just works as fine as day one.

Why do iPhones slow down so severely? I really want to get back to an iPhone but that is preventing me.

I have the same problem as my iphones never lasts me more than a year.
Since we don't allow our kids to have electronic devices. they have playtime on my iPhone.
The amount of games and movies they put on my phone is a lot.
thank goodness I'm on the Jump program
so I just think it's just a lot of junk and apps on your phone that's slowing it down.

 

[M. Gustave]

My two iPhone 4s, yes they're a bit laggy on 9.3.1. They're five years old, so I have no complaints.

But you said "6s"? Nope, I call BS trolling.

 

[LaCosta]

When did this happen?

Skika was asking about the "6S". The "S" is to indicate MULTIPLE phones....not the model. As in....my wife and daughter...two phones. Not Model.


btw....I do wish to return to an iPhone....so I can be unified with my iMac.

 

[5105973]

The only thing I've noticed a slowdown on is my IPad Retina mini. It gets bogged down in websites that are heavy on ads. Apps still run fine on it. The extra gig of RAM they gave the newer devices really helps smooth the browser experience and lets you keep more tabs open.

My daughter was using the original iPad mini until fairly recently and had no problems or slowdowns. We upgraded her to the mini 4 just to give her a better display now that she's using a Bluetooth keyboard to type school papers on. She was also using a 5s with no problems. That was my iPhone at one time and is over four years old. The only thing that was shot on it was the battery. We just traded it in for an SE.

In my experience if anything is going to be a problem first it will be the battery. And even that, it varies. My husband's 5s battery is still going strong and that phone is being used by his dad now.

 

[bandofbrothers]

iPhone 6 Plus = Purchased 28th September 2014 on iOS 9.3.1

Not experienced any slow down.

 

[C DM]

Skika was asking about the "6S". The "S" is to indicate MULTIPLE phones....not the model. As in....my wife and daughter...two phones. Not Model.


btw....I do wish to return to an iPhone....so I can be unified with my iMac.

That would be more along the lines of "5 and 6 iPhones" in that case (as 5s and 6s have their own specific meaning).

 

[Retired Cat]

I don't get the sense that my iPhone 5 has slowed down, even after more than 3 years. Scrolling and interaction is still smooth and quick.

What I do notice is the 1GB of RAM now, because apps and web pages have to re-load more than they used to re-load.

 

[lordofthereef]

I think the last powerhouse phone that I've seen (partially because some aren't old enough yet) is the 5s. That really still chugs along quite nicely. My 6 plus was a slug almost out the door and iOS 9 didn't make anything better (though it didn't make it strictly worse either). 6s plus, I am expecting, to be similar to the 5s in performance and longevity, just based on my current usage of it.

 

[bandofbrothers]

I don't get the sense that my iPhone 5 has slowed down, even after more than 3 years. Scrolling and interaction is still smooth and quick.

What I do notice is the 1GB of RAM now, because apps and web pages have to re-load more than they used to re-load.

Hi,

I did see this on my iPad Air and iPhone 6 Plus occasionally.

I know you can't have this on your iPhone 5 but downloading a Content Blocker worked wonders for greatly reducing this occurrence on my devices.

 

[throAU]

Because people fill them up with crap they don't need, run the flash memory at 99.9% full and then wonder why whenever the phone needs to write to flash it's slow (because it's juggling around a tiny amount of free space and trying to wear level it).

That, and software moves on. New iOS versions do more. The hardware spec stays the same. This has been happening since the first computers built in the 1940s and will continue to happen moving forward. You can accept this or not, but it will happen either way.

 

[smacrumon]

From my experience iOS slows down when storage becomes low, which is why it's a good idea to back up the device and free up storage.

Also experienced is when updating to a new version of iOS. Even though Apple suggested iOS8 worked fine on older devices, upgrading iOS7 to iOS8 on some devices was terrible, slowing down the device.

Apple suggesting users upgrade to a new iOS version is an example of planned obsolescence in my opinion. This view is supported by the fact users can not rollback or downgrade their iOS*.
(*Except for a very small window of about a week after the new version has been released. After that Apple stops signing older versions of iOS making rolling back or downgrading not possible.)

My view is that devices with a 64 bit architecture appear to be more robust than those with older 32 bit architecture. For instance, devices with an A7 processor including iPhone 5S, iPad Air, iPad Mini 2 or later appear to be resilient from iOS7 through to iOS9. Hopefully that's still the case come iOS10.

I think the bigger question is why does Safari for iOS keep crashing when visiting the MacRumors forums.

 

[throAU]

Not so much planned obsolescence, as design life.

The battery in the phone is designed to last 3 years.

The extended warranty is 3 years. The typical phone contract is 2 years. Being a mobile device, they are at high risk of damage or loss anyway.

Supporting phones that have dead batteries, are slow, out of contract, damaged and maybe stolen by that point is a waste of resources.

Sure, your phone might still be alive and hold charge. But...

 

[Skylitfly]

This is BS.

My iPhone 6 was running great on iOS 9. Just as good as on iOS 8 basically.
My iPhone 4 was running great on iOS 6 and first real slowdown was on iOS 7.

People who claim having serious speed problems after one OS update have problem in their heads.

 

[HEK]

"Why do iPhones slow down after one year"?

Main spring inside phone has wound down after a year. Worker at Foxcon is too busy winding up new iPhones to go back and rewind one year old phones. So all you can do is replace with new, freshly wound, iPhone each year.

That's my hypothesis, and I'm sticking to it. So don't try to convince me otherwise. Spring is hidden inside secret enclave.