Apple stop the programmed killing of good phones.... IOS frustrations

[nilk]

My iPhone 6 (4.7") was slow with the version of iOS that it launched with. It's possible I had bad hardware, or maybe the hardware has trouble handling the bigger screen (have a 5S that always felt faster than the 6, all the way up to iOS 10.3.3 so far, will try iOS 11 soon on it). The plus model is probably even worse since it has to render to a much larger resolution and then downsample.

I'd go as far as to say the iPhone 6 is the worst iPhone I've ever owned, the only one I was really unhappy with. The 6S was a huge improvement over the 6 for me. My wife has an iPhone 6 on iOS 10 and has been complaining about it being slow for a while, but previously didn't have a problem.

Though it's not outside of Apple's capabilities to make things smoother. I don't think Apple intentionally cripples old phones, but performance of older harder is never a priority in .0 releases. Historically they do sometimes come back and address the issues with older hardware later.

That said, my 6S was stuttering for a day or two after upgrading to iOS 11, but started running smooth after that. Maybe some background processes working?

Side note: iPhone SE (which has 6S internals) is ridiculously fast on iOS 11. It's always easier to achieve better UI performance at lower resolutions.

 

[dallas112678]

Well I was asking because I don't know if android analyzes and categorizes your photos depending on the context of the image. Does android also recognize peoples faces in photos and group those together? Does android also analyze your most frequent visited locations and give you updates on traffic time to those locations? There are a lot of things that iOS is doing in the background besides displaying animations and app icons.

Is the google assistant and bixby using nural networks and machine learning to carry out tasks?
Again I don't personally know, thats why im asking.
I have not used android in a many many years.

Can’t comment on the inner workings other than they all use machine learning and google assistant is considered to be the best on the market.

Let’s imagine these things are running in the background, why is it that Hugh quality 3D games run smooth, but an app animation stutters.

Nothing you suggested would bog the phone down so much that it can’t handle a simple animation. It’s simply unoptimized. Even in iOS 10, there’s stutters in certain parts of the OS. Cellular pane in settings is a good example.

 

[sdwaltz]

The 6 Plus was underpowered from the factory, even under its native iOS 8. The same specs did fine with the iPhone 6 since it has a lower pixel density in the screen, but 1080p with all the animations and whatnot really was a push for the 6 Plus hardware. I found the 6 Plus tough to use once iOS 10 came around.

 

[Technarchy]

That's just insane, sorry. Why even own a stupid iPhone if you have to hold out on upgrading the OS just so it doesn't brake your phone? Isn't that one of Apple's biggest selling points?

You guys are out of your minds for putting up with this garbage.

Put up with what? Older hardware not performing as well as newer hardware?

 

[C DM]

That's just insane, sorry. Why even own a stupid iPhone if you have to hold out on upgrading the OS just so it doesn't brake your phone? Isn't that one of Apple's biggest selling points?

You guys are out of your minds for putting up with this garbage.

There are always some that have some issues here and there, and then there are many others who don't (or at least no issues that are of much consequence to them). Nothing really new or strange about it.

 

[skottichan]

iPhone 7+ and iPad Pro (1st gen 12.9) both are running perfectly fine under iOS11.

From what I've gathered from messing with my Dad's 6+, it seemed to be not that great of a phone so he's gone back to iOS10 (my mom's 6 is working somewhat better under iOS11).

 

[pixel_junkie]

Put up with what? Older hardware not performing as well as newer hardware?

OS upgrades are barely trivial, just think about it. I would understand if the OS doubled or tripled in size with various upgrades but it is far from what you get with iOS11. It's not right.

 

[nilk]

The 6 Plus was underpowered from the factory, even under its native iOS 8. The same specs did fine with the iPhone 6 since it has a lower pixel density in the screen, but 1080p with all the animations and whatnot really was a push for the 6 Plus hardware. I found the 6 Plus tough to use once iOS 10 came around.

It's worse than just 1080P. The 6+ renders to 1242x2208 first, then downsamples that 1080x1920 (same as what happens in Retina Macs when set to scaling modes). I'm not sure if the downsampling process is a significant performance hit (maybe the GPU handles it efficiently), but I'd guess having to render 1242x2208 is already asking a lot for that hardware.

 

[deadworlds]

OS upgrades are barely trivial, just think about it. I would understand if the OS doubled or tripled in size with various upgrades but it is far from what you get with iOS11. It's not right.

