iPhone 5S impressions
- Thread starter Grall
- Start date
There are also quite a lot of crashes in springboard (the process responsible for the app icon grids) in iOS 7. When it crashes, you'll see the phone shows the Apple icon, like it's rebooting, but it's actually just relaunching the springboard process.
Since iOS 7 introduces the ability for normal apps to run in the background, more and more apps are trying to run in the background, even just intermittently. However, many apps are really not re-designed for this purpose. Normal apps don't really need to release most of the memory it allocated when being suspended as the OS terminates (and let the app saves its states to the storage) any apps when the memory is low. However, apps that requires running in the background will not be terminated. If such apps do not release most of its allocated memory before going to the background, it could sit on a lot of precious memory space which it does not really need when running in the background.
Apple has introduced a set of new API to make it easier for apps to retain the states of UI components, but I suspect that many apps haven't been updated to use these API yet.
Since iOS 7 introduces the ability for normal apps to run in the background, more and more apps are trying to run in the background, even just intermittently. However, many apps are really not re-designed for this purpose. Normal apps don't really need to release most of the memory it allocated when being suspended as the OS terminates (and let the app saves its states to the storage) any apps when the memory is low. However, apps that requires running in the background will not be terminated. If such apps do not release most of its allocated memory before going to the background, it could sit on a lot of precious memory space which it does not really need when running in the background.
Apple has introduced a set of new API to make it easier for apps to retain the states of UI components, but I suspect that many apps haven't been updated to use these API yet.
It's hard to enforce though, as it's very difficult to know which objects are required for the app to run properly and which are not. Maintaining compatibility is also an issue.
Haven't had a single crash yet on my 5S. It is a damn sight faster than my old iPhone 4, and I never upgraded the 4 to iOS 7 either. I am not a "power user" by any means, mostly email, texting, phone calls, and Rhapsody.
Very good phone, and it's amazing the small difference in weight makes. The old 4 feels like a brick now!
The new Control Center that Grall mentioned has finally added the ability to easily toggle bluetooth and WiFi, features I have missed since leaving my original Galaxy S
Very good phone, and it's amazing the small difference in weight makes. The old 4 feels like a brick now!
The new Control Center that Grall mentioned has finally added the ability to easily toggle bluetooth and WiFi, features I have missed since leaving my original Galaxy S
If background multitasking was only enabled for apps that specifically call functions in these APIs it might help...?
All iOS7 devices should have these APIs, and iOS6 devices don't offer background multitasking, so where is the pitfall?
ltcommander.data
Regular
http://bgr.com/2014/01/20/ios-7-1-download-release-beta-4/
Reports on the latest beta do suggest that memory bugs are causing crashes that should be fixed in iOS 7.1. I haven't personally found crashing to be particularly noticeable over iOS 6.
Does anybody else have a sleep/wake button on the iPhone 5s that rattles? Reports seem to be pretty common online. Apple was willing to give me a new 5s since they felt that my original may be worse than expected, but my new one isn't much better. For all the talk of diamond cut chamfers, micron precision, and high-power camera inspection processes, it's surprising the end result is a phone with a rattling button that is within tolerance.
Reports on the latest beta do suggest that memory bugs are causing crashes that should be fixed in iOS 7.1. I haven't personally found crashing to be particularly noticeable over iOS 6.
Does anybody else have a sleep/wake button on the iPhone 5s that rattles? Reports seem to be pretty common online. Apple was willing to give me a new 5s since they felt that my original may be worse than expected, but my new one isn't much better. For all the talk of diamond cut chamfers, micron precision, and high-power camera inspection processes, it's surprising the end result is a phone with a rattling button that is within tolerance.
Rattles... Hurm, I can hear it very slightly if I hold the phone up to my ear and shake it semi-vigorously. Doesn't seem to be much of an issue at least for me. Then again, I slipped my phone in one of those apple leather cases though and I suppose that might dampen the range of motion of the button. Maybe something you might consider as well if this first-world problem is a really big deal to you.
I know I had at least one of those springboard crashes pcchen talked about (apple logo briefly showing as if the phone is restarting), but it's not a very big problem on the whole I would say. For me, who is admittedly a light user, iOS7 is a pretty solid OS release. I love it rather a lot I must say.
I know I had at least one of those springboard crashes pcchen talked about (apple logo briefly showing as if the phone is restarting), but it's not a very big problem on the whole I would say. For me, who is admittedly a light user, iOS7 is a pretty solid OS release. I love it rather a lot I must say.
ltcommander.data
Regular
I couldn't hear it outside with the ambient noise, but with the original one when walking around the house on the phone I could hear it jiggle. The new one is less noticeable and I did end up putting it in a case which mitigates it. I only bring it up since Apple likes to focus on precision in their marketing. Other than that, I'm happy with the speed, reliability, and build quality.Rattles... Hurm, I can hear it very slightly if I hold the phone up to my ear and shake it semi-vigorously. Doesn't seem to be much of an issue at least for me. Then again, I slipped my phone in one of those apple leather cases though and I suppose that might dampen the range of motion of the button. Maybe something you might consider as well if this first-world problem is a really big deal to you.
I've been using the 7.1 on my 5s and Mini 2 since the first beta, and there are a lot of improvements coming. Maybe it's human nature to bury the bad memories, but I almost forgot that 7.0 issues were "a thing".
