Stuttering on iPad Air 2

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Level 1

24 points

Stuttering on iPad Air 2

Hi,

I bought a brand new iPad Air 2 a few days ago and have been using an iPad Air before that. Both run iOS 8.1.

There is a distinct stuttering in high-load games like 'Real Racing 3' and 'Asphalt 8'. Both games run on the iPad Air 2 with a serious frame drop / stuttering.

In Real Racing 3 it seems to be constant: frames drop every now and then, the game seems to freeze for just a fraction of a second. It's subtle, but it's clearly there.

In Asphalt 8 the problem is different: the gameplay is very smooth, but every 60-90 seconds the game will go into a bizarre stutter that can only be resolved by pausing the game and then resuming. After resuming all is smooth again.

It seems the upgrade from an iPad Air to iPad Air 2 'broke' video games that depend on FPS.

I tried resetting the iPad to no avail.

Might there be a problem with the new hardware inside or is this a software issue?

Does anybody else have the same problem?

PS: I restored the iPad from a backup. I'll try a clean install, but I'm pretty sure this will probably not be of much help.

iPad Air, iOS 8.1, iPad Air 2

Posted on Nov 7, 2014 4:40 AM

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Answer 1

Demo

Level 10

166,494 points

Nov 7, 2014 4:51 AM in response to ARB-82

When say you reset the iPad, I assume that you mean the home/sleep button reset, but did you try resetting all settings? Settings>General>Reset>Reset all settings. No data is lost, but most device settings have to be entered again.

If you restored from a backup and that didn't fix it, then a clean install most likely would be the next step to try. If that fails, it might very well be hardware.

One thing that you didn't mention trying is deleting the games and reinstalling them.

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Answer 2

ckuan

Level 10

120,680 points

Nov 7, 2014 4:55 AM in response to ARB-82

My son's iPad Air 2 run RR3 without any problem and is much better than my iPad 3rd gen.

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Answer 3

ARB-82 Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 7, 2014 5:29 AM in response to Demo

Yes I mean home/sleep reset and complete shutdown/reboot.

I just backed up the iPad and did a clean install, just downloaded the RR3 app and the problem is still there.

Will try Asphalt 8 now to see how that works out, but I suspect nothing has changed.

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Answer 4

ARB-82 Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 7, 2014 5:31 AM in response to ckuan

Are you running RR3 from inside the cockpit of the cars? It seems I get reasonable performance when I use an outside cam like the bonnet cam. But I could already play smoothly on an iPad 3 from the bonnet cam, after moving to iPad Air I could race from the cockpit with great/smooth performance. Now it seems I am back to iPad 3 type performance 😉

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Answer 5

ckuan

Level 10

120,680 points

Nov 7, 2014 5:52 AM in response to ARB-82

My favourite is having the bonnet cam but sometimes I also switch to pure road (without the car in view)

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Answer 6

ARB-82 Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 7, 2014 9:09 AM in response to ARB-82

The clean install seems to have 'fixed' Asphalt 8. It's really bizarre, and I simply can't understand whats happening. A backup is nothing more than a couple of settings and documents, nothing really structural. A backup downloads the app again from the App store, so why would a clean install not have these problems?

RR3 seems to perform ok as well after the clean install, but I expected the iPad Air 2 to handle any app without any stutter whatsoever. It is one of the most powerful tablets out there, so maybe something still isn't fine-tuned in either iOS or the App to fully use all this power?

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Answer 7

ckuan

Level 10

120,680 points

Nov 8, 2014 2:05 AM in response to ARB-82

Clean install can get rid of old pref/settings that might be left over from previously installed apps.

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Answer 8

ARB-82 Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 11, 2014 8:41 AM in response to ARB-82

Back to square one: I thought a fresh install fixed the issue, but it's back as never before. The problem is exactly the same on Asphalt 8 and RR3. As no other people seem to have the same problem and I have never encountered a similar problem before on any of my iPads I'm starting to guess it might actually be hardware related.

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Answer 9

ckuan

Level 10

120,680 points

Nov 11, 2014 1:23 PM in response to ARB-82

How big (capacity) is your iPad Air 2?

Any other apps in the background?

