I have recently taken an interest in early iOS devices as nostalgic purpose-built tools to enhance both recreation and productivity, as well as primitive touchscreen-based prototypes for what would eventually become the Apple Silicon Macs. One device of note being an iPad 3 that I happen to own and am rather fond of for sentimental reasons, and have recently made certain strides in attempting to make more usable going into 2023 and beyond.
As you know, this device being a member of the A5 family of Apple Silicon SoCs was EOL'd on iOS 9.3, and has since then developed a certain notorious reputation for an immense sluggishness in doing almost anything under this OS version. Nearly every article online that I was able to find offers only a small handful of tips to improve performance, which while certainly helpful, seldom caused the magnitude of increases in raw UI performance that I was looking for — especially if you don't want to go through the efforts of jailbreaking.
So by piecemeal (as well as much trial and error), I've taken the time to compose a comprehensive, albeit mostly anecdotal guide for myself as well as the greater public to freely peruse in order to more effectively optimize their classic A5-based devices for faster performance and overall usability, in the hopes of saving at least a few phones and tablets still lying around from eventually ending up in the landfill or nearby recycling centers. The contents of this guide is a mixture of having been sourced both online, as well as discovered from my own experiments, and the grand majority of it is conducted from the Settings app.
With that being said, while this guide was primarily developed with the iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad mini, iPhone 4S, and iPod touch 5th Generation in mind, it should also improve the performance and usability of the A6(X)-based iPhone 5 and iPad 4th Generation running iOS 10 equally as well.
So without further ado, let the information commence:
1 — For the best file system performance, starting over with a fresh software restore using iTunes (through a physical connection to the device) is strongly recommended.
Note: According to anecdotal sources online, General > Reset > Reset All Settings may or may not achieve similar results on devices that have been sequentially upgraded via OTA updates.
2 — Most A5-based devices used the 3G networks for cellular activities (if applicable), which have been decommissioned by most service providers in recent times. Given this, it is recommended to shut down the cellular radio indefinitely by enabling Airplane Mode (from the Settings app or Control Center), thereby conserving battery life and placing less strain on the already decade-old cells that originally shipped with the devices.
And contrary to popular belief, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can still operate independently even after Airplane Mode has been enabled, continuously allowing for both Internet connectivity and wireless peripheral usage.
Note: This step can be skipped on Wi-Fi only devices, such as the iPod touch 5th Generation.
3 — Optimize the flow of traffic on the current Wi-Fi network by using ControlD's Ad / Tracking / Social Media blocking DNS servers. Even if it for some reason does not block all ad servers (on iOS 9), I have nonetheless noticed a marked improvement in network access times using these addresses:
Wi-Fi > ( i ) > DNS: 76.76.2.3, 76.76.10.3
Note: After much research and experimentation, if you really want to block all ad and tracking servers (without jailbreaking), your best bet is to establish a PiHole on your local area network. This is because official App Store apps are blocked from modifying /etc/hosts, and the new content blocking feature in Safari 9 only supports 64-bit devices (A7 and up), leaving our older 32-bit devices with relatively few options.
4 — I have been told that disabling all items in Notification Center can improve system performance. Presumably, this is because doing so has the side effect of disabling an additional background daemon related to the feature. Either way, this can be accomplished via:
Notifications > Disable everything
5 — Siri consumes resources by running in the background in order to answer your inquiries at a moment's notice. Free up resources by disabling her with the following path:
General > Siri > Off
6 — Likewise, Spotlight consumes even more resources by indexing installed apps and files. This might improve search times, but has the side effect of dragging the system down all the while. Disable this behavior by using the below path:
General > Spotlight Search > Disable everything
7 — An additional 170 MB of space can be freed by deleting a pre-installed speech profile via the following path:
General > Accessibility > Speech > Voices (temporarily enable Speak Selection to display) > English > Delete Samantha Enhanced (swipe left)
8 — The PowerVR SGX543 GPU in the A5 chips can struggle to render the omnipresent transparency effects laced throughout the system 100% of the time (while also handling animations and other graphical effects), so by disabling window transparency, the GPU can be freed to focus on more smoothly rendering active applications instead. This can be done through the following path:
General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast > Reduce Transparency: Enabled
9 — Of course, disabling the shake to undo function is also advised as it presumably disables an additional background monitoring process:
General > Accessibility > Shake to Undo: Disabled
10 — Due to the way iOS handles data allocation, it performs better if given as much free storage space as possible (to a certain point). Therefore, deleting non-essential apps, photos, videos, and old browsing data is recommended in order to keep the system running at optimal performance. (And to a greater degree, this is also why restoring the system from a fresh installation is also important, because it eliminates the possibility of old configuration files hampering the system.)