Well, regarding bugs - on saturday my 4S phone suddenly stopped responding to the unlock slide (I have no passcode or anything for the lock screen). I was also unable to shut the phone down, but using Siri I was able to open apps like message, facebook and instagram. However once the battery dropped below 20%, I was unable to dismiss the warning message.
Once the battery was depleted, the phone shut down and after the recharge things got back to normal. I still don't like it, robbed me of a few photos I wanted to take.
Oh and occasionally the phone shuts down at ~20% battery charge, too. It's a bit more than 2 years old, I don't think the battery should be misbehaving like that so soon.
Once the battery was depleted, the phone shut down and after the recharge things got back to normal. I still don't like it, robbed me of a few photos I wanted to take.
Oh and occasionally the phone shuts down at ~20% battery charge, too. It's a bit more than 2 years old, I don't think the battery should be misbehaving like that so soon.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
2 years in a smartphone? It sure isn't new.
I think background multitasking starts from iOS 5. Only it has several different categories your app need to declare, such as "location" (e.g. navigation apps), "music" (e.g. Spotify), etc. Of course, some apps which want to run in the background try to claim that it's actually a navigation app or something, but that's relatively easy for Apple to filter out on the App store.
Apple finally removed the restriction in iOS 7, along with the new state preservation API. However, in theory one should already do that to conserve memory even without such API (you can save/restore your UI status by yourself, it's just not that convenient). But since in iOS 5/6 the number of apps running in the background is not that great, it's rarely a problem.
As some people have mentioned here, iOS 7.1 beta fixed a lot of these problems, but I still sees some apps running in the background using a lot of memory, and obviously they need to be fixed.
Lithium batteries age, as we all know, and they age faster the more/deeply they're cycled. If you use your phone a lot the battery ages faster, naturally, so if you're an eager phone user and charge your device more or less daily it's not inconcievable that you could be wearing it out after this time.
Also note that if the phone says 20% charge and then shuts off it could be that the battery was actually holding a lot less than 20%. The capacity remaining indicator is just an approximation, there's no real way to know how much is really there. If the output voltage was dropping too low the phone might have shut off prematurely. Or, software bugs. *shrug* Who knows?
Yeah, you're most likely right, I didn't have an iPhone before this feature was available so I'm not good at iOS history. However, I meant the extended background multitasking that came with iOS7, I should perhaps have been more specific there!
Many/most of apple's own integrated iOS apps don't seem to run in the background at all, such as stopwatch for example which does not update on the app switcher screen. Or can't you simply see updates on the app switcher at all...? I got the impression from the iOS7 presentation that it would update app appearance in real-time, but I've never actually seen that happen.
No way! Apple just needs to up the RAM capacity of future iOS devices. If it worked this way on PCs for decades, then it's good enough for mobile too!
Ugh. You forgot the smiley at the end.
Seriously though, this is one of many reasons the OS environment in mobile devices shouldn't use memory/time-share model adopted from old multi-user timesharing systems in the 60s.
Mobile devices don't allow you to upgrade RAM to fit different or changing needs. There are good reasons for this to be the case. The OS and app environment needs to take this into account.
Indeed most apps don't need to run in the background. For example, the alarm clock app only needs to be "awaken" from the suspended state maybe a moment before the alarm time. There's really no need for it to be running in the background, polling the clock to know when to ring the alarm. The system is already doing that.
On the UI part, I believe apps running in the background shouldn't be updating its UI as it's simply wasted. The app switching screen, AFAIK, is just a snapshot before the app enters background.
Of course, more memory is always good, if it comes with no cost. I was a bit disappointed that iPad Air doesn't have 2GB RAM. However, for mobile devices, more memory means more power consumption. Most apps actually spend most of their RAM space on UI elements (images, mostly). These can be easily taken out when running in the background.
Personally I think efficiency is paramount for mobile devices. People really need to stop treating some precious resources as free like on a desktop computer
I know, I know. I was thinking if I should point out I'm being sarcastic or not (wisdom dictates that it's tantamount to playing with fire not to do so on the internet), but I thought, what the hell. A life without risks is no life at all, right?
Uhm, current mobile devices do that now, and what should they be using instead...? I thought iOS - being Linux-based - used "modern" pre-emptive multitasking and stuff like that.
Apps could be updating just on the app switcher screen, perhaps at a lower rate than usual. It would often be useful to see an up-to-date view of the app's current state to help you decide if you want/need to switch to it or not. Of course, some apps might not want to do that - banking apps for example - so the app should be able to block realtime background UI updates.
Often I see just a white rectangle on the switcher screen, so the screenshot functionality is not entirely reliable, or there's other factors involved as well...
Of course, you'd need to re-load that data again from flash when you wake up the app, and that too would consume power and also slow down app switching. How much I don't know, maybe just a few tenths of a second at most, I don't know how fast flash access is in an iphone. iP4 at least isn't very fast though that's for sure. 5S is supposedly pretty quick, considering you can shoot up to 1000 (well, 999) photos in a row, and you couldn't fit all of them in RAM even if you don't have any other apps loaded...
Definitely agreed there, and I hope most other people including phone and app makers agree as well. That said, I was rather dismayed seeing how much iOS slowed down in version 7 on older hardware, even for stuff that would not require more hardware resources; simple stuff like flipping between pages of app icons on the home screen, stuff like that.Personally I think efficiency is paramount for mobile devices. People really need to stop treating some precious resources as free like on a desktop computer
...So there's obviously also planned obsolescence involved here as well unfortunately...