Maybe the last 2 are of interest to you:

Restart / Reset

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1430

Restore from backup

Restore as new

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414

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Answer 10

ARB-82 Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 12, 2014 7:03 AM in response to ckuan

Did a restart and also both restore from backup as well as a restore from new.

The capacity is 16GB, but only 3 apps are installed, so there's lots of free space to play with.

The problems were so annoying that I decided to return the device. They tested it in-store and noticed exactly what I noticed: stuttering in all sorts of games.

They actually gave me a brand new iPad Air 2 as there clearly was a problem with it.

I just did a clean install of the brand new iPad Air 2 and the problem is still there! We now have to brand new iPad Air 2's with the exact some problems.

They're both running iOS8.1 and both are clean install with the exact same apps on it.

There's clear stuttering and frame dropping, performance is simply much worse than iPad Air 1.

This is getting quite serious... It really seems as if there something structurally wrong here.

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Answer 11

ARB-82 Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 12, 2014 7:09 AM in response to ARB-82

Something else I noted. On Plants vs Zombies 2 (3.0.1) there's a problem with the actual levels you play in. They're 'zoomed in' so plants and zombies are much larger than they should be, and some stuff is missing from the screen. There are no accessibility features enabled.

This might of course be an app-related problem as they just released a brand new update, but it's another graphics problem on our iPad Air 2.

See this screenshot:

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Answer 12

ckuan

Level 10

120,680 points

Nov 12, 2014 7:17 AM in response to ARB-82

Not sure if that helps:

My son iPad Air 2 is 128 GB with cellular.

My iPad 3rd generation is 64 GB also with cellular.

On my iPad, RR3 did sometime slowed for a second (not all the time though).

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Answer 13

Aragon32

Level 1

0 points

Dec 13, 2014 4:04 AM in response to ARB-82

Hi,

I recognized this issue on my own devic ( iPad air 2 wlan 64 gb), too. In my opinion it has nothing to do with the capacity of the device and it doesn't matter if I close all Apps in the background before or not. As you alredy described, the framerate drop in Asphalt 8 occurs only from time to time whether there are any opponents or not and is quite annoying. After a few seconds of stuttering it seems to get better again and the game runs smooth but the framerate drops itself should be noticed by everyone. I also can confim the little stutterings in RR3 but these are much weaker and I think most of the people don't even recognize them. Because of the fact that you alredy changed your device and we both have the same problem I think that there is someting wrong with the adaption of the game/games to the new I pad air 2.

Are there any news or did you even manage to solve the problem?

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Answer 14

Jan 4, 2015 4:43 PM in response to ARB-82

ARB-82, I have this problem as well, though on my iPhone 6 Plus. Dropping frames every few seconds, so it feels like it's stuttering. I have plenty of space, and it WASN'T happening last week when the memory was near capacity. I've been playing for about three trouble-free weeks, until yesterday. Since then I have tried:

clearing up space
restarting the phone and running no other apps
running in airplane mode
backing up my profile to the cloud and doing a clean install, then using my backup

Nothing has stopped the stutter, and it's not dependent on the gameplay at the time. I can be along on the track with very little changing on the frame, and it drops frames. It even makes me a bit nauseous, and it's very noticeable to me. I fear it's the game.

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Answer 15

romainSH

Level 1

8 points

Jan 8, 2015 2:27 AM in response to ARB-82

I tested my iPad Air 2 and noticed low FPS in some introduction scenes of Asphalt 8. Sometimes, there are a few dropped frames when playing too.

If you are still having issue with this game, I'd suggest you report it to their customer service. To do so, tap on the Options icon (gear), tap on "Customer Care", tap on "Game randomly freezes or lags" then tap on "I also have this problem!". Make sure you fill in the form and specify you have an iPad Air 2 and send it. If they get many bug reports for iPad Air 2, they will probably fix this issue for this device.

Anyway, lags/freezes seem to be a known issue with Asphalt 8, as they write:

"We have received reports from our players indicating that they experience some random lags and game freezes. Our development team is consistantly working on the optimizations that allow the game to use fewer of the device's resources. [...]"

Hopefully this will get fixed.

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