Q: ios 9 has turned ipad 2 very very slow

Try all of my updated list of things to try and speed up your iPad 2.

Slow iPad 2 on iOS 9

My iPad 2 is running fine on iOS 9.

Good Luck to you!

thanks you. But does not improve the issue.

I Installed fresh copy of iOS from iTunes. All services turned off including iCloud, background refresh, location, auto downloads, suggestions, visual enhancements. No accounts added. Only native apps present.

WHen I tapped on setting app, it 6 seconds for it to load. Typing on keyboard has a very long lag.

which other iDevice did we have to go to this length to just get basic functionality from.

iphone 4s owners have the same issue. Their device has similar hardware inside. Apple needs to issue a special release of iOS 9 for iPad 2 and iPhone 4s (and yes I know they are OLD devices) to reduce the iOS demand on hardware.

these devices should have been excluded from iOS 9 compatible list.

The users who have been able to downgrade uses a JB tool say the functionality is back to normal. For the rest of us, we have now something to place our coffee mugs on.

My iPad 2 is working just peachy on iOS 9.3.5.

How much free data space is left on your iPad 2?

I have an iPad 2 with 64 GBs (57 GBs actual) data storage space with approx. 20 GBs of free storage space left.

Did you follow my iTunes backup/erase-reset/restore iPad procedure?

My iPad restore procedure is different from the normal reset/restore procedure.

There are a couple of steps that are different from the normal backup erase/reset/restore procedures.

I Don't have any data on it to want to backup. I assume you're saying the backup restore process you describe itself has an effect on device performance. i will try that as well but cannot put together how that may effect the issue. I'm a software engineer. Know a few things about the workings of iOS. Do you have a theory of what's the effect?

also. The iPad 2 I have is a 16GB wifi model. I wonder if the chips and cache size is different on these. I will look into it.

I hope you agree we shouldn't have to do any of this. This should've been detected by Apple's guys before release.

If your 16 GBs iPad has less than 3 GBs of data left on it, this is insufficent/low amount of free data space for the OS to operate normally in.

As a software engineer, you should be very aware of this. There is a minimum amount of space you need to leave on any storage drive so the OS has a certain amount of free data space for any type of data swapping needed by the OS.

Ideally you should be maintaining 3-5 GBs of free storage on any iDevice.

The backup will retain all of your downloaded and purchased apps, so you can completely erase and reset your iPad to a default state.

As per my links,

THIS WILL NOT CHANGE THE IOS VERSION THAT YOUR IPAD HAS BEEN UPGRADED/UPDATED TO.

After the complete reset and erase, immediately perform a hard reset of your iPad. Then reconnected your iPad to the latest version of iTunes and do a restore of your iPad's data and downloaded apps, then perform one more hard reset of your iDevice.

Apple develops new iOS versions on newer, most up to date iDevice models and puts in software exception codes that degrades/dowgrades/removes the amount of functionalities of iOS based on the hardware of each qualifying iDevice.

The iPad 2, iPad Mini 1 and iPhone 4S all share the same basic hardware architecture and all get a minimum of features from the last two major iOS upgrades.

Most times, these devices only get the very base features of iOS 8 or iOS 9.

The iPad 2 has 11.8GB free. as I mentioned the slowness is present immediately after a reset when only native apps are present. I hoped that would be clear that iOS 9 does not occupy 11GB to leave less that 5GB as was pointed out.

"as a software engineer you should ver aware of this..."  Thank you. I'm also very familiar in narrowing down the problem by eliminating factors. Here, storage is not an issue.

I tried the backup-restore. Not because I had anything I want backup, but in case there is a bug of some sort that this would help bypass. It did not improve the speed.

Apple strategy of releasing stripped down version of iOS for older devices work almost all of the time. Here they seem to have messed up. As it's quite obvious, iOS 9 is too much for this iPad 2(fresh replacement from Apple, and my own)

tthe very fact that you've been suggesting solutions points to the fact that there is a problem. It's goes against the "Just Works" slogan.

I appreciate the suggestions indeed. They did not speed up the device. I cannot tell a difference. I'm a huge apple fan with almost everything Apple (haven't bought the Apple Pencil yet), but I'm also a fair critic. This was a mistake. Their testing missed this and they don't want to take responsibility. There are solutions if apple wants to help.