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As an Android user I am not sure whether to believe this tired story about how new iOS releases slow down the phone and make you 'have to' upgrade to a new devi

As an Android user I am not sure whether to believe this tired story about how new iOS releases slow down the phone and make you 'have to' upgrade to a new device. I am sure there have been historical precedents where Apple have moved e.g. from 32 to 64 bit and made a tranche of older devices practically unusable. But is this really the situation today? I think that there will always be those that grumble about progress, e.g. people that complained 'Win 7 slower than Vista', so it is hard to tell. But have Apple upgraded things so that the iphone 6 feels slow and users of the device feel compelled to upgrade? Not wishing to start an opinion based flamewar but, as an Android user seeing all as well in Apple land, I would like to know if there really is a performance issue on iOS 11 / iphone 6.

tmikaeld 9y ago
I'd argue that the bigger issue is worn out flash memory. Even with TRIM (4.3+), the chips grinds to a halt after a few years of constant writing. These days it's not as big of an issue due to most higher end phones having bigger memories (with more cells to wear out).
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  It could also be unintentionally full flash memory. I have an iPhone 4 that was unbearably slow, and eventually started claiming there was not enough room to sync music, despite supposedly having 2 - 3GB spare. (The 'other' section had somehow grown to 8GB, and after attempting a factory reset & resync, Other grew to 16GB instead of disappearing.) I fixed it by deleted all the music, syncing, and then manually selecting the music I wanted again. That got me back my free space and cleared the 'other' space. The device is now remarkably zippy again. [Obviously I have other phones, but I still use the iPhone 4 as an iPod & podcast device.]
Hurtak 9y ago
On Windows Phone the story was the same. Upgrade from 8 to 8.1 made the phone noticeably slower, another upgrade to 10 made it almost unusable. So this is not exclusive to Apple. It is probably that Android users usually do not receive updates, so they can't complain that updates made their phones slower.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
  > It is probably that Android users usually do not receive updates I don’t know if that’s true - I use a Nexus and it’s well supported in terms of updates - but I actually think it might be the way to go anyway. I would quite like a situation whereby my phone gets minor and patch releases, but I have to upgrade my phone to get the next major. That way, I can have some confidence I’ll get vital security fixes and minor features without huge performance penalties, and each major release can be very highly optimised for the latest hardware.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    I don’t know if that’s true - I use a Nexus and it’s well supported It is absolutely true. Outside of a few model lines which get directly supported by Google, software updates for Android phones are rare. This is one of the biggest causes of Android fragmentation -- for most people who have an Android phone, the version that came preinstalled is the only version that phone will ever have installed.
    - foldr 9y ago
      I recently switched to Android from iOS, and actually don't find this to be too big of a deal now that mobile OSs have matured somewhat. I was excited to finally be able to upgrade to Nougat a couple of months ago, but there were precisely zero user-facing differences, apart from a few inconsequential aesthetic tweaks. I can see that it is more of a problem for developers, who can't use new APIs without drastically limiting their audience.
- pimeys 9y ago
  I upgraded my HTC 10 from Android 7.0 to LineageOS 14.1. Instead of 24 hours I got over 48 hours of battery life and the phone is noticeably faster. I get a new update once per week now and I'm quite happy with my phone, which started to lag a bit too much with the stock ROM. And this also fixed the KRACK issue.
akvadrako 9y ago
I've seen dozens of people online complaining about it, so there is probably a bug that effects some percentage of users. I personally didn't notice any slowdown.
s_kilk 9y ago
I can attest first hand that iOS11 slowed my iPhone to a crawl. We're talking multiple tens of seconds lag with basic operations like opening the camera, opening the keyboard, etc. The same is true for everyone I know personally who has used iOS11 (a head-count of about seven so far). This really isn't progress. iOS11 introduced practically nothing in the way of improvements or new features, but instead has made a lot of devices practically unusable.
- afro88 9y ago
  Multiple tens of seconds to open the camera??? I'm on a 6S and have had no issues with it. My old iPad Air slowed a bit, but never into multiple tens of seconds. Maybe 3-4 seconds to enter multitasking view (which is bad enough, don't get me wrong). What phone are you on? Have you tried a factory reset?
  - oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
    I also find it difficult to believe that 8/8 people have a 20+ second delay opening the keyboard - that just sounds nigh-on impossible.
- foldr 9y ago
  >We're talking multiple tens of seconds lag Do you mean multiple tenths of a second? Waiting 20-30 seconds for the camera app to open seems inconceivable.
- thinkythought 9y ago
