iOS 7, thoroughly reviewed

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/ios-7-thoroughly-reviewed/

by eigenvector • 13 years ago

134 110 13 years ago

untog• 13 years ago

Battery life is down across the board compared to iOS 6.

This worries me. If it's because of the background downloading then at least it has a benefit (and is disable-able), but if it's the extra GPU cycles for the UI then that's a real shame.

k-mcgrady2• 13 years ago

This is the 1st review I've seen come to that conclusion and having used it since June I haven't noticed any reduction in battery life. I wouldn't get too worried.

younata• 13 years ago

Beta 1 had significantly reduced battery life. But, it has since been fixed. Since beta 3 or so, if there is a difference, I haven't noticed it.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

I’ve been using the betas for months. I haven’t noticed any battery life decrease on iPhone or iPad.

numbsafari• 13 years ago

iOS6 also had some battery life issues in the beginning. I'm guessing this will get tuned with subsequent bug fixes, especially as real-world usage data comes in.

davidcollantes• 13 years ago

I have been using the betas and the GM, and I noticed a decrease of battery life. I have my phone (iPhone 5) tuned to the best battery saving settings, and still the battery drains faster than it did when it was on iOS 6.

micheljansen• 13 years ago

The Dutch tech site Tweakers.net also found this in their tests [1].

They found that battery life was degraded mostly in standby mode (with iOS7 losing 12% of battery after 16 hours of standby time, compared to 7% on iOS 6.1.4).

With a more active usage pattern, they found the differences were smaller: their iPhone 5 running iOS 7 lasted 16 hours, compared to 17 hours on iOS 6.1.4.

This would suggest the increased consumption is more likely to come from background stuff than from visual UI effects.

[1] http://tweakers.net/nieuws/91361/accu-iphone-5-sneller-leeg-... (Dutch)

uptown• 13 years ago

I've been using all the betas on a 4S - aside from early-betas, it's been no more demanding on my battery than iOS6 had been. It hasn't been a factor for me.

markshepard• 13 years ago

I am not sure if the version they have been using is the GM seed version of IOS7 or not, but I notice in XCode there are still a lot of tracing going on. Even with that, I find the battery life on my iPhone 5 to be quite decent. I would think it will improve once debug stuff is turned off in release version.

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

Anecdotally, my phone's been ending the day at 30-40% on iOS7 when I usually ended at 10-20% on iOS6. I'm guessing I had a particular app that Apple's now handling differently.

stevenleeg• 13 years ago

I've had a similar experience with my iPhone 5 as well. It was significantly worse during the beginning of the beta builds, however now it seems to be better than iOS6 (for me).

I'm guessing it's something similar to you – a wonky app draining my battery that is handled better on 7.

canthonytucci• 13 years ago

Might it be be that a constant loop of activity is not a good model for battery performance in actual use ?

I've heard someone suggest that perhaps background sync actually might help battery life in some situations since it is done in batches. this would mean that users are spending less time looking at a power hungry screen that's just showing a loading spinner, assuming that some of this saved time is spent not using the phone at all, there might be a gain.

edit: To expand, although I am unfamiliar with everything that could be/has been done to maximize battery life:

Is it possible that "tweaks" are made in ways that are more relevant to actual usage patterns? (And perhaps ways that sacrifice battery life in the for speed in other areas, in the hopes of maintaining the baseline or improving battery life overall while still improving perceived performance)

What might these kind of changes be?

I'm not trying to be an apologist, genuinely curious about how what sort of optimizations might be made, and trying to make sense of the difference between what Ars is seeing and the anecdotal evidence.

malandrew3• 13 years ago

I would totally expect it to be extra GPU cycles. To support all those animations and transitions, they are certain to be executing many more screen redraws.

moca• 13 years ago

It happens to most OS updates. Wait 24 hours for things to settle down, then measure again. On Android, some app may go crazy after update, you have to reinstall it to get out of bad state. I have seen it too many times. Not sure how to troubleshoot the same issue on iOS though.

YeahKIA• 13 years ago

Fascinating how so many screenshots resemble the appearance of Windows Phone. Any case a welcome change as the old UI looked very toyish and dated.

Knacktus• 13 years ago

I like the cleaner UI design and new fontset a lot. However, the background blur is distracting and counterproductive for the overall clean look. Maybe they just tried to much to top / set themselves apart from the Metro UI somehow?

puma17• 13 years ago

I find this funny. IOS 7 is the same as IOS 6 except for a few re-arrangements of features and a new look. I feel like Mugato from Zoolander.. Am I taking crazy pills? Their all the same! Ios 6, 7.. iphone c.. s.. it's really the same thing with tiny changes. And everyone is reviewing them like they are new phones or new OS.

clauretano• 13 years ago

iPhones have existed for more than six years with largely the same UI style. While it may be mostly a reskin, iOS 7 is a dramatic departure from the circa-2007 style.

Ars is known to every major release of iOS and OS X in this fashion, just as Anandtech reviews the new hardware in great detail.

poolpool• 13 years ago

iOS 7 changes the backgrounding model, which has been a giant point of contention since the app store was introduced, and also has a brand new facelift. It was also one of the main differentiators aside from data sharing between apps between iOS and android. It is not a trivial update technologically or a small update from a marketing and direction standpoint.

It is also the first major OS update under Ive and Cook's direction.

The phones are a minor update, as to be expected like every S release.

puma17• 13 years ago

poolpool. I get what your saying, but exactly what are you saying? Data sharing between apps between IOS and Android? Ive and Cook are just riding on concept from Jobs, there is nothing new here. If any other hardware vendor put out phones with this level of "same old" they would be burned for it. In the future people will look back at this Apple craze and laugh. Apple put out the iphone 5, with a new case and blogs are reviewing it! Are you kidding me? IOS 7 is the same damn OS as 6! Airdrop is nothing new feature wise. Almost every other feature has been out on other OSes for a long time. Apple struck gold in 2007.. and they been re-regurgitating since. Scared to wipe the slate because there will never be another Steve and they will never hit another winner like the initial iphone. But it's tired now. IOS 7 was supposed to be something different, and bottom line it's the same OS that consumes more battery and more resources. Whatever additional battery life they added to the iphone 5s hardware is cancelled out by the new requirements.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

The phones are a minor update, as to be expected like every S release.

There have been two S releases prior to the 5S/5C release. The 3G->3GS was a bigger change to the phone than the iPhone->3G update. And the 4->4S update was a bigger change to the phone internals than the 3GS->4 update, though the display stayed the same.

Really, all the S releases have been major phone updates, and of the non-S releases only the 4S->5 update was.

potatolicious6• 13 years ago

"I find this funny. IOS 7 is the same as IOS 6 except for a few re-arrangements of features and a new look."

As someone who's spent the last 2 months porting code from iOS6 to iOS7, I disagree. The API changes (documented or otherwise...) are large enough that this really was more of a port than it was a simple update.

It may look like simple rearrangement (I disagree with that assessment, but whatever), but under the hood a great deal has changed.

puma17• 13 years ago

If so that's great. But to the user who is looking at this OS, what do they know about this?

kalleboo6• 13 years ago

Interesting, we had very few issues with API changes moving to iOS 7 (mainly dealing with the status bar, especially double-height, which in some places still needs an OS-specific check). All our work has been in getting the iOS 7-style UI looking right and working well. And we have code in our app dating back to iOS 3.

alayne• 13 years ago

"Let's see where Microsoft is vs where Apple is in 3 years. Apple has 0 innovation going on. OS X and IOS are stale as anything. They are riding on earlier success and eventually will fizzle out."

-puma1

puma17• 13 years ago

bump. Again not a fanboy, just stating the blatant obvious. At least Microsoft tries and puts out something completely new.

rimantas• 13 years ago

Tiny changes like going to 64 bits, UIKit Dynamics, Text Kit…

ozataman3• 13 years ago

So much effort was poured into just redesigning, repackaging basic apps on the surface. I think some of them look and exhibit functional behavior straightforwardly worse than before:

- Smaller fonts and less obvious icons on the weather app

- Less info on the world clock without the digital time text, which helps grasp the time at a glance especially when you're looking at several zones.