General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage > Delete all non-essential apps
11 — Background App Refresh allows installed apps to run even if they aren't open, more effectively portraying the device as having a mind of its own. However, when more apps and services run all at once, the more overloaded the dual-core A5 CPU becomes, and additionally, the more RAM is consumed. Thankfully, this load can be significantly alleviated by disabling the feature in question with the following path:
General > Background App Refresh > Background App Refresh: Disabled
12 — While telling the device to autonomously handle the current date and time can reduce the number of things that the user needs to stay on top of, this feature is nonetheless another background process, and can thus be disabled for a contributory impact to better performance by way of the following path:
General > Date & Time > Set Automatically: Disabled
13 — If you do not use emoji characters (or are able to live without them), it is recommended to disable the dedicated emoji keyboard in order to reduce the number of input maps that the iOS virtual keyboard service needs to query, thus offering a noticeable reduction in typing lag. Accomplish this via the following path:
General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Emoji (swipe left to delete)
14 — Likewise, the following collection of preferences reduces the number of tasks that the device must process simultaneously while the virtual keyboard is active, and in some cases, saves screen real estate as well. Predictably, this also contributes to a small reduction in typing lag:
General > Keyboard > Auto-Capitalization: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Auto-Correction: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Auto-Capitalization: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Shortcuts: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Predictive: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Split Keyboard: Disabled
General > Keyboard > "." Shortcut: Disabled
15 — Similarly, telling the device not to monitor ambient room light levels appears to reduce the system load, allowing it to better focus on active applications:
Display & Brightness > Auto-Brightness: Disabled
16 — The higher in resolution that the background wallpaper is, the harder the GPU needs to work in order to render it. Passes that are spent on merely displaying the image could have instead been used to more smoothly render launch animations, or process app transitions faster.
Just as well, VRAM stores that otherwise would have been used to cache portions of the background image could have been freer and more readily available to receive bitmaps from a newly opened application (and thus also lowering the system's need to conduct garbage collection on old data in tandem with displaying the content of the current app, especially if it contains something resource intensive such as 3D graphics).
Therefore, switching to an ultra-low resolution solid color should make another contributory improvement to home screen graphical performance:
Wallpaper > Choose a New Wallpaper > Camera Roll > Black #000000, Eclipse #404040, Dark Gray #AFAFAF (for Dark Mode) (all 16x16)
17 — Location Services is yet another background process that can be disabled to conserve resources. Disabling it will decrease the accuracy of Maps, GPS, and website tracking, but will also contribute to an overall higher device performance given that the CPU will no longer have as much to process in the background. Moreover, this setting is also much more privacy-preserving:
Privacy > Location Services > Location Services: Disabled
18 — Similarly to Location Services, Diagnostics & Usage is a telemetry-related background service that can be disabled to increase performance (as well as decrease overall network traffic, which also optimizes sending and receiving only data that the user requested):
Privacy > Diagnostics & Usage > Don't Send
19 — In contrast however, I'm not entirely sure whether Limit Ad Tracking actually improves performance, but it certainly further enhances user privacy and can be enabled via:
Privacy > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking: Enabled
20 — Moving on, signing out of the many Apple / Mail account services disables various cloud sync daemons constantly running in the background, which can also result in a noticeable improvement in performance:
iCloud > Sign Out
iTunes & App Store > Sign Out
iTunes & App Store > Updates: Disabled
Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Push: Disabled
Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Fetch: Manually
Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Contacts Found in Mail: Disabled
Messages > Sign Out
FaceTime > Sign Out
Music > Show Apple Music: Disabled
Game Center > Sign Out
21 — Lastly, I have taken note that the following settings offer the greatest improvement in Web browsing performance by decreasing any unnecessary load on the CPU wherever possible in order to most effectively direct the device's available resources to instead rendering the webpage as soon as possible:
Safari > Search Engine > Google (fastest, or lite.duckduckgo.com)
Safari > Search Engine Suggestions: Disabled
Safari > Safari Suggestions: Disabled
Safari > Quick Website Search > Quick Website Search: Disabled
Safari > Preload Top Hit: Disabled
Safari > AutoFill > Use Contact Info: Disabled
Safari > AutoFill > Names and Passwords: Disabled
Safari > AutoFill > Credit Cards: Disabled
Safari > Frequently Visited Sites: Disabled
Safari > Advanced > JavaScript: Disabled (much faster and more secure by removing most interactivity from sites - useful for simple sites / searching / light browsing)
22 — In order to fully finalize the above strings of modifications, it is now recommended to execute the following short sequence of events:
Close all apps, and hold Sleep / Wake + Home (until Apple logo appears)
iPad 3 (A5X, iOS 9) now loads most webpages roughly equal to if not faster than iPhone 5 (A6, iOS 10). All UI animations are now almost always fluid (and even faster than the 'Reduce Motion' fade effect), keyboard lag is seldom noticeable, and boot times, launch times, app switching, and site load times are significantly improved. System now feels almost identical to iOS 7 in terms of performance rather than stock iOS 9 (while still keeping the iOS 9 benefits of broader capabilities, better security, and newer software).