  I can corroborate this MASSIVE lag on both a 6S+ and a 6 here, and additionally my friends 7+ I've done a complete restore/set up new/bla bla bla... didn't do much. I have to either reboot or hard reset my phone almost every day because apps(even system apps, like messages) will either lock the entire phone up or just all start freezing signalling that's about to occur. My phone is in perfect condition hardware wise, with great battery health etc(like over 90%). The battery runs down as fast as my 6 that had a defective battery apple replaced under that recall program. I was seriously debating keeping this phone for another six months at least, but if 11.1 doesn't fix it it's going on craigslist. This is just hilariously inexcusable, it's almost ios 4 on the iphone 3G bad. Like my phone is pretty bad, but my roommates 6 will literally sit for yea, 10+ seconds waiting for the camera to actually be "ready". There's also random ENORMOUS lag when shooting photos/before tap to focus works/etc.
kodablah 9y ago
> I would like to know if there really is a performance issue on iOS 11 / iphone 6. My wife's anecdotal experience says: yes, definitely. Yesterday we went and bought her the 8. We were going to do it anyways, but we made haste because of her phone woes (I myself don't use Apple products for other principalled reasons). I am not a conspiracy theorist and I will not claim planned obsolescence, but her reliance/preference towards iPhone coupled with Apple's approach that leaves little consumer choice left us with that same little choice. And Apple got paid. I suppose their quality in general has earned them this leverage.
tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
I can attest to being it true, at least partially. Some new major iOS versions do slow down some previous models. I had an iPhone 4S that was fast when I bought it. I kept updating until Apple stopped releasing new iOS versions for it (I think I went from iOS 6 up to iOS 9.3.5). Everything was just slower and using the phone felt almost like a chore. Same for my iPad 3. It runs iOS 9.3.5, too, and is barely usable. I only ever watch YouTube on it now. Apps load so slowly. The onscreen keyboard takes several seconds to pop up after tapping a text field. I bought the iPhone 4S for 700€, the iPad 3 for 400€. And Apple simply decides to fuck people over by basically breaking their devices with a software update. Yes, the device still works, all functionality is still there, but using the device is an exercise in patience. I don’t think Apple makes previous devices slower on purpose. But I think they do not care to keep them fast either … to help sales. They love to claim the majority of devices runs the latest iOS version. Great. But at the same time they made millions of devices obsolete by nagging users to install it.
- barrkel 9y ago
  My observation is that Apple is extremely stingy with the amount of RAM they put in their devices, throughout the range; I had to buy a top of the line Macbook Air back in the day just to get moderately future-proof 4G, which I would have considered insufficient at the time in a PC laptop. I wouldn't be surprised if there's cliff-edge effects on performance when they start optimizing later software for hardware that has more RAM than the previous generation.
rahkiin 9y ago
I also wonder what happens if I now buy a new Windows 10 machine and put Windows XP on it. Will it be faster? If that is the case, it can be expected that putting Windows 10 on a Vista or XP machine will be much slower. The people want more features and fancy stuff, and that requires more compute power. I don't think Apple should be optimizing for their oldest phones, business wise. (I would not mind personally, using an iPhone 6 myself but have not updated to iOS 11)
- kodablah 9y ago
  We are talking about the recommended OS on a 2 year old computing device here. Please don't muddy the waters with poor analogies of decade old hardware or terms like "oldest phone". People would be similarly upset if any other company did this. By excusing the company with these poor comparisons, you appear to have vendor bias.
dep_b 9y ago
I think 6 to 7 was really difficult, but everything that shipped with 7 would go up easily to 10. Many people were still repeating the same “my iPhone 4 became slow so planned obsolence” mantra. iOS 11 on the other hand is just garbage. It doesn’t run like shit only on older devicee, it runs like shit on a brand new iPhone 8 as well. Battery tests were abysmal. I woke up this morning because of an alarm on my iPad that was planned only on weekdays. WTF!! SUNDAY!!! 11.1 solves a lot of problems. Installing dev certs on all of my devices infected with 11 just so I can run the 11.1 beta.
yladiz 9y ago
The most plausible explanation I've seen is that Apple isn't being purposefully malicious and releasing updates to make older phones slower, but that they don't actively test the older phones with the updates and add features that take more computational power, causing the issues. I do think that iOS 11 has been significantly less tested (or built by less experienced engineers) due to the glitches and issues that have happened, but again I don't think this is malicious, just poor QA processes or major changes due to the release of iPhone X.
fotcorn 9y ago
Here is a video of a guy testing ALL iPhones supporting iOS 11 (5s upwards): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMAcZFNq0bI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMAcZFNq0bI There seems to be a small regression on older devices.

tmikaeld 9y ago

I'd argue that the bigger issue is worn out flash memory. Even with TRIM (4.3+), the chips grinds to a halt after a few years of constant writing. These days it's not as big of an issue due to most higher end phones having bigger memories (with more cells to wear out).

