[miffed]

Lately , I have been noticing far more crashes , freezes & general quirkiness with iOS on the iPhone 4 and the iPad.
I am not suggesting this is a real problem , or even that it is a frequent occurance (compared with other mobile OS's) ...but to me it seems these things DO happen now , whereas Pre iPhone 3GS the very fact that these things pretty much never happened was part of the reason that iOS was so far ahead of the pack in the first place !



Is it just my luck / bad luck ? or does anyone else have similar experiences with iOS ?

[Ben]

4.3 introduced lots of new crashes in third party apps for me. Apple apps are fine.

Financial Times, Twitter, Flipboard, they're all a bit iffy now. I can only assume Apple has changed the rules regarding memory usage/management and is now treating these apps much more harshly.

There have been a few 'not great' releases of iOS along the way as far as stability is concerned. I don't remember the version number, but one version of iOS made keeping Safari open a veritable lucky dip!

Hopefully things will improve again soon.

[DBMandrake]

Same for me on the 3GS.

3.1.3 was exceptionally stable and uniformly fast on the 3GS, ever since 4.0 smoothness and stability seem to have gone down hill.

4.1 was probably the most stable version of 4.x, since then they seem to have been adding more features but introducing more instability, with both 4.2 and 4.3 introducing new problems.

Just one example - ever since 4.2 whenever I enter the photo gallery on my 3GS and select a picture it always displays a popup that says "This movie format is not supported." to which I have to press OK. Problem is it says this for still images as well !!

I've been patiently waiting for them to fix this - 4.2.1, 4.3, 4.3.1, and 4.3.2 have all failed to fix this glaringly obvious problem.

Apps crashing to the home screen is also happening more often since 4.2 - including the built in apps like Settings and Mail, and is no better in 4.3, worse if anything.

I really wish they would make a bigger effort to fix existing bugs before cramming more and more new features into point releases. There were a few specific versions of iOS that were exceptionally stable - 3.1.3 springs to mind as an almost bullet proof version, and 4.1 wasn't too bad either.

My GF is having so much trouble with 4.2.1 on her 3G that I'm seriously thinking about reverting it back to 3.1.3, (especially when the 3G doesn't support many of the 4.x key features) only trouble is many apps may no longer work on that version :(

[miffed]

Ah , glad its not just me !

Although it probably doesn't seem a big deal to most people I talk to , I find this a MAJOR thing

The success of iOS for me was the magic , everything was so fluid and rock solid reliable that you almost forgot you were interacting with a digital device - and almost felt that you were dealing with the device on an "analogue" level - Silly I know , but for me this was the area that iOS was SO different to the rest .

[Ben]

Sounds like the 3GS maybe has things a little worse than the 4... which is out of order really, given that the 3GS is still on sale. I'm liking less and less Apple's policy of continuing to sell the 'old' iPhone alongside the new one. No, if they want a cheaper model then they should make one designed for that specific purpose.

I can't say crashiness is causing me any major headaches, but then like I said it's only really third party apps I'm having problems with. No doubt individual usage is going to amplify or diminish this issue in the eyes of the user.