You do realize that the download size has nothing to do with the algorithm that are running the OS. Sure code does take up some space but suggesting that a bigger install file must suggest more features is flawed. Oh and also the updates are compressed to reduce their file size and allow for faster downloads.

 

[dallas112678]

It's worse than just 1080P. The 6+ renders to 1242x2208 first, then downsamples that 1080x1920 (same as what happens in Retina Macs when set to scaling modes). I'm not sure if the downsampling process is a significant performance hit (maybe the GPU handles it efficiently), but I'd guess having to render 1242x2208 is already asking a lot for that hardware.

The higher resolution rendering would be much more intensive compared to downscaling.

 

[C DM]

OS upgrades are barely trivial, just think about it. I would understand if the OS doubled or tripled in size with various upgrades but it is far from what you get with iOS11. It's not right.

The major version updates are generally quite a ways off from being even close to trivial (and the OS size usually has little to do with that).

 

[nilk]

That's just insane, sorry. Why even own a stupid iPhone if you have to hold out on upgrading the OS just so it doesn't brake your phone? Isn't that one of Apple's biggest selling points?

You guys are out of your minds for putting up with this garbage.

Are you trying to turn this into an Android vs iOS debate? If so: No iOS update has broken my device the way Android 5.0 did to my 2012 Nexus 7 (it was completely unusable). Granted, at least I could go back to 4.4 (which was not a user-friendly process), but the selling point of the Nexus line was that you got the latest OS updates as they came out. I learned my lesson. I like Android as an OS enough, and I've bought Android devices since then, but I never upgrade them past the major version they are on.

 

[pixel_junkie]

Are you trying to turn this into an Android vs iOS debate? If so: No iOS update has broken my device the way Android 5.0 did to my 2012 Nexus 7 (it was completely unusable). Granted, at least I could go back to 4.4 (which was not a user-friendly process), but the selling point of the Nexus line was that you got the latest OS updates as they came out. I learned my lesson. I like Android as an OS enough, and I've bought Android devices since then, but I never upgrade them past the major version they are on.

2012? It's 2018 in a few months, lots of water has flowed under the bridge ...

 

[nickchallis92]

I don't understand how old iOS devices can slow down. We all know iOS doesn't allow background processes and throws all its power at keeping animations smooth when the screen is touched. On that basis keeping iOS running smoothly can't be too difficult.

 

[deadworlds]

I don't understand how old iOS devices can slow down. We all know iOS doesn't allow background processes and throws all its power at keeping animations smooth when the screen is touched. On that basis keeping iOS running smoothly can't be too difficult.

Old iOS devices use older processors that are at a lower clock rate. iOS doesnt allow background processors from 3rd part apps, that doesnt mean that apple doesnt run background processes. Animating anything is actually math intensive, you have to create a transformation matrix for each pixel that you want to move and then multiply it out based on time elapsed. Not to mention that there are different transformation matrices for rotation, scaling and translation.

Theres also the fact that the offending app may not be in ram and so it needs to be loaded up from the SSD, which takes longer. iOS has to manage all of this, and much more, in the background.

When you have all of these operations going on at the same time on a processor that is old there shouldn't be a surprise that you're going to run into some lag. Again apple is not purposefully messing up older phones just so you can upgrade they are simply creating software that requires more resources that older hardware has a hard time keeping up.

 

[nilk]

2012? It's 2018 in a few months, lots of water has flowed under the bridge ...

So I take it you don't want to continue discussing older hardware running later versions of operating systems?

Your statement "You guys are out of your minds for putting up with this garbage." implies there is some kind of track record here where this is a common theme enough that someone buying a phone in 2014 (when iPhone 6/6+ was released) should have known better enough to avoid this situation. In 2014 Android 5.0 was released, an OS which made my 2 year old Android device unusable. Here we are in 2017, and someone's 3 year old 2014-era iOS device is running sluggish.

 

[dallas112678]

So I take it you don't want to continue discussing older hardware running later versions of operating systems?

Your statement "You guys are out of your minds for putting up with this garbage." implies there is some kind of track record here where this is a common theme enough that someone buying a phone in 2014 (when iPhone 6/6+ was released) should have known better enough to avoid this situation. In 2014 Android 5.0 was released, an OS which made my 2 year old Android device unusable. Here we are in 2017, and someone's 3 year old 2014-era iOS device is running sluggish.

