I knew it - App scrolling performance has increased with iOS 10.

[XeroAllusion]

Ever since iOS 8, all A7 iPads(iPad Air and iPad mini 2/3) have struggled with graphical performance in iOS animations for some nonsensical reason.

On iOS 7, they ran all of the animations at 60 fps, but something happened in iOS 8 that degraded the oh so powerful A7 from a majestic horse to a petty donkey with 20 fps animations(my pet peeve, the keyboard rotation animation)

On 9.3.3 beta 3, it has improved a bit.

In iOS 10 beta 1, some animations run worse, but some, like the keyboard rotation animation, surprisingly run at 60 fps which gives me hope that the A7 can again maybe become the majestic horse that it was always meant to be.

You can see that I'm very passionate about this. I have always hated that about my iPad mini 2.

 

[lagwagon]

Ever since iOS 8, all A7 iPads(iPad Air and iPad mini 2/3) have struggled with graphical performance in iOS animations for some nonsensical reason.

On iOS 7, they ran all of the animations at 60 fps, but something happened in iOS 8 that degraded the oh so powerful A7 from a majestic horse to a petty donkey with 20 fps animations(my pet peeve, the keyboard rotation animation)

On 9.3.3 beta 3, it has improved a bit.

In iOS 10 beta 1, some animations run worse, but some, like the keyboard rotation animation, surprisingly run at 60 fps which gives me hope that the A7 can again maybe become the majestic horse that it was always meant to be.

You can see that I'm very passionate about this. I have always hated that about my iPad mini 2.

Big reason for the noticeable sudden difference in iOS 8 is because of that's when they added heavy encryption. iOS 7 didn't have this or anywhere near the same levels. iOS 8 they went full blown privacy and encryption.

Encryption is known for slowing things down. You can even tell the difference on most macs when you run it encrypted and not encrypted.

Hence the reason for iOS 10 to drop encryption on the kernel. When Apple confirmed it was intended for iOS 10 to not have the kernel encrypted, they mentioned that because of this they can optimize performance to the OS without risking security.

 

[iTom17]

I've been checking on the performance in the past few days and can indeed say that at some points it is definitely an improvement. Even closing apps like I saw someone saying as I remember; when pressing the home button it immediately goes back to the home screen. Strangely this does not happen all the time, but when it does I like it, haha.

As for the other animations I've been seeing improvements as well. Scrolling is more close to 60fps than it was with iOS 9, although with the known lag issues here and there. But we should not forget that this is the very first beta. The fact that performance is almost - if not ON par with iOS 9.3, really makes me happy. Hope Apple keeps it up and won't fall back again with iOS 11 for example.

 

[XTheLancerX]

He said it needs translucency disabled. It can be done per the users request via the settings.

I agree with everything he said that the iPad 4 is super choppy in beta 1. I too have an iPad 4 with iOS 10 installed. But some of that choppiness is beta 1 some of that is hardware and some of that is the iPad 4 is the bottom of the barrel of supported devices (and we all know what that usually means.)

I would expect the iPad 4 to be no less than iOS 9.3.3 speed wise (not all that great but at least better than beta 1 of iOS 10) once iOS 10 is in developer beta 7 or 8. And if not. Well there is the Reduce Transparency option that helps quite a bit.

I meant *like the iPad 2 and 3*.

They have translucency disabled where it matters. Control Center, Keyboard, Notification Center, Siri, power down screen, Spotlight, etc. however, they still have the pretty translucent passcode screen, dock, and folders. Those three things are what make reduce transparency unbearable to me. It is so horribly ugly. And the light keyboard has no key tap indicators, which is incredibly annoying.

Ever since iOS 8, all A7 iPads(iPad Air and iPad mini 2/3) have struggled with graphical performance in iOS animations for some nonsensical reason.

On iOS 7, they ran all of the animations at 60 fps, but something happened in iOS 8 that degraded the oh so powerful A7 from a majestic horse to a petty donkey with 20 fps animations(my pet peeve, the keyboard rotation animation)

On 9.3.3 beta 3, it has improved a bit.

In iOS 10 beta 1, some animations run worse, but some, like the keyboard rotation animation, surprisingly run at 60 fps which gives me hope that the A7 can again maybe become the majestic horse that it was always meant to be.

You can see that I'm very passionate about this. I have always hated that about my iPad mini 2.

iOS 7 had its issues too. Rotate keyboard, rotate App Store, rotate power down screen (this doesn't even matter, but still lol), control center over keyboard, control center over lock screen, control center over open folder, control center over certain situations with dim overlays, etc. Message send animation was never smooth either.

But yeah I do agree. iOS 8 really took smoothness downhill, iOS 9.3 actually is smoother than iOS 8 imo but a little slower with loading stuff and responsiveness. iOS 10 all around is a bit worse than iOS 9, but the keyboard rotation is now smooth, as well as rotating the power down screen but again, that doesn't even matter lol. App Switcher is horrible, that still needs to be fixed since iOS 9.

Big reason for the noticeable sudden difference in iOS 8 is because of that's when they added heavy encryption. iOS 7 didn't have this or anywhere near the same levels. iOS 8 they went full blown privacy and encryption.

Encryption is known for slowing things down. You can even tell the difference on most macs when you run it encrypted and not encrypted.

Hence the reason for iOS 10 to drop encryption on the kernel. When Apple confirmed it was intended for iOS 10 to not have the kernel encrypted, they mentioned that because of this they can optimize performance to the OS without risking security.

Hmm. That's really interesting actually. Never thought that would've been the culprit. I'm excited for future betas of iOS 10 as apple really seems to be cracking down on quality now. This is INCREDIBLY stable and smooth, considering it's a first beta..

 

[oldmacs]

They have translucency disabled where it matters. Control Center, Keyboard, Notification Center, Siri, power down screen, Spotlight, etc. however, they still have the pretty translucent passcode screen, dock, and folders. Those three things are what make reduce transparency unbearable to me. It is so horribly ugly. And the light keyboard has no key tap indicators, which is incredibly annoying.

This x100. I hate reduce transparency on iOS 9 (really everything since 7.1) because it makes everything SUPER BLOODY UGLY.

Performance of the Mini 2 has been hopeless always. iOS 7 was bearable, 8 was a bit worse, 9 was worse again and i can't imagine 10 being any better. The jittering drives me up the wall. I prefer to use my iPad 2 (as in 2011 iPad 2) because it doesn't jitter as much, and if it does jitter, I can forgive it for running 2016 software on a 2015 device, not like 2016 software on a (late) 2013 device. Maybe its the Retina display that makes the clarity of the stutter so much better, thus being more annoying. I don't know!
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Hmm. That's really interesting actually. Never thought that would've been the culprit. I'm excited for future betas of iOS 10 as apple really seems to be cracking down on quality now. This is INCREDIBLY stable and smooth, considering it's a first beta..

I've long thought encryption was the cause of the slow down in general terms especially on the oldest devices, but iOS 7 on A7 devices was already stuttering, and I would have thought the A7 devices would have been fine with encryption.

 

[XTheLancerX]

This x100. I hate reduce transparency on iOS 9 (really everything since 7.1) because it makes everything SUPER BLOODY UGLY.

Performance of the Mini 2 has been hopeless always. iOS 7 was bearable, 8 was a bit worse, 9 was worse again and i can't imagine 10 being any better. The jittering drives me up the wall. I prefer to use my iPad 2 (as in 2011 iPad 2) because it doesn't jitter as much, and if it does jitter, I can forgive it for running 2016 software on a 2015 device, not like 2016 software on a (late) 2013 device. Maybe its the Retina display that makes the clarity of the stutter so much better, thus being more annoying. I don't know!
[doublepost=1466824736][/doublepost]

I've long thought encryption was the cause of the slow down in general terms especially on the oldest devices, but iOS 7 on A7 devices was already stuttering, and I would have thought the A7 devices would have been fine with encryption.

