Ask Slashdot: Is iOS 7 Slow?

New submitter PopHollywood writes "Is iOS 7 slower than version 6? After upgrading, myself and a few others notice slow, choppy experience when scrolling, changing apps, etc. Is this common?" For those using iOS in general, what's been your experience with the new upgrade?

Not new

[Samantha Wright]

I've kept an iPod touch 2G and 4G around for a while—and I can say with some confidence that every single release of iOS has come with a palpable performance penalty. That's how Apple decides when to stop releasing iOS for a given device; the performance gets unacceptably awful.

Re:yawn

[Dahamma]

From what I can see there is a *lot* more eye candy (and I'm not talking about the icon changes) - it seems like the decided they needed to animate every single action and control in the OS now. Not to mention transparency, animated blur effects (especially in the camera), etc.

I don't notice any slowdown from it, though - seems like they are using the 3D HW to do it, and the latest devices have pretty decent graphics. In fact, the perception is often that it's faster (which is the point of transition animation) but that's just a subjective observation...

Re:yawn

[calzones]

All these new animations drive me batty.

Sure, you see something happen right away in response to an action, so in a sense, you have instant feedback. If that makes you think things are happening faster, lucky you.

Because my iPhone 5, when it was running iOS 6 felt faster to me because any action I took translated to a change of UX paradigm right away where I could take yet another action. Hence, I'm working faster. Now with animations, I have to wait for each animation before I can take my next action. That feels slower to me.

Worst offender is the new lock screen. Why did they decide to make me wait an extra 1/2-1 seconds after hitting the power or home button to turn it on so that can "gracefully" fade in from black before giving me access to the "slide to unlock"? It's maddening.

is Linux slow?

[smash]

When i started using Linux, it would run just fine on my 486DX33 with 8 MB of RAM. Now when I try to run it on machines with 50x that spec it is slow.

Newsflash: hardware requirements increase with new features. Supporting end of life hardware that hasn't been made for multiple generations in new platforms holds back said platform. Whether it is iOS, WIndows, Linux or whatever.

Re:yawn

[Cryacin]

You have to admire apple for their ingenuity. What better way to force people to ditch that old phone than to update the OS, make it more resource hungry with fancy schmancy animations that can't be turned off by the user? I used to own an iPhone 3 a few years ago, and when they forced an update onto it that basically made it useless, I decided there and then to switch to Android. Never looked back.

If the Apple way is so important to you, then I guess you have to accept it. For me, it was a simple choice.

Re:yawn

[bkmoore]

You have to admire apple for their ingenuity. What better way to force people to ditch that old phone than to update the OS, make it more resource hungry...

That's been going on for as long as there has been a computer industry.

Re:Dude,

[Anonymous Coward]

If something works well, do you really need to update it every few years? No personal offense, but I really hate people like you. Change for the sake of change is a bad thing.

Re:Yep

[immaterial]

Android has done it properly from scratch simply riding on the shoulders of linux. Apple wanted to make sure the experience is guaranteed so it slowly introduced task switching, and now it has to hack it in.

What exactly does this mean? What is Android getting from its Linux pedigree that iOS doesn't get from its BSD UNIX pedigree?

Re:Nope

[immaterial]

Restricting folders to a 3x3 grid is by far my biggest pet peeve. It's an absurdity on a 10" tablet especially. If you have a dev account I encourage you to file a UI big against it. Maybe if they get enough complaints they'll do something about it (hahahahaha).

Re:yawn

[sjwt]

Not always with forced updates though.

Could you imagine turning on your old 486-DX266 and being told it was now installing windows 7

Re:Dude,

[Anonymous Coward]

. Change for the sake of change is a bad thing.

Like how you are wearing clothes with styles from the 1700s? Oh.. right.

We change clothing styles to keep getting laid. Granted, some people's interaction with a UI is the only way that happens, but still, not for most of us.