Was iPad mini this slow even in iOS 6?

Question

Was iPad mini this slow even in iOS 6?

Hi all, I recently got the 1st gen iPad mini, and it came pre-loaded with iOS 7. I know that iOS 7 is kind of buggy and it will be fixed in iOS 7.1, but I have never experienced iOS 6 on any iDevices, so I am here to ask.

In iOS 7 on my iPad mini, I cannot keep 2 apps open at once. It seems like apps are using up a lot of memory. Was this the case with iOS 6? Will this be fixed? For ex, I am using an app I think called Apps Gone Free or something, and if I click a link of an app, it takes me to App Store. Then If I go back using 4 finger swipe, Apps Gone Free reloads from the splash screen, and it's really, really slow, taking about 10 seconds until the app is completely loaded. Before moving to iPad from Android, I thought iOS is the smoothest and fasted mobile OS, and I was really expecting good things, but it really seems like it's lacking in the performance aspect. They say that iOS doesn't need a quad core. So yes, iPad mini 1st gen has a dual core, and according to other people, it should still be pretty fast and smooth. But it's way too slow for my taste.

I heard that 7.1 will bring performance improvements, but I want to know will memory mangement also be better? I hope I can at least keep 2 or 3 apps open (i mean paused, and not closed completely), so that I can actually switch back and forth easily. And when it loads the apps that are closed, I wish they can open in at most 3 or 4 seconds, but will that be just a dream? How was your iPad mini's performance in iOS 6?

Any advice would be nice. I can't return it anymore so not that kind of advice. I have a mac, so I like syncing between my devices, so I'm planning to keep my iPad. Thanks a lot for your help.

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), MBA 2013 version

Posted on Feb 17, 2014 5:44 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 17, 2014 6:05 PM in response to Community User

There have only been very few posts about the iPad being slow. So your post is somewhat unique.

How to Fix a Slow iPad

http://ipad.about.com/od/iPad_Troubleshooting/ss/How-To-Fix-A-Slow-iPad.htm

iPad running slow? How to speed up a slow iPad

http://appletoolbox.com/2012/07/ipad-running-slow-how-to-speed-up-a-slow-ipad/

If You Think iOS 7 Feels Slow Here’s How to Speed It Up

http://osxdaily.com/2013/09/23/ios-7-slow-speed-it-up/

You may have many apps open which can possibly cause the slowdown and possibly the loss of wifi. In iOS 4-6 double tap your Home button & at the bottom of the screen you will see the icons of all open apps. Close those you are not using by pressing on an icon until all icons wiggle - then tap the minus sign. For iOS 7 users, there’s an easy way to see which apps are open in order to close them. By double-tapping the home button on your iPhone or iPad, the new multitasking feature in iOS 7 shows full page previews of all your open apps. Simply scroll horizontally to see all your apps, and close the apps with a simple flick towards the top of the screen.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 2

Feb 18, 2014 5:12 PM in response to Texas Mac Man

Thanks for your reply. I think the osxdaily link to speed up iOS 7 helped a little. However, why do we have to close recent apps when iOS is supposed to manage memory such that it closes apps that were open long time ago and allocate that memory to newly opened apps? Why do we need to keep closing recent apps to prevent slow downs and sudden app crashing? If this task was easy, I wouldn't mind, but it so annoying to close apps in iOS 7 as windows keep sliding. I'm pretty sure other people know what I mean. Also, I thought the memory management is supposed to work similar to Android where Android just keeps apps open completely before caching then, and then killing them in the background, and iOS pauses the apps before killing them. And I see some articles saying that we don't need to kill any recent apps and mention what I just said, but some articles say that we should close recent apps. This is very inefficient in my opinion.

I appreciate your help above though, so please advice on this as well. Thanks.

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Answer 3

AceNeerav

Level 1

141 points

Mar 20, 2015 9:04 PM in response to Community User

i have devices older than the ipad mini, like iphone 4s, 5 and ipad 2, which run better than ipad mini with ios 7 (and now 8.2). there seems to be something specific to ipad mini hardware thats making it very slow.

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