iOS 10 painfully slow on iphone 6

FWIW I was dreading upgrading my iPhone 6 Plus to iOS 11 because I'd assumed it would only make things worse but finally had to bite the bullet y'day. It "feels" somewhat faster - or at least not worse - although this could easily be a by-product of the fresh upgrade; as mentioned in my previous reply, things tend to get worse after a couple of weeks' use.

I'm expecting delivery of an X today to replace it, so Apple still have me well locked in their eco-system. To be fair, there aren't really any alternatives these days for those not comfortable with their private data being sold off.

I remain convinced that the sluggishness - and other unpleasant artefacts - is caused by the low amount of RAM in these older devices. For instance, my iPad mini 4 (same CPU but twice the RAM of my 6+) is still absolutely fine. Can't help but wonder if this might be related with Apple's reluctance to document the amount of RAM in their official specs... oh well...

This just happened for my wife's iPhone 6S today. She was experiencing the same issues as most people on this thread. I went through her phone, deleted a bunch of old texts, cleared her safari history, deleted all her voice mails, and the phone started working normally afterwards. She still has 18gb in documents and data, I'd assume from whatsapp chats and other things like that.

ipadminihalf wrote:

This just happened for my wife's iPhone 6S today. She was experiencing the same issues as most people on this thread. I went through her phone, deleted a bunch of old texts, cleared her safari history, deleted all her voice mails, and the phone started working normally afterwards. She still has 18gb in documents and data, I'd assume from whatsapp chats and other things like that.

Any computer can have it's performance degraded if it doesn't have enough free storage space. Your solution was simple and sensible. Glad you got your wife's phone working properly again.

Best of luck.

Hi - my first post here so I'm not sure if I should start a new thread about iPhone 6 being super slow. I know this is from September but mine is still very laggy (swipe camera always freezes in mid-swipe and apps often take 10secs to open) I've clean restored, done all the things mentioned - still no luck. Do you know if this has been resolved please?

Aaltron wrote:

Hi - my first post here so I'm not sure if I should start a new thread about iPhone 6 being super slow. I know this is from September but mine is still very laggy (swipe camera always freezes in mid-swipe and apps often take 10secs to open) I've clean restored, done all the things mentioned - still no luck. Do you know if this has been resolved please?

Welcome to the forums!

As it is not a single issue, there's no way it could have a single resolution.

When you restored your phone to factory state, did you test it for a couple of days without adding any third party apps? What other things did you do? I understand you said you did "all the things mentioned" but, without knowing exactly what you did, we won't really know if you missed something. I know it can seem annoying to post all this information but, really, the better picture we have, the better the answers.

Yes, it actually might be a good idea if you repost this as a new thread. That way, your issues are not mixed in with old ones and things might be clearer.

Best of luck

I buy and sell phones for a living and have been comparing the same iPhones, wiped on different major software releases (usually the latest revision of the major release to be fair) for years. So let's just skip the part where we debate iPhones performing poorer on new software. T

hough wiping the device and starting over without backup can clear up fragmentation that could hinder performance, it does not correct the root cause of the problem. Everybody knows by now that new software contains new features that require more system resources...this is the case with any platform in general. This is why Windows offers settings specifically intended to accommodate for older computers. But it definitely seems that, with iOS, the exact same function that doesn't involve a new

feature is delayed and slower still - such as a keyboard appearing or the camera loading. It seems suspicious that performance and speed are affected in such an unnatural way and even more so that Apple offers no solutions (even on latest versions of the release). If truthfully there are more underlying features that are causing lag, there should be a performance mode setting or something where the user with an older iPhone can select between features or performance and no this is not what "reduce motion" or "reduce transparency" or anything in the Accessibility menu is for. It took Apple eight years to implement a Low Power Mode... where is the performance mode? Pretty much everybody knows lag on older devices with newer software is a thing and people on this website ought to stop defending Apple while not being able to explain the problem. Instead Apple should make some effort to deal with this issue and stop avoiding it.

mdelaney2014 wrote:

people on this website ought to stop defending Apple while not being able to explain the problem. Instead Apple should make some effort to deal with this issue and stop avoiding it.

Older phones will not run newer software as fast as newer phones will. Would I load iOS 10 onto an iPhone 5? Maybe not. My iPhone 6 does not, however, suffer lags under iOS 10. I am not defending Apple. I am stating facts as I know them.

