Advice: Do not update iPad 3 to iOS 9. Problems! Lag!

I Am having issues with my photos being deleted. They are still on my original iPad, that I have not updated. My iPad mini only has some recent photos that were acquired on the mini. How do I get the sharing of older pictures back to the mini? iCloud is on on both devices, I can't lose the the picture, I do not have those specific pictures saved to my portable hard drive. This issue super annoying, ive never had my pictures or anything else disappear after a update.

I can only tell of my experiences. I followed MichelPM proceedure (see earlier posts) exactly. Did the backup, download update to itunes, then follow instructions for the update of ipad. I went from 6.1 to 9.3.

Yes there were/ are some typing issues, but another update to 9.3.1 (or whatever it is now) seems to have fixed those issues.

Good luck.

How are you going to do this update?

If you own a computer with iTunes installed, that would be the best method to upgrade/update.

Also I'm interested to know the developments , thanks

iPad 3gen

Really appreciate your patient and positive contributions to this thread - really good of you to take the time to help other owners of old iPads in this way

There are perfectly good reasons why worried people have searched out this thread, based on direct *personal* experience in the past. Thanks for understanding and addressing our caution about "upgrading" a much loved and fully working device, when it's a one way journey with no return path.

I'm baffled by all the superior, sneering and deeply unhelpful comments by those who show up here purely to tell us all how Stupid and Wrong we are.

With OSX you can try out each new OS - but still roll back to any other version you prefer, anytime you like. If the same applied to iOS we wouldn't even need to be having this discussion.

Thank you very much for your kind thoughts to me.

It's very much appreciated.

🙂

A lot of users here and in two other posts on this subject that I have been fielding for sometime, are just so angry and they thnk I am some sort of "Apple Lackey or Fanboy/Fanboi, that doesn't know what I am doing or talkng about or anythng of their iDevice issues and my steadfast determination to convince all of these angry users that there is no "Apple conspiracy" and that "Apple is out to get their money by forcing these angry iPad 2 users to purchase a new iPad by purposely crippling or obsoleting their now 5 year old iPad 2" is just ridiculous and unfounded, just seems to make them even more angry and keep trying to tell me otherwise or simply feel like telling me off and I haven't got a clue.

Plus, those older iPad users who may still be having issues with their iPads, that I haven't been successful with getting back up and running, are still angry.

I fully understand that at the time the iPad 2 was available (up to 2014) these angry users paid a lot of money for their iPads, as we all did, so they have the right to be angry, but this doesn't mean that Apple is, necessarily, to blame.

Apple WAS to blame when iOS 9.3 hit and that debacle GOT A WHOLE LOT OF USERS REAL ANGRY!!!!

But that was another "whole can of worms" that got released and it took Apple over a week to straighten that mess out!

I have had angry users here that have gotten even more angry when I tell them that both my iPad 2 and 3 models are working just fine on the latest iOS.

Again, thanks for your kind words of support.

I really appreciate it very much!

Michel

Thanks for your great posts! Your posts have convinced me to update my iPad 3 to the latest iOS 9.3.2 from iOS 6 and I am pretty happy I did in the end. The steps I took were:

1) factory reset iPad

2) update iOS using latest version of iTunes

3) also turned off/on settings you recommended in your posts

Obviously iOS 9.3.2 does not run as fast on my iPad as it would on newer models, but I wouldnt say it runs slow either.

cheers!

I recently upgrade my A1416 (64GB ipad 3Gen) to IOS 9.3.2 from IOS 7. I had been quite cautious about doing the upgrade for the usual concerns about poor performance. My kids though are keen Minecraft players and the latest upgrade only worked on IOS8+ so after a call to Apple I decided to take the plunge. So far I am very happy with the upgrade Minecraft seems to work fine with no noticeable lag, Civilisation which I also play is a little laggy but still very playable. Apps do take slightly longer to open, but again not so long that it bothers me at all. I have turned off all notifications apart from those apps that I want to hear from (facebook and mail) which may help.

As far as I am concerned this has increased the useful life I will get out of the ipad by a couple of years, I expect 4-5 years from my kit (I lake to make my investment sweat!) and this should prolong the life of this ipad to 5-6 years.

BTW thanks to the OP for the original post, I think a note of caution is well advised when dealing with Apple upgrades, they really don't win themselves any friends by their dictatorial policy on no downgrades.

I am glad to hear that you had success in upgrading your iPad 3 to iOS 9.3.2

As far as getting another 5 years out of your purchase, you will have to wait and see about that.

iPad 2,3 and first generation iPad MIni will no longer be supported when iOS 10 is, officially, released.

The iOS 10 Beta doesn't support these models, either.

So, what ever becomes the final iOS 9 update will be as far as your iPad 3 will go with iOS.

Whether you can get another 4 to 5 years out of your iPad without any more upgrades/updates, this may become more apparent to you within the next 2-3 years.

iOS apps ger regularly updated and, eventually, drop support for older iOS versions.

Obviously, you will have a wait and see period of time to know for sure if you can eek out another 4-5 years out of your iPad 3.

I gave my wife my iPad 3, 64 GB storage, as I have a large iPad Pro 128 GB storage, now, replacing it and it may serve her needs for another couple years until I maybe forced to replace it.

I, also, still have an iPad 2, 64 GB model that will probably still work for me for another couple of years, too!

At some point, the apps my wife and I use will no longer be compatible with our older model iPads.

Good Luck!

😉

Sorry for the confusion, I agree, to hope to get another 5 years out of my ipad 3 would be a bit optimistic! I was merely hope to get a full 5 years from the time I bought it in 2012 😁

Chris Haldenby !

Bless you and your family and everyone you ever meet.

I had the exact same problem and failure modes you experienced. I tried your solution and my Ipad is working much better now. I think it is working as well as it ever did 🙂

I use my Ipad daily at work and it had become a problem, but not anymore.

Thank You Sir, for posting this 🙂

Having reached too many websites that don't work well with the Safari version on my IOS 6 iPad 3 I'm finally ready to update it. I was going to use the iTunes, backup, reset, restore method described in this thread, however there's just one thing I need to clarify before proceeding:

Will any Draft emails I have on my iPad 3 survive the update using the method above?

(I know that the In, Out, Spam and even Trash folders sync between devices so I'm not worried about them, but that's doesn't appear to be the case with "Drafts")

Tx!

..Follow up..

OK, So I updated my iPad3 from iOS6 to whatever the current 9.x version is via USB/iTunes. I didn't do any full resets or anything like that, but all appeared to go well. None of my mail was lost and all my other data remained intact. I also have far fewer browsing issues...

At first I didn't notice any lag, but after a while and a few app updates my measly 16GB soon ran out. Now it's gotten so slow that I don't like using it - I turned off all the things mentioned in this thread. I also removed a few apps, but it mysteriously fills up whatever space I recover. I think this may be due to Mail downloading much more than it did under iOS6 - All I used to see in iOS6 was up to 100 messages, however here I'm seeing at least 200 per mailbox and there's no way to limit it. I'll weed out more apps which should help, but I didn't think I'd have so much fine tuning to do...

One thing I wasn't prepared for is the bland starkness of iOS9. I know that "skeuomorphism" is "out" (for now) and I was prepared for some of the "flatness", but the readability of Notes, Calendars, Contacts, Safari headers and tabs, etc. has, in my opinion, been obliterated. Everything is boring black sanserif fonts on boring white. The calendar app is so stripped down that the months don't even have any delineation between them as you scroll so all you're looking at is a grid of numbers that leaves you boggle eyed. I feel my trusty iPad - which I used nearly every day but not so much now, has lost its "personality" and sold it's soul to the minimalists... Meh!

My advice (if you happen to still be holding out on iOS6) is don't do it!

Is iCloud activated and do you use iCloud for storing images/photos?

How much free storage space is left on your iPad 3 16 GB model.

If it's 2 GBs or less, that maybe one of the reasons for some of your slowdown issues.

My wife has a 64 GB iPad 3 with over 20 GBs of free storage left and iOS 9.3.5 is just fine.

Your iPad maybe starved for storage space.

Yes, iCloud is active but it's not used for photo storage. I'm using about 3.5Gb of the available 5Gb. (I also turned off the setting to auto update any apps)

My free space is about 200Mb - but that can vary.

To be clear, I know I need to free up more space (although I doubt I could get to 2Gb free) to get some speed back and I wasn't necessarily advising to not upgrade because of speed issues - as I mentioned above, I didn't notice any significant lag until the apps got updated and email boxes filled up.

My advice to hold off for anyone still on iOS6 was based mainly on the aesthetic shock... ⚠