appleinsider.com
Enable Dark Mode (for reading / browsing / text processing) —
General > Accessibility > Grayscale: Enabled
General > Accessibility > Invert Colors: Enabled
Buttonless Navigation (iPad only) —
General > Gestures: Enabled
Playing Audio / Video Streams in Background —
Start playing a video > Switch apps / tabs > Open Control Center, and tap play
Keyboard: Press play / pause key
Scrolling on Bluetooth Keyboard —
Incrementally scroll through page: Up / Down
Scroll through chunk of page: Option + Up / Down
Scroll to top / bottom of page: Command + Up / Down
Text Processing on Bluetooth Keyboard —
Scrub cursor through text: Left, Right, Up, and Down Arrow Keys
Touch: Hold two fingers anywhere on onscreen keyboard (iPad only)
Finely select text: Shift + Left / Right
Select chunks of text: Shift + Option + Left / Right
Touch: Double-tap word, then move edge dividers or use together with trackpad
Select lines of text: Shift + Command + Left / Right
Touch: Triple-tap line
Undo change: Command + Z
Touch: Press ".?123" on virtual keyboard to switch to symbols panel; 'undo' button is above spacebar, and below "-" key
Browsing on Bluetooth Keyboard —
Select search bar: Command + L
Switch tabs: Control + Shift
Go back: Command + [
Go forward: Command + ]
Go to top of page (touch): Tap a blank space in the Safari navigation bar
General Shortcuts for Bluetooth Keyboard —
Home screen: Command + H (or Home key)
Search apps: Command + Space
Switch apps: Command + Tab
-
Composed in Pages for iOS 9, tested, developed, and posted on iPad 3 running iOS 9. Cross-referenced on iPhone 4S running iOS 9.
As you know, this device being a member of the A5 family of Apple Silicon SoCs was EOL'd on iOS 9.3, and has since then developed a certain notorious reputation for an immense sluggishness in doing almost anything under this OS version. Nearly every article online that I was able to find offers only a small handful of tips to improve performance, which while certainly helpful, seldom caused the magnitude of increases in raw UI performance that I was looking for — especially if you don't want to go through the efforts of jailbreaking.
So by piecemeal (as well as much trial and error), I've taken the time to compose a comprehensive, albeit mostly anecdotal guide for myself as well as the greater public to freely peruse in order to more effectively optimize their classic A5-based devices for faster performance and overall usability, in the hopes of saving at least a few phones and tablets still lying around from eventually ending up in the landfill or nearby recycling centers. The contents of this guide is a mixture of having been sourced both online, as well as discovered from my own experiments, and the grand majority of it is conducted from the Settings app.
With that being said, while this guide was primarily developed with the iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad mini, iPhone 4S, and iPod touch 5th Generation in mind, it should also improve the performance and usability of the A6(X)-based iPhone 5 and iPad 4th Generation running iOS 10 equally as well.
So without further ado, let the information commence:
1 — For the best file system performance, starting over with a fresh software restore using iTunes (through a physical connection to the device) is strongly recommended.
Note: According to anecdotal sources online, General > Reset > Reset All Settings may or may not achieve similar results on devices that have been sequentially upgraded via OTA updates.
2 — Most A5-based devices used the 3G networks for cellular activities (if applicable), which have been decommissioned by most service providers in recent times. Given this, it is recommended to shut down the cellular radio indefinitely by enabling Airplane Mode (from the Settings app or Control Center), thereby conserving battery life and placing less strain on the already decade-old cells that originally shipped with the devices.
And contrary to popular belief, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can still operate independently even after Airplane Mode has been enabled, continuously allowing for both Internet connectivity and wireless peripheral usage.
Note: This step can be skipped on Wi-Fi only devices, such as the iPod touch 5th Generation.