SyneRyder 9y ago
It could also be unintentionally full flash memory. I have an iPhone 4 that was unbearably slow, and eventually started claiming there was not enough room to sync music, despite supposedly having 2 - 3GB spare. (The 'other' section had somehow grown to 8GB, and after attempting a factory reset & resync, Other grew to 16GB instead of disappearing.) I fixed it by deleted all the music, syncing, and then manually selecting the music I wanted again. That got me back my free space and cleared the 'other' space. The device is now remarkably zippy again. [Obviously I have other phones, but I still use the iPhone 4 as an iPod & podcast device.]

Hurtak 9y ago

On Windows Phone the story was the same. Upgrade from 8 to 8.1 made the phone noticeably slower, another upgrade to 10 made it almost unusable. So this is not exclusive to Apple. It is probably that Android users usually do not receive updates, so they can't complain that updates made their phones slower.

oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
> It is probably that Android users usually do not receive updates I don’t know if that’s true - I use a Nexus and it’s well supported in terms of updates - but I actually think it might be the way to go anyway. I would quite like a situation whereby my phone gets minor and patch releases, but I have to upgrade my phone to get the next major. That way, I can have some confidence I’ll get vital security fixes and minor features without huge performance penalties, and each major release can be very highly optimised for the latest hardware.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  I don’t know if that’s true - I use a Nexus and it’s well supported It is absolutely true. Outside of a few model lines which get directly supported by Google, software updates for Android phones are rare. This is one of the biggest causes of Android fragmentation -- for most people who have an Android phone, the version that came preinstalled is the only version that phone will ever have installed.
  - foldr 9y ago
    I recently switched to Android from iOS, and actually don't find this to be too big of a deal now that mobile OSs have matured somewhat. I was excited to finally be able to upgrade to Nougat a couple of months ago, but there were precisely zero user-facing differences, apart from a few inconsequential aesthetic tweaks. I can see that it is more of a problem for developers, who can't use new APIs without drastically limiting their audience.
pimeys 9y ago
I upgraded my HTC 10 from Android 7.0 to LineageOS 14.1. Instead of 24 hours I got over 48 hours of battery life and the phone is noticeably faster. I get a new update once per week now and I'm quite happy with my phone, which started to lag a bit too much with the stock ROM. And this also fixed the KRACK issue.

akvadrako 9y ago

I've seen dozens of people online complaining about it, so there is probably a bug that effects some percentage of users. I personally didn't notice any slowdown.

s_kilk 9y ago

I can attest first hand that iOS11 slowed my iPhone to a crawl. We're talking multiple tens of seconds lag with basic operations like opening the camera, opening the keyboard, etc. The same is true for everyone I know personally who has used iOS11 (a head-count of about seven so far). This really isn't progress. iOS11 introduced practically nothing in the way of improvements or new features, but instead has made a lot of devices practically unusable.

afro88 9y ago
Multiple tens of seconds to open the camera??? I'm on a 6S and have had no issues with it. My old iPad Air slowed a bit, but never into multiple tens of seconds. Maybe 3-4 seconds to enter multitasking view (which is bad enough, don't get me wrong). What phone are you on? Have you tried a factory reset?
- oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
  I also find it difficult to believe that 8/8 people have a 20+ second delay opening the keyboard - that just sounds nigh-on impossible.
foldr 9y ago
>We're talking multiple tens of seconds lag Do you mean multiple tenths of a second? Waiting 20-30 seconds for the camera app to open seems inconceivable.
thinkythought 9y ago
I can corroborate this MASSIVE lag on both a 6S+ and a 6 here, and additionally my friends 7+ I've done a complete restore/set up new/bla bla bla... didn't do much. I have to either reboot or hard reset my phone almost every day because apps(even system apps, like messages) will either lock the entire phone up or just all start freezing signalling that's about to occur. My phone is in perfect condition hardware wise, with great battery health etc(like over 90%). The battery runs down as fast as my 6 that had a defective battery apple replaced under that recall program. I was seriously debating keeping this phone for another six months at least, but if 11.1 doesn't fix it it's going on craigslist. This is just hilariously inexcusable, it's almost ios 4 on the iphone 3G bad. Like my phone is pretty bad, but my roommates 6 will literally sit for yea, 10+ seconds waiting for the camera to actually be "ready". There's also random ENORMOUS lag when shooting photos/before tap to focus works/etc.

