Expiry of your warranty does cause your iPad’s performance to degrade or diminish. Performance issues can be due many factors, including (but not limited to) more recent Apps making more demands upon available system hardware, multitasking, available storage space, memory fragmentation, “memory leaks” etc.
When compared with newer iPad models that benefit from more powerful CPU/GPU, you will undoubtedly notice differences in iPad capabilities and overall performance. Older devices are clearly not able to perform as well as devices with much newer internal hardware.
iPadOS is very efficient at managing its system resources. That said, it can sometimes benefit from being given a little help. Many iPad performance issues can be easily resolved through some basic housekeeping - such as occasionally deleting cached website data and simply shutting-down and restarting the iPad. Force-closing Apps is generally unnecessary; due to the system architecture, Apps generally consume negligible system resources when idle.
You should only need to close one or more App if they are unresponsive. To close an app on your iPad, follow these steps:
- From the Home Screen, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause in the middle of the screen.
- Swipe right or left to find the app that you want to close.
- Swipe up on the app's preview to close the app.
Find out how to close an app on your iPhone or iPod touch.
The element of system storage that you can directly influence is your browser cache - which you can manually clear if you wish to do so.
For Safari:
Settings > Safari > Clear History & Website Data
For other browsers, you’ll need to find the relevant section of the App settings - which may be within the App itself.
Otherwise, transient system caches can be significantly reduced by performing a forced-restart of your iPad - although caches, by their nature, will again accumulate and be automatically managed by the operating system.
Force restart iPad (models with Face ID or with Touch ID in the top button)
If your iPad doesn’t have the Home button, do the following:
- Press and quickly release the volume button nearest to the top button.
- Press and quickly release the volume button farthest from the top button.
- Press and hold the top button.
- When the Apple logo appears, release the top button.
Force restart iPad (models with the Home button)
Press and hold the top button and the Home button at the same time. When the Apple logo appears, release both buttons.
Cached system data can also be cleared with a restore. More information about clearing system/other data is outlined here:
Clear Other storage on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support
Reported System Data (a.k.a. “other data”) can be expected to fluctuate. Your iPad will automatically and optimally manage its available system resources, using available free space to cache data and improve overall performance.