3 — Optimize the flow of traffic on the current Wi-Fi network by using ControlD's Ad / Tracking / Social Media blocking DNS servers. Even if it for some reason does not block all ad servers (on iOS 9), I have nonetheless noticed a marked improvement in network access times using these addresses:
Wi-Fi > ( i ) > DNS: 76.76.2.3, 76.76.10.3
Note: After much research and experimentation, if you really want to block all ad and tracking servers (without jailbreaking), your best bet is to establish a PiHole on your local area network. This is because official App Store apps are blocked from modifying /etc/hosts, and the new content blocking feature in Safari 9 only supports 64-bit devices (A7 and up), leaving our older 32-bit devices with relatively few options.
4 — I have been told that disabling all items in Notification Center can improve system performance. Presumably, this is because doing so has the side effect of disabling an additional background daemon related to the feature. Either way, this can be accomplished via:
Notifications > Disable everything
5 — Siri consumes resources by running in the background in order to answer your inquiries at a moment's notice. Free up resources by disabling her with the following path:
General > Siri > Off
6 — Likewise, Spotlight consumes even more resources by indexing installed apps and files. This might improve search times, but has the side effect of dragging the system down all the while. Disable this behavior by using the below path:
General > Spotlight Search > Disable everything
7 — An additional 170 MB of space can be freed by deleting a pre-installed speech profile via the following path:
General > Accessibility > Speech > Voices (temporarily enable Speak Selection to display) > English > Delete Samantha Enhanced (swipe left)
8 — The PowerVR SGX543 GPU in the A5 chips can struggle to render the omnipresent transparency effects laced throughout the system 100% of the time (while also handling animations and other graphical effects), so by disabling window transparency, the GPU can be freed to focus on more smoothly rendering active applications instead. This can be done through the following path:
General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast > Reduce Transparency: Enabled
9 — Of course, disabling the shake to undo function is also advised as it presumably disables an additional background monitoring process:
General > Accessibility > Shake to Undo: Disabled
10 — Due to the way iOS handles data allocation, it performs better if given as much free storage space as possible (to a certain point). Therefore, deleting non-essential apps, photos, videos, and old browsing data is recommended in order to keep the system running at optimal performance. (And to a greater degree, this is also why restoring the system from a fresh installation is also important, because it eliminates the possibility of old configuration files hampering the system.)
General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage > Delete all non-essential apps
11 — Background App Refresh allows installed apps to run even if they aren't open, more effectively portraying the device as having a mind of its own. However, when more apps and services run all at once, the more overloaded the dual-core A5 CPU becomes, and additionally, the more RAM is consumed. Thankfully, this load can be significantly alleviated by disabling the feature in question with the following path:
General > Background App Refresh > Background App Refresh: Disabled
12 — While telling the device to autonomously handle the current date and time can reduce the number of things that the user needs to stay on top of, this feature is nonetheless another background process, and can thus be disabled for a contributory impact to better performance by way of the following path:
General > Date & Time > Set Automatically: Disabled
13 — If you do not use emoji characters (or are able to live without them), it is recommended to disable the dedicated emoji keyboard in order to reduce the number of input maps that the iOS virtual keyboard service needs to query, thus offering a noticeable reduction in typing lag. Accomplish this via the following path:
General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Emoji (swipe left to delete)
14 — Likewise, the following collection of preferences reduces the number of tasks that the device must process simultaneously while the virtual keyboard is active, and in some cases, saves screen real estate as well. Predictably, this also contributes to a small reduction in typing lag:
General > Keyboard > Auto-Capitalization: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Auto-Correction: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Auto-Capitalization: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Shortcuts: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Predictive: Disabled
General > Keyboard > Split Keyboard: Disabled
General > Keyboard > "." Shortcut: Disabled
15 — Similarly, telling the device not to monitor ambient room light levels appears to reduce the system load, allowing it to better focus on active applications:
Display & Brightness > Auto-Brightness: Disabled
16 — The higher in resolution that the background wallpaper is, the harder the GPU needs to work in order to render it. Passes that are spent on merely displaying the image could have instead been used to more smoothly render launch animations, or process app transitions faster.
Just as well, VRAM stores that otherwise would have been used to cache portions of the background image could have been freer and more readily available to receive bitmaps from a newly opened application (and thus also lowering the system's need to conduct garbage collection on old data in tandem with displaying the content of the current app, especially if it contains something resource intensive such as 3D graphics).
