iOS 7 is unlikely to run better on the iPhone 4 than it does in iOS 7.1. That’s not to say that the experience is great – even stepping up to an iPhone 4S would get you noticeable gains in performance and overall smoothness – but it’s better than it was, and it’s as good as it’s going to get.
If you’re sticking with the iPhone 4 for another year, iOS 7.1 makes performance tolerable enough that using the phone isn’t unbearable.
Good news for iPhone 4 owners – and good on Apple for taking care of this demographic.
They only stopped making/selling iPhone 4 in 2013. Many people (at least here in the UK) got them on 2 year contracts. Basically this means they have to support it for the length of the contract or rick losing that user as a customer forever. There is of course also a large Ebay market to think of. This might not bring Apple hardware revenue, but brings in appstore money like anyone else.
And by not spiting at their userbase’s face, they avoid turning them toward Nexus line with their guaranteed 18 months operating system support plan and cheaper high grade hardware.
Kochise
Was it a risk that iPhone 4 owners would be groaning and saying to themselves “wow, this phone is just completely unbearable… if ONLY I could get iOS 7.1”? Don’t get me wrong, iPhone 4 users should be excited to be getting the latest version of their OS, but this mentality that a phone is “unbearable” without the absolute latest just strikes me as odd. The iPhone 4 was leading-edge at one point, and I imagine it still does texting, calling, photo snapping, web browsing and playing games just fine on iOS 7.0. Of course, if there are actual bugs with 7.0 on the iPhone 4, then of course this entire paragraph is moot; otherwise, I remain baffled.
I mean, I don’t feel like my Razr HD is a piece of garbage just because it’s only dual-core, 1GB RAM and running Android 4.1 – I love it just as much as I did when I first bought it.
I think you misunderstand. The complaint isn’t that the iPhone 4 isn’t running the latest-and-greatest (Which it is), but that performance took a dive – the phone was once snappy under iOS 6.x, but became a stuttering mess with iOS 7. There was a significant performance penalty in the UI as well as app load time. The fact that you can’t downgrade iOS makes things worse.
That irreversible peformance penalty is what makes it unbearable.
Thanks. I was not aware of the issues, and I appreciate your explanation. I guess I should get in the habit of checking out the linked articles before commenting from now on.
The other issue is that Apple doesn’t keep old versions of apps in the App Store for installing on old versions of iOS.
Meaning, if you want to install newer apps on your iPhone4, then you need to install the newer iOS.
If you don’t upgrade iOS, then you better keep offline copies of all your apps. If you ever have to reinstall down the line, you’ll be SoL when it comes to using the App Store.
So, your options are:
1. Stay with the older iOS and get good performance, but need to keep backups of all apps, or
2. Upgrade to the latest iOS which gives you access to all the latest apps, and hope you don’t lose so much performance that it becomes annoying to use the device.
The AppStore will download an older version of an app if your iOS version doesn’t run the latest version of the app.
But how far back does it go?
Can you install the latest version of an app for iOS 5? Or iOS 4? Or iOS 3?
With the Google Play Store, you can still install new versions of apps on phones running Android 2.x.
Seems to go back pretty far. I have an iPod Touch 2g running iOS 4.2.1 and when I had to do a restore recently I was able to go to the App Store and download the last compatible version of various apps. For example, the Facebook app it downloaded was version 4.1.1, but the newest available for iOS6+ is version 7.
That’s new. You didn’t used to be able to do that. There was even a story here on OSAlert about this (lack of installs/updates available for old versions of iOS) last year.
OSAlert? Crappy site, never believe anything you read there. This includes comments.
Damn, can’t add a “+1 Funny” since I’ve already commented.
I wouldn’t believe it anyway! :-p
I don’t know, but an iOS device stuck on iOS 4 or earlier really needs to be replaced, if only for the battery.
Your apps will keep working. You can’t update them if the newer version won’t run on your iOS level. There should also be a backup in iTunes.
Personally I find it more annoying that new apps arrive that don’t seem that special yet require the latest OS version. I had this with my first generation iPad and still have it with my WP 7.8 phone. Why not filter these apps from my appstore screen?
That has nothing to do with the Play Store and everything to do with the app developer. There is nothing stopping an iOS app developer from supporting their app on iOS 3 or 4 or 5.
Android developers target Android 2.x because there is still a huge chunk of devices out there that are running that version (~20%).
That’s not necessary on iOS because the update rate is far better. The percentage of devices running iOS 3 is negligible. In general, it is quite safe to target one major release back from current and cover 95%+ of the market (iOS 7 and 6 together make up 96% of devices). Targetting iOS 6 will only leave out the iPhone 3G and earlier (6 years old), and iPod touch 3rd gen (6 years old) and iPad 1 (only 4 years old but it was first of it’s kind).
Exactly! My iphone 4 was quick & snappy running ios 6.1.3, but as soon as I installed ios 7 it felt like it turned into a slow bogged down piece of crap. I actually emailed Apple to bitch about it, saying that ios 7 had turned my nice luxury Mercedes into a base model Kia. And further thanked them for not offering me any way to undo the DOWNGRADE.
I was waiting for ios 7.1 to see if I was going to buy a new non-Apple phone, or forgive Apple for the massive performance hit my iphone 4 took with ios 7 and continue to be an Apple user. Although initial reports are that ios 7.1 addresses the problem, I’m going to give it a minute and let more reviews come back.
It’s definitely better. Some things I find are a bit slower than iOS 6, others faster. For example I find Safari in iOS 7 far better than in iOS6 on the iPhone 4.
Have a 5S now, but the old iPhone 4 is still fine. Even with 7.0 I preferred it over 6.
For me, I’m going to be honest, my iPhone 4 (which I hardly use now) is perfectly usable under iOS 7. I moved to Android because I was interested in trying something new. The iPhone still worked fine.
Probably only done to make the 5C acceptable to use, since that uses older and slower internals.
The iPhone 5C is basically the plastic version of the iPhone 5, which runs iOS 7 just fine.
The iPhone 4 is 2 generations behind the iPhone 5C. OP is in serious troll mode.