- Smaller direction character font on the compass (why would anyone do that? It's like 40% of what it used to be and is only a single char!)

- Less contrast across the entire interface with all white text; harder to discern differences.

... and at best a neutral change across the others. I haven't yet installed it myself, but the screenshots look disappointing. I am not dismissing the idea of removing skeumorphisms, but this particular implementation/execution seems like a step in the direction of less refined for Apple.

I have seen very few screenshots so far that made me say "oh that's so much better, wow". Several did make me say "Gosh, why would you reduce the font size there?!?! Why would you make the icon much less obvious?"

Just to note that I am not trying to be negative - I am certain with this much solid engineering talent, there will be features we'll love.

I hope I'm proven wrong once the OS is officially out and we're hooked in the following few weeks.

fredsted3• 13 years ago

- Weather app: Some fonts are smaller, some are larger, but you get a great looking animation that shows the current weather. In my opinion the app is much prettier than before, and more useful since you can see, for example, whether you need to bring a raincoat immediately.

- Clock: Try tapping on the clocks: http://d.pr/i/yrmI

- About less contrast: You can turn on bolder fonts in the interface.

I really, really like iOS 7. Especially on the iPhone, somehow on iPad I had more of a meh reaction, and I installed it there first. But going back to my iPhone with iOS 6 made me realize how dated that OS looks and feels.

Forgetting the looks, all the little new features and improvements are great, like all the new Safari stuff, command center and the improved app switcher. Apple says there are 200 new features and I definitely believe them.

ozataman3• 13 years ago

Well, that's very good to hear. Looking forward to the official release.

yapcguy4• 13 years ago

But going back to my iPhone with iOS 6 made me realize how dated that OS looks and feels.

Isn't this simply emotion - based upon you already knowing that iOS 7 is newer?

If you showed iOS 6 and 7 to someone who had never seen an iPhone before, how would they figure out which was the newer design?

nnnnni• 13 years ago

Reading about the bolder fonts is a huge relief. That was my #1 complaint about the earlier screenshots.

crazygringo2• 13 years ago

The official weather app actually looks remarkably similar to the current Yahoo! Weather app, and seems to share the same icons.

Before it was 100% obvious what the icons meant at a glance -- a big yellow unmistakable sun, clear full clouds, etc.

The new ones are just outlines, you almost can't tell the white and yellow lines apart, you have to "decipher" them with your eyes to figure out the weather for the next few days. A huge step backwards in clarity.

grin• 13 years ago

The Weather app had been powered by Yahoo! previously so they could have partnered with them after the release of their app to do the default app and update it for iOS7.

ozataman3• 13 years ago

That's exactly how I feel; good description sir!

shawndumas• 13 years ago

it looks the same because Yahoo built both.

leoc2• 13 years ago

I'm still a bit agape at what they seem to have done to the in-app back button. I mean, it's always been maybe the worst thing about the iOS UI, a wart thrown into a convenient corner of the screen where it's easy for unsophisticated users to forget about or miss entirely. Obviously, it's just the outer symptom of a real, hard-to-handle problem - the different layers of 'back' or 'escape' in a full-screen mobile OS - but what have they done with it? Is it still a button, or just an indication that you can swipe left-to-right across the screen to go back? If it is still a button, then why in tarnation have they made it (possibly) harder to notice and (certainly) to identify as a button? Maybe the free-standing left arrow makes it harder to miss the 'go back' meaning compared to the cutesy border of the old button, but it looks like one step forward, one back at best.

gdubs2• 13 years ago

It has to do with the way UIViewController titles now work. When you tap something that pushes a new view controller onto the stack, the current title animates left and _becomes_ the new back button. The animation is not only pretty, it makes it really obvious where you are going, and how to get back.

gdubs2• 13 years ago

Worth pointing out that screenshots have not really told the story, ever since iOS 7 was released to developers this spring. There's an overall lightness and fun feeling that's only really apparent in actual usage. Subjective, obviously, but I've been using it for months now, and when I pick up an iOS 6 device it feels ancient.

