JamesWhite.ie

Home Screen

The first thought that hit me when my iPhone 4 rebooted and presented the new lock screen was that it was such a fresh look. It feels lighter on screen and is a great departure from the now stodgy previous iOS look and feel. The colours are vivid (even on non-retina display) and there are many subtle changes all over the OS for example the 5 dots representing the coverage your network is providing, you can see in mine that 3 provide awful coverage!

Control Centre

So how does it run on an iPhone 4? Unfortunately, pretty bad, it’s slow and unresponsive, so much so that I have touched on icons twice because I thought the OS had not registered my first touch. The apps themselves seem fine when they are running, both native and 3rd party, Netflix runs fine with a few jitters that could have been download speed or runtime, I’m not sure which. It is so disappointing that iOS 7 runs so slowly on iPhone 4, if Apple were not happy with the speed and responsiveness on iPhone 4 they should have just not supported the device as it leaves a less than appealing impression. As per usual however, my appetite for upgrade has increased, now more than anytime over the last 2+ years, I would like to buy new hardware, I hope I will have the resolve to wait until a new iPhone is released.

Settings

Lastly some thoughts on other, less documented features in iOS 7. The new animations and transitions between apps are nice, I like the feeling of the app zooming in/out when called/dismissed. The lock screen is also really nice, the new keypad makes it easier to enter in lock code and the Control Centre is a welcome addition but for some reason I don’t like how it looks, it feels like a metal slate sliding up on the screen and alien compared to the rest of the delicate screens. The functionality provided by Control Centre is nice however, but hardly earth shattering in its ingenuity.

Overall iOS 7 is a very nice refresh of the iOS platform, but didn’t go at all as far as I was expecting, its performance on iPhone 4 leaves a lot to be desired. It must be remembered that this is still a beta copy, so maybe it will improve before release, lets hope so.