The difference is it’s not just old devices. My 7+ is stutter city and even 8’s are having stutters. Reports are showing that android 8.0 is actually making older devices faster as Oreo is heavily focused on performance increases rather than tons of new features (as there are already tons of features in android.)

Really confused why there’s still no split screen in iOS but there is animated poop emoji’s. I don’t know about you, but split screen would be a muuuuuch better feature to add.

 

[joeblow7777]

Remember that for a few days after updating you'll not have the best experience as Siri will be re-indexing and so on.

This. Was having some performance and battery issues on my iPhone 6 and iPad Mini 4 for the first day or two. Now they seem to be both running flawlessly.

 

[deadworlds]

The difference is it’s not just old devices. My 7+ is stutter city and even 8’s are having stutters. Reports are showing that android 8.0 is actually making older devices faster as Oreo is heavily focused on performance increases rather than tons of new features (as there are already tons of features in android.)

Really confused why there’s still no split screen in iOS but there is animated poop emoji’s. I don’t know about you, but split screen would be a muuuuuch better feature to add.

Split screen on an iPhone would be terrible, thats why its reserved for iPads. Doing any kind of productivity work on an iPhone is a bit painful. I can't imagine having the mail app and Word app on split screen on an iPhone.

 

[joeblow7777]

Split screen on an iPhone would be terrible, thats why its reserved for iPads. Doing any kind of productivity work on an iPhone is a bit painful. I can't imagine having the mail app and Word app on split screen on an iPhone.

Yeah, even on my iPad Mini 4 I have barely ever used split screen, and its screen is significantly larger than any iPhone. How much can you do splitting a screen that's less than 6 inches diagonally?

 

[Jake2017]

I don't think that anyone who knows android would disagree with the statement "android has many more features that IOS doesn't have than the number of iOS features that android doesn't have."[/QUOTE]

It's probably iOS 11 being unoptimized.

There was a comparison on YT where the iPhone 8 Plus was lagging a bit behind the iPhone 7 Plus when opening some apps.

Well then they should not put it out there before its optimized. I just dont believe that a IOS like this can not run fluently on say my Iphone 6 plus. I do strongly believe that no effort is made to make it run, so its deleberate slobby programming, to nudge consumers. I hope that many will be nudged away from a company that embarks on that strategy. The least they could be is honest. Offer the update, but inform the user that it will lead to a 30 % drop in performance.

 

[LastOneToKnow]

Welcome to learning about when to stop updating to newer os's.

Faster hardware, encourages feature/software bloat. You have to know when to say when.

I remember when a 486/33 was a screaming fast computer.

I own an iPhone 6+ (128GB) and learned to say when at iOS 8.4. Runs smooth as a baby's bottom and continues to serve my purposes beautifully. Don't need my iPhone to whistle dixie. Sometimes less is more and dare I say, the latest isn't always the greatest. To each his own. Would certainly give iOS 11 a test drive, but only if I was able to revert back to any prior release that I saw fit.

 

[bambooshots]

I don't think that anyone who knows android would disagree with the statement "android has many more features that IOS doesn't have than the number of iOS features that android doesn't have."

Well then they should not put it out there before its optimized. I just dont believe that a IOS like this can not run fluently on say my Iphone 6 plus. I do strongly believe that no effort is made to make it run, so its deleberate slobby programming, to nudge consumers. I hope that many will be nudged away from a company that embarks on that strategy. The least they could be is honest. Offer the update, but inform the user that it will lead to a 30 % drop in performance.[/QUOTE]

Idk what to tell you except that it is what it is.

iOS 11.1 will undoubtedly fix some of these issues.

 

[lali]

But bottom line, Apple is not "killing" their phones on purpose.

I agree. But they should have metrics that tell them when a phone series should or should not be upgraded to the next IOS version. Their standard should be common tasks, usability tests with specific metrics, when a phone cannot meet this “experience quality metric” then the IOS version is not available. I recognize this opens us security concerns if a phone cannot be updated. But I am baffled that a perfectly functionning phone delivered new is no longer usable afterwards.

 

[Applefan4]

iOS 11 is laggy compared to iOS 10 on iPhone 7+. Weather app lags horrendously. And I have checked multiple iPhone 7’s. There are micro stutters and frame drops that weren’t present in iOS 10