Iphone meet Vista.... Don't upgrade to ios 7

[Skiz]

I always found it funny that while the general ethos for operating system upgrades were to make it more clean, efficient, and fast in a smaller footprint that uses less resources (a la Windows 8, Kit Kat, etc.); iOS updates always tended to be more resource intensive and bloated then the last. For any Iphone/Ipad that isn't the current generation new updates just made your device slower and made your battery life worse. To make it worse you were often forced to upgrade to the latest version because if you wanted to download/update a mainstream app, they often required the latest iOS to function.

I like it. No complaints at all. The differences are mostly minor and my iPhone 5 gets better battery life than ever before; lasts all day.

I think the OS gets more resource intensive with every upgrade because the hardware gets better as well. In the first smartphones, it had to be simple because the hardware was too. In the newer smartphones, they're able to do much more and so in turn they're enabled with much more. That being said, Apple and Intel have been getting smarter in that things that once ran in the background, don't any longer. (Haswell, Mavericks, etc.) That'll all spill over into phones as well.

[Rart]

I like it. No complaints at all. The differences are mostly minor and my iPhone 5 gets better battery life than ever before; lasts all day.

Yea that's certainly fair. I definitely don't doubt that plenty of people are upgrading to iOS 7 hassle free. However (and this is not in anyway scientific) it seems like for every person I know that upgraded to iOS 7 hassle free, there were just as many people that suffered an array of issues from frame rate drops, lag, battery life drops etc (ie this thread). The proportion of people with issues rises substantially the lower you go in the device hierarchy. There's always the bias of people with bad experiences being louder than the people with good, but it certainly seems like the newer OS's are taking their toll on older hardware.

What always irked me was that at the same time, Tim Cook takes every opportunity he gets to criticize Android for fragmentation. I'd take an older OS anyday if it meant a more stable, better performing OS that didn't bring a phone to it's knees.

I think the OS gets more resource intensive with every upgrade because the hardware gets better as well. In the first smartphones, it had to be simple because the hardware was too. In the newer smartphones, they're able to do much more and so in turn they're enabled with much more.

But what exactly is iOS adding thats so resource intensive (and warrants it)? This is a legitimate question not a hypothetical as I am not an expert on iOS. Windows 8/WP8, Android Kit Kat, etc. are all adding plenty of new features while at the same time being more compact and less resource intensive than their previous versions.

[Skiz]

iOS7 definitely runs better on the 5 and 5S. My sister and g/f both have the 4S and occasionally have bugs that pop up; nothing horrible tho. The betas were also very popular this time around and tons of people were using them. Some of the betas definitely had terrible battery issues, but those were all fixed (in my experience) by the public release, but the word around town was that iOS7 had terrible battery life. I found that those beta complaints were drifting over into the public release. I never had battery issues with the official release on my 5.

Most of the additional resource requirements likely are related to faster and better multitasking. Again, as the hardware becomes more capable, Apple in turn pushes it harder and demands more of it. As with any company and device. No point in have increasingly faster and better processor, graphics, and memory if you only need it do what the 2008 model phone could accomplish, right? The phones simply don't need to be as streamlined with just basic functionality anymore. People are using them to do lots of different things now and Apple has ramped up the OS to be able to easily handle not only performing those tasks, but newer, more demanding application, as well as switching back and forth between them quickly and easily.

I'm an iPhone guy tho. I really like them. I tried a GS3 for several months and hated everything about it. It's inferior battery, inferior screen resolution, and inferior app selection. I didn't like the style of icons that Android uses and I don't like that are basically two "Home" screens - the one you normally see and then the "Apps" screen. Why the fuck don't they just put it all together...? The whole layout just seems very backwards and unorganized to me.

[Rart]

I'm an iPhone guy tho. I really like them. I tried a GS3 for several months and hated everything about it. It's inferior battery, inferior screen resolution, and inferior app selection.

While those are certainly valid complaints (well except for the screen, the S3 actually does have a higher resolution albeit lower ppi) ...they are a little outdated. It can also be a little difficult to directly compare the Iphone to the Galaxy line since their release schedules are staggered by 6 months which is ages in the tech world.

For the current buyer, the LG G2, Moto G (which btw is 179$ off contract), and the Droid Maxx actually flat out beat the Iphone 5s in terms of battery life. Also most of the Android phones that I can think of off the top of my head beat the Iphone 5 in screen resolution, and the LG G2/Moto G/Galaxy S4/HTC One all have higher ppi's than the Iphone as well. As for their respective marketplaces, the Google Play store has actually surpassed the App Store in terms of selection for well over 7-8 months now. You can certainly make the point that iOS has more high quality apps, and I wouldn't argue with you there. Google certainly is more relaxed in quality control and it shows.

However I certainly don't place the specs arms race as my highest priority when buying a phone, and the general "feel" and layout of the OS is extremely important as well, and that is definitely a very subjective matter and certainly varies from user to user. I would ask that you try to keep in mind that transitioning between OS's is always incredibly jarring, as there are certainly many design decisions that baffle and confuse me when I try to use Mac OS/iOS as well due to how different they feel from Windows and Android, even though I know many people prefer them. What may seem very illogical to you could feel very familiar and sensible to someone else.

There's also another important thing to consider as well though: if you're looking for a bigger screen, and the market certainly seems like it's moving that way as "phablets" are becoming more and more popular everyday, the iPhone is automatically ruled out. Apple really needs to adapt and not be so stubborn on a fixed screen size or they are going to lose more market share than they already have.

Most of the additional resource requirements likely are related to faster and better multitasking. Again, as the hardware becomes more capable, Apple in turn pushes it harder and demands more of it. As with any company and device. No point in have increasingly faster and better processor, graphics, and memory if you only need it do what the 2008 model phone could accomplish, right? The phones simply don't need to be as streamlined with just basic functionality anymore. People are using them to do lots of different things now and Apple has ramped up the OS to be able to easily handle not only performing those tasks, but newer, more demanding application, as well as switching back and forth between them quickly and easily.

Wouldn't faster and better multitasking imply that the multitasking would be more...efficient somehow? I certainly would understand that argument if they fundamentally changed how multitasking works (ie true multitasking a la desktop OS/Android) and then multitasking would place a larger hit on older phones but AFAIK the multitasking is the same as always, with the exact actions allowed to go through while apps are in the background and the exact same sleep/suspend mode for apps. In fact they even mentioned that with iOS7 that they were grouping background refreshes to execute at a more optimal time, implying that it should be more efficient. Apple even mentions on their official page that "Multitasking doesn't slow down the performance of the foreground app". Regardless: even if they did make multitasking more resource intensive somehow, how difficult would it be to disable those features on older hardware?

I would also argue that it is not the OS's job to push hardware and demand more of it - quite the opposite in fact. It's the OS's job to make things more efficient and quick so that apps/programs have more room to push your hardware to the limit. Programs are what really should be taking advantage of newer hardware in order to do more complicated/powerful things. lnfinity Blade is a perfect example of an app really pushing the iPhone/iPad to their limits and I think that's who should trying to push hardware, not the OS.