FilterJoe• 13 years ago

Safari was in need of an overhaul - Chrome, Atomic, and other browsers were so much better that I pretty much stopped using Safari.

From what I saw in this review, the new Safari offers much more functionality than the prior version, devoting substantially more pixels to content and offering the iCloud Keychain feature.

I do agree though that the functionality hasn't improved significantly for most of the other apps. I'd be way more excited if the Control Center offered customization. My two most frequent settings (Cellular on/off, Location Services on/off) aren't in Control Center so it doesn't really give me much.

yapcguy4• 13 years ago

I was going to complain about AirDrop being proprietary, but this is very disappointing. What is wrong with Apple?

It’s important to note that while AirDrop in iOS 7 and AirDrop in OS X share the same name and underlying technology (both work by transmitting files over a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection), they aren’t actually compatible with one another. You can AirDrop things from iOS to iOS and from OS X to OS X, but not from iOS to OS X or vice versa. All the reports I can find say that this situation doesn’t change with Mavericks.

prehkugler4• 13 years ago

It's important to ask yourself what you would do if you could AirDrop from your iOS device to an OS X device. Even though under the covers iOS and OS X work on files, iOS is sandboxed where OS X isn't, i.e. if you can't get to it via USB, you couldn't get to it via AirDrop anyway.

With that said, it would be useful to have some of the iTunes/iPhoto functionality for wireless(AirDrop) a la carte file transfer, but most people will just use iTunes wifi sync to get this effect.

fredsted3• 13 years ago

Even though iOS is sandboxed, has no files and no folders, lets not forget AirDrop on Mac doesn't do folders either. It almost looks like attachments: you drag (send) a file to the receiver. iOS handles mail attachments fine. I think this is something apple will implement later via software updates. Like for example obvious but long awaited OS X features like iBooks, Maps, Messages and Finder tabs. We're are wondering why they just didn't include it from the start, maybe they need a reason to sell OS X 10.10.

kalleboo6• 13 years ago

It's important to ask yourself what you would do if you could AirDrop from your iOS device to an OS X device

Quickly send photos I just took to put in email, IMs or on web forums. I used to do that constantly before I had an iPhone using Bluetooth, it was super-handy. Now I have to take a pointless long-cut through the internet with something like Dropbox. Royal pain when you're somewhere with spotty upstream internet.

crazygringo2• 13 years ago

I know. I can't ever imagine a time when I wanted to share something with an iPhone next to me (my friends are usually faraway, or if we're hanging out then we're not using our phones).

But several times a day I wish I could beam a photo, a Notes text file, etc., from my iPhone to my Macbook Air. In the end I'm just constantly e-mailing links/photos/etc. to myself, which never ceases to seem ridiculous in 2013.

yapcguy4• 13 years ago

I guess Apple wants you to use iCloud...

lgg• 13 years ago

The issue is that things work totally differently. AirDrop for the Mac works via multi-association wifi, which takes a decent amount of power. That is less noticeable on a device with a large battery, and Apple designed the UI in such a way that it only turns on when sharing is occurring.

On iOS it still uses multi-association wifi for the actual sharing, but it uses Bluetooth LE for the discovery. That allows it to be active at all times, which is very important given that on iOS most of the time AirDrop will be initiated while the app receiving the drop is completely inactive. The problem is that if Apple were to move Mavericks over to Blue LE discovery it would impact backward compatibility with existing AirDrop to Macs running older OSes, and it would have issues since some Macs that support AirDrop don't have Bluetooth LE compatible hardware. Not to mention you would have a lot more (and more confusing) use cases to deal with in the UI.

I expect them to move Mac OS over to iOS compatible AirDrop eventually, but it is not just a simple oversight. It is going to have to be a transition that has some thought put into it.

m_eiman• 13 years ago

Just tested this, and my iPad doesn't show up until I open the "control panel". Still it'll save battery by using only bluetooth for the initial scan.

kyro3• 13 years ago

I'm not a fan of iOS 7 design-wise, but my biggest gripe is the battery. It's bad. Really, really bad. I think it's a combination of an actual decrease in battery life and iOS 7's terrible monitoring of it.

It's not uncommon for my phone to shut down after it's hit 8% remaining battery. Or I'll be watching a video with 45% left, and the next second it'll cut me down to 25%. There have been a few instances where I've gone from ~25% to completely empty in a flash, leaving me with a dead phone much earlier than I'd anticipated. So now I really can't leave my place for more than maybe 4/5 hours without my charger.

nickconfer2• 13 years ago

I'd give it an update or two... Apple tends to have this issue at first, either because of something in their updated OS or 3rd party software.

It usually gets fixed pretty quickly though.

pohl2• 13 years ago

I'm curious, how did you determine that the problem is iOS 7, as opposed to your hardware – or, perhaps, the need for your hardware's power management needing to be reset/recalibrated?

I only ask because I recall reading some complaints during the beta cycle that were resolved in some way without changing the specific version of the pre-release they were running.

kyro3• 13 years ago

It was a very clear change for me. I'm usually at work from 7 to 5. On iOS 6, my iPhone 5 had no problem making it through with moderate use. There were no jumps in percentages. I could use the phone for an entire hour with <10% remaining.

Once I downloaded the beta, I found myself with a dead phone at noon, having to fully recharge it at least once just to have a usable phone by the end of the work day. And I think I've only seen it actually hit <5% all of two times. It'll power down way before it gets that low.

ianstallings2• 13 years ago

Are you running the GM seed or the beta? What hardware?

kyro3• 13 years ago

Latest beta on iPhone 5. Haven't updated to GM seed, although I'll do that today.

Einherji• 13 years ago

I've been using iOS7 on my daily driver since the first beta release and never had any problems whatsoever with battery life. In previous betas I've noticed this problem, not this time though, and certainly nothing close to what you were describing

itsameta4• 13 years ago

This sounds like a blown cell in your battery. I'd get it serviced.

r00fus2• 13 years ago

So you're running pre-release iOS, and expect it to work flawlessly?

I made the same mistake with iOS5beta and it was a nightmare. Power usage was the least of my issues. WHen iOS5 finally came out, I noticed most of my issues had disappeared (the rest got resolved by 5.1).

tl;dr: The use of iOS betas for your daily driver are inadvisable.

nwh2• 13 years ago

iOS7 is released, not a beta.

astrange• 13 years ago

Do you have a 4S? This is a hardware issue.

whalesalad• 13 years ago

Make sure to disable all the new location related shit. There are a dozen new things in there that will rape your GPS for all it's worth. Also, the second I installed the Starbucks app it re-activated Passbook and the whole GPS system for that to automatically start itself when you walk into a Starbucks. No thanks. Disabled all of it and my battery has been much better.

jamra• 13 years ago

iOS versions have generally had a massively forward adoption rate. I read that 80% of iPhones were on the most modern OS. It looks to me like the lack of support for the 3GS will create a split in adoption of the OS, which will trickle down and create an even larger gap in the purchasing of new iOS devices. I think this split will occur due to the stability of the 3G iPhones. This is concerning to me due to my company having iOS releases for the enterprise. This means that our customers are purchasing iOS devices just for our app. This also means that we have to be backwards compatible with yet another version of the OS. In code, this is where Macros come in.

I am reminded of the days of Microsoft vs Apple where Microsoft had better backwards compatibility. I think that the use of these devices in the business world will echo the days past and the cheaper device, Android, will be the go to business device.

pretz• 13 years ago

Why is lack of support for the 3GS any different than iOS 6's lack of support for the 3G? The 3GS came out in _2009_. I'm surprised it supports iOS 6; the 3G can't even run iOS 5.

kalleboo6• 13 years ago

The 3GS was still for sale new in box last year

potatolicious6• 13 years ago

"It looks to me like the lack of support for the 3GS will create a split in adoption of the OS"

Sure, but having seen the 3GS usage numbers on my own app (which, granted, is hardly a gold standard of representative demographics), I think this will be a rounding error. Despite Apple selling the devices until relatively recently, there are actually very few out in the wild. A developer can now effectively develop for iPhone 4 as their baseline.

Granted, you might have uniqueness in your demographic that will skew 3GS usage higher than the general population.

"This also means that we have to be backwards compatible with yet another version of the OS. In code, this is where Macros come in."

Ah, but you can't use macros, since a single binary will have to work on all devices - there aren't multiple binaries built with multiple flags. What you will have is a lot of runtime checks against either the OS version or specific featuresets.

Be prepared to write a whole lot of if ([obj respondsToSelector@selector(...)])

The worst part about this isn't just supporting new features - that part's easy since you can simply test for the presence of necessary bits, mostly with respondsToSelector. The worst part are the undocumented behavior changes in UI components that will break between iOS6 and 7. For example, it looks like there are large implementation changes in UITableView and UITableViewCells. This means you must necessarily test against the version string and branch from that. Annoying at best, code-quality-destroyer at worst.

nickconfer2• 13 years ago

I like iOS 7, but I'm a little worried about how app designers will do with the new look.

When you compare the apps currently out that have been updated, you can see a lot of companies are struggling with flat design. Something that seems simple, is actually very complex to pull off, but when done right, can be fantastic.

I think it will be a while before the ecosystem fully recovers and most of the best apps around have figured out how to execute flat design well.

malandrew3• 13 years ago

In case you didn't see it, this thread links to a site that did a side by side comparison of how a lot of apps moved to the new aesthetics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6400834

xntrk• 13 years ago

iOS7 seems really slow. hitting the home button to wake the screen up takes way too long.

joe5150• 13 years ago

The new alert banner is enormous! It clearly seems to have been designed with the iPhone 5+ in mind. At least the new ringtones and chimes are sort of lovely and not corny like the "Classic" ones.

diogocal• 13 years ago

Looks pretty and useless. I've been using iOS since iPhones came out, I'm seriously thinking about moving to android. Google has a good deal on Nexus 4.

Macha2• 13 years ago

Had. By now the Nexus 4 is sold out in most countries and Google has no plans to restock as the N5 is coming out in early October.

The N5 is also far more likely to match the N4's launch price than it's final price.

asabjorn• 13 years ago

And now we are starting to see Apple fall behind its competitors on central features, like e.g wi-fi calling. This feature is essential for the phones primary function, calling, in low-coverage areas. All competing mobile OSs already support wi-fi calling so this is disappointing.

hcarvalhoalves• 13 years ago

I can see a lot of effort went into interactions and some screens. Then I'm left with the impression they just winged it on the rest [1].

The redesign of the messages app limited itself to removing the graphics. The app still shows messages as bubbles, it's just bland now. I can think on a couple better design solutions for chat threads by looking at other apps and Adium themes.

The Newsstand is another example of redesign-WTF. It still has bad usability and small thumbnails, it just replaced the background with some random grey background.

Noteworthy are also those icons on the home screen. There's no consistency between them, as pointed by multiple designers already [1][2]. I can't believe Apple is pushing these as final.

Overall, it looks like a rushed job, not something I would expect from Apple. I see no compelling reason to update.

[1] http://tristanedwards.me/what-ios7-should-look-like [2] http://ianstormtaylor.com/whats-wrong-with-the-ios-7-icons/

glasz• 13 years ago

i click that link, see the image above the article showing an iphone running ios7 and i immediately have to vomit.

(nb: i love apple. used an iphone for 4 years. use only macs.)

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

I really dislike rendering active buttons as pure text. Moving away from skeumorphism does not mean removing every visual cue that differentiates active from inactive items. All the more so on mobile devices where "hover" cues are not accessible. Google is also guilty of this.

EpicEng• 13 years ago

I... don't like it. So far anyway. I'm trying to keep an open mind since I don't have much of a choice anyway.

I don't like that buttons turned into labels. I don't like that my screens now look more cluttered without clear delineations between UI elements. It looks a bit like a toy now as well. It also feels a bit more sluggish on my 4s.

I don't know, maybe it will grow on me.

iOS 7, thoroughly reviewed

Related Stories