Therefore, switching to an ultra-low resolution solid color should make another contributory improvement to home screen graphical performance:
Wallpaper > Choose a New Wallpaper > Camera Roll > Black #000000, Eclipse #404040, Dark Gray #AFAFAF (for Dark Mode) (all 16x16)
17 — Location Services is yet another background process that can be disabled to conserve resources. Disabling it will decrease the accuracy of Maps, GPS, and website tracking, but will also contribute to an overall higher device performance given that the CPU will no longer have as much to process in the background. Moreover, this setting is also much more privacy-preserving:
Privacy > Location Services > Location Services: Disabled
18 — Similarly to Location Services, Diagnostics & Usage is a telemetry-related background service that can be disabled to increase performance (as well as decrease overall network traffic, which also optimizes sending and receiving only data that the user requested):
Privacy > Diagnostics & Usage > Don't Send
19 — In contrast however, I'm not entirely sure whether Limit Ad Tracking actually improves performance, but it certainly further enhances user privacy and can be enabled via:
Privacy > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking: Enabled
20 — Moving on, signing out of the many Apple / Mail account services disables various cloud sync daemons constantly running in the background, which can also result in a noticeable improvement in performance:
iCloud > Sign Out
iTunes & App Store > Sign Out
iTunes & App Store > Updates: Disabled
Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Push: Disabled
Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Fetch: Manually
Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Contacts Found in Mail: Disabled
Messages > Sign Out
FaceTime > Sign Out
Music > Show Apple Music: Disabled
Game Center > Sign Out
21 — Lastly, I have taken note that the following settings offer the greatest improvement in Web browsing performance by decreasing any unnecessary load on the CPU wherever possible in order to most effectively direct the device's available resources to instead rendering the webpage as soon as possible:
Safari > Search Engine > Google (fastest, or lite.duckduckgo.com)
Safari > Search Engine Suggestions: Disabled
Safari > Safari Suggestions: Disabled
Safari > Quick Website Search > Quick Website Search: Disabled
Safari > Preload Top Hit: Disabled
Safari > AutoFill > Use Contact Info: Disabled
Safari > AutoFill > Names and Passwords: Disabled
Safari > AutoFill > Credit Cards: Disabled
Safari > Frequently Visited Sites: Disabled
Safari > Advanced > JavaScript: Disabled (much faster and more secure by removing most interactivity from sites - useful for simple sites / searching / light browsing)
22 — In order to fully finalize the above strings of modifications, it is now recommended to execute the following short sequence of events:
Close all apps, and hold Sleep / Wake + Home (until Apple logo appears)
iPad 3 (A5X, iOS 9) now loads most webpages roughly equal to if not faster than iPhone 5 (A6, iOS 10). All UI animations are now almost always fluid (and even faster than the 'Reduce Motion' fade effect), keyboard lag is seldom noticeable, and boot times, launch times, app switching, and site load times are significantly improved. System now feels almost identical to iOS 7 in terms of performance rather than stock iOS 9 (while still keeping the iOS 9 benefits of broader capabilities, better security, and newer software).
A5X: How Apple took iPad to a luxury tier rivals couldn't match | AppleInsider
In its third year of releasing products using its Ax custom processors, Apple radically diverged from a winning "Model T" strategy of mass-producing a single chip used to power 100 million mobile devices. Instead, Apple pursued a new luxury tier iPad powered by new custom silicon.
appleinsider.com
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks for Better Usability (Bonus)
Enable Dark Mode (for reading / browsing / text processing) —
General > Accessibility > Grayscale: Enabled
General > Accessibility > Invert Colors: Enabled
Buttonless Navigation (iPad only) —
General > Gestures: Enabled
Playing Audio / Video Streams in Background —
Start playing a video > Switch apps / tabs > Open Control Center, and tap play
Keyboard: Press play / pause key
Scrolling on Bluetooth Keyboard —
Incrementally scroll through page: Up / Down
Scroll through chunk of page: Option + Up / Down
Scroll to top / bottom of page: Command + Up / Down
Text Processing on Bluetooth Keyboard —
Scrub cursor through text: Left, Right, Up, and Down Arrow Keys
Touch: Hold two fingers anywhere on onscreen keyboard (iPad only)
Finely select text: Shift + Left / Right
Select chunks of text: Shift + Option + Left / Right
Touch: Double-tap word, then move edge dividers or use together with trackpad
Select lines of text: Shift + Command + Left / Right
Touch: Triple-tap line
Undo change: Command + Z
Touch: Press ".?123" on virtual keyboard to switch to symbols panel; 'undo' button is above spacebar, and below "-" key
Browsing on Bluetooth Keyboard —
Select search bar: Command + L
Switch tabs: Control + Shift
Go back: Command + [
Go forward: Command + ]
Go to top of page (touch): Tap a blank space in the Safari navigation bar
General Shortcuts for Bluetooth Keyboard —
Home screen: Command + H (or Home key)
Search apps: Command + Space
Switch apps: Command + Tab
-
Composed in Pages for iOS 9, tested, developed, and posted on iPad 3 running iOS 9. Cross-referenced on iPhone 4S running iOS 9.
Last edited:
