Post iOS 7.1 update, Apple’s iPhone 4 is finally running faster

Fewer headaches now

It was the first iPhone to bring the now-familiar industrial design to the fore, so there’s a bit of ‘technoholic’ nostalgia for the iPhone 4 in our minds. But with iOS 7, that was replaced with mockery and complaints as the phone refused to function as an Apple device is expected to. So we were really eager to see how Apple would fix the major bugs with the iOS 7.1 update and looks like the Cupertino company has delivered.

According to Ars Technica’s review, there are slight improvements in application loading times, while some animations have been trimmed to enhance performance. The website said that Apple has revitalised the iPhone 4 and worked its magic once more when it comes to hardware and software optimisation.



But we decided to wait on delivering a verdict before we could see how things are first-hand. Firstpost’s Arun George has been struggling with an iPhone 4 running iOS 7 since the update came out, but is looking a bit more chipper since the 7.1 update hit his phone. Here’s his account:




It was difficult to avoid the temptation of iOS 7 despite being advised against it. An iPhone 4 was never the ideal device to receive the update to iOS 7, and complaints began hitting the web about how some units had begun to malfunction after the update. I ignored every one of them to get the new operating system and apart from giving the phone a new appearance, it did little beyond slowing it down.



Applications slowed, and in some cases even crashed. Switching between applications became a task and opening an application often took its own sweet time. Subsequent updates didn’t help either. Until yesterday, when I downloaded the iOS 7.1 update.



There are visible improvements now in the speed of the phone. Applications open faster, shut faster and so far I haven’t experienced any time lag in switching between two of them. The phone screen which had been rather unresponsive since I upgraded to iOS 7, is now working like it did before I downloaded the latest version of iOS.


But the biggest difference for me is in the operation of games. FIFA 14, which often slowed down and hung, is now functioning smoothly. For the first time since I downloaded iOS7, I could play a game without it slowing down, hanging or crashing.



So it looks like Apple has managed to make the iPhone 4 a little more appealing to those who were looking to buy one, but were afraid of the bad user experience. Of course, with Apple typically having supporting devices for three years, the iPhone 4 will in all likelihood not see the next version of the OS.