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Performance in iOS 4.2 beta 3

L

lozpop

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 6, 2006
487
0
I've installed the 4.2 beta 3 on my iPad this morning and I have to say it's phenomenal. I can't compare this beta with the first two, because I didn't installed them, but this version is really fast.

Even if I'm not an ultra-multitasking user — I use two or three apps at the same time — I couldn't wait to try how the machine responds to a lot of apps in the background.

So I opened two tabs in Safari — to see if they would have been refreshed — and then I launched Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Maps, iPod (with music in background), Videos, YouTube, iBooks and Mail. Obviously all at the same time.

Then I started to switch between apps really fast and without staying in every app more than 4-5 sec. I loaded multiple maps in Google Maps, opened a PDF in iBooks, played a video, returned to maps, skipped to the next song in the iPod app, opened some emails with images attached and in the end returned to Safari. The two tabs didn't refreshed! Awesome.

So, the iPad could have more powerful hardware specs —*and in Spring it probably will — but for now I'm personally really excited and happy with what has been done with Multitasking.

It obviously depends on the usage, but it's really snappy and fast — I didn't see any slower task comparing to OS 3.

Can't wait to see the official version of 4.2, but it seems we're very close (regarding performance I mean).

Now I'm really interested to test the battery life in my daily usage.
 
I found it very snappy as well :) I had a few games running that had multitasking support and my iPad never skipped a beat switching between them.

I have noticed a drop in battery life though, not much and I'm sure with further tweaking it will be great :)
 
The performance will be the same.

Because, this "multitasking" is nothing but, app still remains in memory (UNlike iOS 3.2, where they totally terminate).

There is no "concurrent execution" taking place. Apps just remain in memory, unless quit by OS or if you do it manually. And they begin to execute ONLY when they become active (or unless they are executing a specialized background task, which most apps donot).
 
whocaresit said:
The performance will be the same.

Because, this "multitasking" is nothing but, app still remains in memory (UNlike iOS 3.2, where they totally terminate).

There is no "concurrent execution" taking place. Apps just remain in memory, unless quit by OS or if you do it manually. And they begin to execute ONLY when they become active (or unless they are executing a specialized background task, which most apps donot).
Click to expand...

I have 2 ipads side by side, 3.2.2 and 4.2b3, and the performance of 4.x is markedly improved over 3.x. The new OS is a completely new code base and therefore contains a great deal of performance optimisation which is evident despite still being in beta.
~You seem to be running it. How can you claim the performance is the same?
 
f4780y said:
I have 2 ipads side by side, 3.2.2 and 4.2b3, and the performance of 4.x is markedly improved over 3.x. The new OS is a completely new code base and therefore contains a great deal of performance optimisation which is evident despite still being in beta.
~You seem to be running it. How can you claim the performance is the same?
Click to expand...

Performance, in general words, the processor clock speed remains the same. They might have tweaked the app launching splash screen animation speeds, but that is only a visual change.

I did notice some improvement in memory management. iOS 3.2.x has about 125MB free in best cases (after reboot). On the iOS 4.2 Beta 3, the free memory is around 148 MB. Around 25MB more, free.
 
This is GREAT news. I was really hoping they'd optimize things in OS4, and it sounds like they did so in a major way. Not that 3.2 is bad, but my iPad does struggle a little sometimes, and it shouldn't be that way.
 
whocaresit said:
Performance, in general words, the processor clock speed remains the same.
Click to expand...

If the iPad spent most of its time running application code that assertion might carry a lot more weight. As it is, the vast majority of time spent in the average iOS application is spent in system frameworks which can certainly be dramatically optimized from release to release.

Snow Leopard was markedly faster on the same hardware than Leopard. Windows 7 is a huge improvement over Vista on the same hardware. It's certainly possible to make significant strides and I look forward to trying out 4.2 for myself with the kinds of usage patterns that matter most to me.
 
whocaresit said:
The performance will be the same.

Because, this "multitasking" is nothing but, app still remains in memory (UNlike iOS 3.2, where they totally terminate).

There is no "concurrent execution" taking place. Apps just remain in memory, unless quit by OS or if you do it manually. And they begin to execute ONLY when they become active (or unless they are executing a specialized background task, which most apps donot).
Click to expand...
Apps can multi-task, I.E, play a YouTube video while you're not in the app (audio) or stream Pandora, etc.
 
lozpop said:
I've installed the 4.2 beta 3 on my iPad this morning and I have to say it's phenomenal. I can't compare this beta with the first two, because I didn't installed them, but this version is really fast.

Even if I'm not an ultra-multitasking user — I use two or three apps at the same time — I couldn't wait to try how the machine responds to a lot of apps in the background.

So I opened two tabs in Safari — to see if they would have been refreshed — and then I launched Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Maps, iPod (with music in background), Videos, YouTube, iBooks and Mail. Obviously all at the same time.

Then I started to switch between apps really fast and without staying in every app more than 4-5 sec. I loaded multiple maps in Google Maps, opened a PDF in iBooks, played a video, returned to maps, skipped to the next song in the iPod app, opened some emails with images attached and in the end returned to Safari. The two tabs didn't refreshed! Awesome.

So, the iPad could have more powerful hardware specs —*and in Spring it probably will — but for now I'm personally really excited and happy with what has been done with Multitasking.