And, by the way, I spent 20 years selling and supporting cell phones.

Thanks for mentioning newer software runs slower on older devices. Just so you know, that's actually what my entire post was about! :-0

I would like someone on this website to give me some technical answers as to why the same function takes longer with newer software on the same device and why there is absolutely no solution to this from Apple.

With the new iOS 10 on an older device I would expect:

A) no (or few) new features and the same or adequate performance

B) all new features and poorer performance

What I got was no new useful features and poorer performance and no way to go back or turn off stupid features like, for example, the camera firing up every time I wish to attach a photo to a message....in most cases I intended on sending a picture already on the storage yet the camera has to fire every time regardless wasting battery power. Considering with iOS 10 the camera seems to take much longer to open on some older devices and causes music to stutter in third party apps while doing so, is nothing more than a pain in the ***. All I ask is a setting to disable this feature. This is just an example.

Also my phones and iPad both feel like they have half the ram now with iOS 10. Opening Very simple apps like messages and settings and performing functions are only fast after being repeated once or twice, but something that hasn't been used in a small amount of time has lag as if the entire thing is being launched into the memory as if the device just restarted.

I will say performance within games and apps themselves is the same...just iOS seems to be laggy on a 2-3 year old device every year and if this weren't true there wouldn't be thousands of people complain about it. I have yet to hear a technical explanation as to why the exact same function takes longer with the same hardware on newer iOS versions especially since they have the same graphical interface, and also why there is no way to turn off features we don't want that are clearly taking their toll on older devices. I get that with any platform newer software will always seem a bit slower on older devices but I have used them all and this issue is clearly more prominent with iOS.

Also forgot to mention, this new feature where the photos app scans every photo on the device for a face - another thing I have heard people complain about....There are people who don't care for this feature and for these people it does nothing more than waste system resources. Along with the camera firing up just to attach a photo in messages, unless you need it, it's a waste of resources....there really should be a way for people to turn features like this off in settings. These features are kind of cool for people with newer faster iPhones so they should exist no doubt, but people with limited hardware should be allowed to disable them.

mdelaney2014 wrote:

Thanks for mentioning newer software runs slower on older devices. Just so you know, that's actually what my entire post was about! :-0

You are misquoting me, hopefully not intentionally, as that would be rude. What I said was "Older phones will not run newer software as fast as newer phones will." And, by that, I do not mean that the older phones are slowed down by the newer software. To be clear, what I mean is that the older phones have less powerful hardware. They will not be as fast as the newer phones, regardless of the iOS version. The subtly of the difference may have escaped you.

I have not had the experience that the same functions take longer on my phone with iOS 10 than on previous devices. I suspect the problem lies more with wetware than software.

mdelaney2014 wrote:

Sorry if I seemed rude but you quoted the end of my post and then stated what I was questioning to begin with completely ignoring my questions.

I'm not sure who the "you" is to whom you're referring as you replied to yourself. However, no one here is obligated to respond to ever part of a post. We may address as much or as little as we see fit. However, no one is going to be able to give you a specific answer as to why your phone has the problem it does. Various trouble shooting suggestions have been made. You can also take your phone to the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store.

There is no overarching failure of the iPhone 6 to run iOS 10. It works just fine, as advertised, without problems, for most people.

iPhone 6 16gb

Painfully unresponsive on iOS 10.2.

Background app display

Receiving calls

Typing in apps

Even switching off.

Everything is unresponsive.

Please look into that matter and release an update after fixing the bugs.

SH4D0W7 wrote:

Please look into that matter and release an update after fixing the bugs.

This is a user-to-user forum. No one here is going to "look into" anything. No one here an release any updates to iOS. This thread does have a number of suggestions on how to resolve your problem.

Best of luck.

Hi

I have IPhone 6 64gb. I also have the problems mentioned in this tread.

My first option was restore from iCloud. Didn't solved.

2nd was erase all content and start as a new iPhone. The problem remains: to open an app it's seconds... safari, iMessage it takes seconds. My iPhone 4s it's faster than the 6.

Frustrating, so frustrating that I have consider buy a android phone! And I have a 2nd generation iPhone, a 3Gs, a 4s and a 6. I'm awaiting for the 8, but until there I'm sick of this lagging all over the phone.

Also one annoying thing it's when you are seeing some videos and for some reason they stop playing and you must restart your phone...

That's my story in iPhone 6 and iOS 10 (now 10.3)