kodablah 9y ago

> I would like to know if there really is a performance issue on iOS 11 / iphone 6. My wife's anecdotal experience says: yes, definitely. Yesterday we went and bought her the 8. We were going to do it anyways, but we made haste because of her phone woes (I myself don't use Apple products for other principalled reasons). I am not a conspiracy theorist and I will not claim planned obsolescence, but her reliance/preference towards iPhone coupled with Apple's approach that leaves little consumer choice left us with that same little choice. And Apple got paid. I suppose their quality in general has earned them this leverage.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago

I can attest to being it true, at least partially. Some new major iOS versions do slow down some previous models. I had an iPhone 4S that was fast when I bought it. I kept updating until Apple stopped releasing new iOS versions for it (I think I went from iOS 6 up to iOS 9.3.5). Everything was just slower and using the phone felt almost like a chore. Same for my iPad 3. It runs iOS 9.3.5, too, and is barely usable. I only ever watch YouTube on it now. Apps load so slowly. The onscreen keyboard takes several seconds to pop up after tapping a text field. I bought the iPhone 4S for 700€, the iPad 3 for 400€. And Apple simply decides to fuck people over by basically breaking their devices with a software update. Yes, the device still works, all functionality is still there, but using the device is an exercise in patience. I don’t think Apple makes previous devices slower on purpose. But I think they do not care to keep them fast either … to help sales. They love to claim the majority of devices runs the latest iOS version. Great. But at the same time they made millions of devices obsolete by nagging users to install it.

barrkel 9y ago
My observation is that Apple is extremely stingy with the amount of RAM they put in their devices, throughout the range; I had to buy a top of the line Macbook Air back in the day just to get moderately future-proof 4G, which I would have considered insufficient at the time in a PC laptop. I wouldn't be surprised if there's cliff-edge effects on performance when they start optimizing later software for hardware that has more RAM than the previous generation.

rahkiin 9y ago

I also wonder what happens if I now buy a new Windows 10 machine and put Windows XP on it. Will it be faster? If that is the case, it can be expected that putting Windows 10 on a Vista or XP machine will be much slower. The people want more features and fancy stuff, and that requires more compute power. I don't think Apple should be optimizing for their oldest phones, business wise. (I would not mind personally, using an iPhone 6 myself but have not updated to iOS 11)

kodablah 9y ago
We are talking about the recommended OS on a 2 year old computing device here. Please don't muddy the waters with poor analogies of decade old hardware or terms like "oldest phone". People would be similarly upset if any other company did this. By excusing the company with these poor comparisons, you appear to have vendor bias.

dep_b 9y ago

I think 6 to 7 was really difficult, but everything that shipped with 7 would go up easily to 10. Many people were still repeating the same “my iPhone 4 became slow so planned obsolence” mantra. iOS 11 on the other hand is just garbage. It doesn’t run like shit only on older devicee, it runs like shit on a brand new iPhone 8 as well. Battery tests were abysmal. I woke up this morning because of an alarm on my iPad that was planned only on weekdays. WTF!! SUNDAY!!! 11.1 solves a lot of problems. Installing dev certs on all of my devices infected with 11 just so I can run the 11.1 beta.

yladiz 9y ago

The most plausible explanation I've seen is that Apple isn't being purposefully malicious and releasing updates to make older phones slower, but that they don't actively test the older phones with the updates and add features that take more computational power, causing the issues. I do think that iOS 11 has been significantly less tested (or built by less experienced engineers) due to the glitches and issues that have happened, but again I don't think this is malicious, just poor QA processes or major changes due to the release of iPhone X.

fotcorn 9y ago

Here is a video of a guy testing ALL iPhones supporting iOS 11 (5s upwards): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMAcZFNq0bI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMAcZFNq0bI There seems to be a small regression on older devices.