It obviously depends on the usage, but it's really snappy and fast — I didn't see any slower task comparing to OS 3.

Can't wait to see the official version of 4.2, but it seems we're very close (regarding performance I mean).

Now I'm really interested to test the battery life in my daily usage.
Click to expand...

In comparison to the first two, Beta 1 was sluggish but not bad. Beta 2 was as snappy as 3. But your'e correct, 4.2 is much nicer than 3.2 apart from the obvious folders and multi tasking
 
Another test that shocked me:

I had only Mail and Safari running in multitasking, and I opened up to 9 pages with Safari with no refresh! Also after jumping to Mail, checking some emails and coming back to Safari, none of the nine pages refreshed!

With 3.2.2, as you all now, I always had multiple refreshing even with 2 pages, obviously depending on the website, but 9 pages without refreshing is a really good surprise!
 
whocaresit said:
Performance, in general words, the processor clock speed remains the same. They might have tweaked the app launching splash screen animation speeds, but that is only a visual change.

I did notice some improvement in memory management. iOS 3.2.x has about 125MB free in best cases (after reboot). On the iOS 4.2 Beta 3, the free memory is around 148 MB. Around 25MB more, free.
Click to expand...

WHAT? Performance "in general" is not just Clock Speed. Utter rubbish.

You obviously know nothing about the relationship between hardware and software. A brand new software code base (which 4.x is compared to 3.2) can improve the performance of a device considerably despite no changes to the hardware platform.

Just ask anyone who has upgraded Windows Vista to Windows 7 if there is a performance increase JUST BECAUSE OF SOFTWARE...
 
whocaresit said:
The performance will be the same.

Because, this "multitasking" is nothing but, app still remains in memory (UNlike iOS 3.2, where they totally terminate).

There is no "concurrent execution" taking place. Apps just remain in memory, unless quit by OS or if you do it manually. And they begin to execute ONLY when they become active (or unless they are executing a specialized background task, which most apps donot).
Click to expand...

Wouldn't say the performance of iOS 3.2 would be the same as 4.2
 
f4780y said:
WHAT? Performance "in general" is not just Clock Speed. Utter rubbish.

You obviously know nothing about the relationship between hardware and software. A brand new software code base (which 4.x is compared to 3.2) can improve the performance of a device considerably despite no changes to the hardware platform.

Just ask anyone who has upgraded Windows Vista to Windows 7 if there is a performance increase JUST BECAUSE OF SOFTWARE...
Click to expand...

I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but where are you getting this "4.x is a whole new code base" thing? Yes many thing have been changed or added, but in general most of the system frameworks are likely identical to their 3.x versions (again, with some additions).
 
admanimal said:
I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but where are you getting this "4.x is a whole new code base" thing? Yes many thing have been changed or added, but in general most of the system frameworks are likely identical to their 3.x versions (again, with some additions).
Click to expand...
I don't think that anyone apart from the iOS development team can really say how big a change to the code base there was from 3.2 to 4.2 because that needs knowledge of the source code for iOS which is strictly Apple-proprietary. Just because the system frameworks are identical doesn't necessarily mean that the implementation of those frameworks hasn't been tightened up in some cases, that could either be tightening up specific code paths for an individual interface or it could be something generic such as managing to save a few clock cycles in the main iOS interrupt handling code. Unfortunately the only thing that we mere mortals can do is try to measure effects, without access to iOS source code we really can't state any solid facts about causes.

- Julian
 
kevingaffney said:
Mine stopped after 34 but there was one missing further up.
Im on beta3
Click to expand...

That's quite a few.

Unfortunately I realized I can't do the comparison on my iPad. It's jailbroken and is running the VM hack and all kinds of other tweaks. Wouldn't be a fair test. I did try it and got to pic 32. But perhaps someone with a stock 3.2 iPad wants to give it a go. I bet it's less.
 
redman042 said:
Here's a stress test for those of you on 4.2 beta 3. First, reboot your device to start fresh, then load this site in safari:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/10/the_xix_commonwealth_games.html

Tell us how many pictures come up. I don't expect all of them to, but maybe it will be many more than in 3.2

I'll try this on my 3.2 iPad and tell you what I get.
Click to expand...

The ram definitely limits the iPad. My iPad stopped loading pictures halfway through. But when i loaded the page on my iPhone 4 everything came up.
 
whocaresit said:
The performance will be the same.

Because, this "multitasking" is nothing but, app still remains in memory (UNlike iOS 3.2, where they totally terminate).

There is no "concurrent execution" taking place. Apps just remain in memory, unless quit by OS or if you do it manually. And they begin to execute ONLY when they become active (or unless they are executing a specialized background task, which most apps donot).
Click to expand...

whocaresit said:
Performance, in general words, the processor clock speed remains the same. They might have tweaked the app launching splash screen animation speeds, but that is only a visual change.

I did notice some improvement in memory management. iOS 3.2.x has about 125MB free in best cases (after reboot). On the iOS 4.2 Beta 3, the free memory is around 148 MB. Around 25MB more, free.
Click to expand...

Then I guess windows and osX has the same 'performance' on the same machine? Just like there wasn't a decrease in performance on the 3g iphone's on 4.0 that was fixed in 4.1? Because performance is only a measure of the hardware?
 
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