Apple's release of iOS 7.1 on Monday included a number of improvements, but there's one demographic who should really take notice of the update: iPhone 4 owners. iOS 7.1 significantly improves the performance of the phone, although it's still not up to iOS 6 levels.
In a thorough examination of how the update runs on the iPhone 4, Ars Technica compared the launch times of several built-in apps between iOS 7.1, iOS 7.0 and iOS 6.1.3. In general, apps run noticeably faster on the iPhone 4 after updating to iOS 7.1, but there's still a significant gap when compared with iOS 6.1.3.
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For example, the Camera app takes 2.63 seconds to load in iOS 7.0 but just 2.2 seconds in iOS 7.1. However, that's still slower than iOS 6.1.3, which loads it in 1.9 seconds.
In fact, almost none of the apps match or beat their speeds under iOS 6. Messages is the sole exception, whose launch time got stretched from 1.57 to 2.8 seconds upon the jump to iOS 7 but is now down to 1.5 seconds.
In anecdotal testing among iPhone 4 users in Mashable's office, users noticed performance improvement upon updating the iOS 7.1. Although iPhone 4 owners noted it was still slower than more recent iPhones, it was "definitely faster" than before.
Ars attributes much of the added snappiness to a better speed in the animations of iOS 7. With iOS 7, Apple introduced animations that make apps appear to "zoom" as they load. Some criticized the effects for making them dizzy, but they also added to the load times of some apps.
In iOS 7.1, those animations have been accelerated, so apps load just as fast as before. Users can still switch a setting the "reduce motion," which changes the "zoom" to something more like a fade-in/fade-out effect, but the load time is unaffected.
As the report notes, the performance improvements in iOS 7.1 likely represent the last set of changes that will bring any meaningful enhancement for iPhone 4 users. The phone is almost four years old, and Apple typically ends support for the most recent version of iOS after a multi-year period; it's expected the iPhone 4 won't be supported by iOS 8.
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