Yep. iPad 2 and 3, although slow as all hell, have been smoother than iPad mini 2 and iPad Air since iOS 7/8/9. Task switcher? 60FPS smooth on iPad 2 and 3. A7 and even A8 (iPad mini 4) devices? Jittery and stuttery. Rotate keyboard? Has always been perfectly smooth on iPad 2/3. Has always been stuttery on A7 iPads. Control center in the areas I mentioned earlier? Same case again with performance. Weird things like rotating power down screen or spotlight were smooth too although those are nitpicky spots just trying to cause lag that will not happen in real use. But still, it's smooth on the older devices because lack of *UNNECESSARY* translucency.

And the Retina display could be contributing to the lag but really it's just the translucency I think. Stutters should still be noticeable even on a not so crisp display.

 

[lagwagon]

I've long thought encryption was the cause of the slow down in general terms especially on the oldest devices, but iOS 7 on A7 devices was already stuttering, and I would have thought the A7 devices would have been fine with encryption.

The A7 isn't some magical beast that defys one of the drawbacks of full encryption. A lot of full fledge macs with i5 and even i7 intel chips that also have much more powerful GPU's on top can be slowed down by FileVault (OS X/macOS) encryption.

I'm not saying it's the reason 100% or even at all. But with the change to iOS 10 and unencrypting the kernel and they mention being able to optimize the OS better because of that change, made me really consider it a very possible explanation for slowdowns. Because quite honestly, blur should not effect modern hardware that much on its own.

 

[XeroAllusion]

One thing I don’t understand is how is encryption affecting GPU performance? I mean I understand why things are slower on the cpu side of things for things such as opening apps or switching between them, but why is GPU performance taking a hit?

 

[lagwagon]

One thing I don’t understand is how is encryption affecting GPU performance? I mean I understand why things are slower on the cpu side of things for things such as opening apps or switching between them, but why is GPU performance taking a hit?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(operating_system)

The kernel sits between the hardware and software.

Here is a quote from the link.

"For example, to show the user something on the screen, an application would make a request to the kernel, which would forward the request to its display driver, which is then responsible for actually plotting the character/pixel."

So it is possible encryption can affect GPU performance because it's the kernel that tells the display driver to do something.

 

[luke lau]

UITableView/UICollectionView now have prefetching APIs in iOS 10. They basically load cells before they're shown on screen which is probably the reason for the performance increase

 

[ashindnile]

UITableView/UICollectionView now have prefetching APIs in iOS 10. They basically load cells before they're shown on screen which is probably the reason for the performance increase

Wouldn't that require more RAM? Because that would mean apps will now sooner quit whilst multitasking, and browser tabs refresh more often..

 

[dsTny]

Did you guys notice that swiping in folders is possible during folder-open-animation? Did you also notice that it seems that data will be loaded (for example in Widgets) during scrolling?
Nice changes! I hope, Apple keeps that up (and I hope all animations will be a bit faster though). Sadly (and I hope that will be changed, too) the closing-app-animation do blocking the input. But overall: Long way to go, but it is the right direction

 

[iphonedude2008]

When I first saw this thread, I had this idea that maybe OP was a mischievous genius, posting a thread about scrolling performance, something that really helps in scroll heavy apps like safari, and this thread was going to end in OP declaring, after gathering lots of feedback, that definitively,

safari seems snapp1er

(I had to, the joke was right there, the '1' is to avoid possible automods)

Wouldn't that require more RAM? Because that would mean apps will now sooner quit whilst multitasking, and browser tabs refresh more often..

Yes, anything that does caching like that will require more ram. I don't think you realize how little ram a tableviewcell or collectionviewcell takes though. In addition, Apple probably stores it in the cache part of memory (not sure if that's the right term, too lazy to look through the dev docs and I'm just remembering a wwdc talk from last year), so that means that it'll delete that cached memory before it starts killing apps.

 

[luke lau]

Wouldn't that require more RAM? Because that would mean apps will now sooner quit whilst multitasking, and browser tabs refresh more often..

No, the cells are often reused so they don't take up much extra memory

 

[GreyOS]

I can't be sure but I think lagwagon is confusing encryption of the kernel with full disk encryption.