iPhone 5S: worth the upgrade? (vs 4S)


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I'm another for which iOS7 ran great on the 4s.

 

I agreed to pass the phone on to my folks once my contract was up, so had to replace it, and went with the 5s. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't have upgraded.

 

As for the upgrade itself, 5s runs fine on 7.03 or later. Prior to this there were a lot of random crashes, which I never had on iOS7 on the 4s. Suspect its the 64bit version of iOS which had problems. Since 7.03 seems much more stable.

 

However, is it worth the upgrade? Personally no. I would have preferred to wait till iphone 6 or had a look around next year to see what else was on offer.

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No! iOS 7 works smooth like iOS 6 did on my 4S

 

I made clean install and everyting is perfect including battery life!

 

I also performed a clean install, but battery life is crap

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Is it "true" about the older 4S-hardware and iOS slow down?!

 

I don't know about iPhone's, but on my iPad 3 the performance is quite poor. To me this is just not acceptable. Poor performance is to be expected on an iPad 2, but not on the iPad 3! I intend to move to a Nexus 10 next year.

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I don't know about iPhone's, but on my iPad 3 the performance is quite poor. To me this is just not acceptable. Poor performance is to be expected on an iPad 2, but not on the iPad 3! I intend to move to a Nexus 10 next year.

 

How 'funny' I have no issues/lags etc on my iPad 2.

Strange this iOS7 behavior on different devices... makes you kinda think Apple is "purposely" slowing down devices - and some not - just for upgrade-reasons...

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I think 4/4s screensize is enough, and that they're great phones, if you have JB iOS 5 or 6 on them

 

The screensize is perfect/nice. It's just battery life that on iOS7 is really, really awful.... :(

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i went from 4s to 5s.

its lighter, the extra screen bit is nice.

i do like the touch id, as now i can just press and it unlocks, when it works.

 

otherwise nothing much really.

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i went from 4s to 5s.

its lighter, the extra screen bit is nice.

i do like the touch id, as now i can just press and it unlocks, when it works.

otherwise nothing much really.

How is the difference in battery life? I mean, nowadays at the end of the day with my 4S I have like 3-5% (in some cases 10%) battery left. Whereas this has been 30+%.

And is it (noticeably) faster?

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The screensize is perfect/nice. It's just battery life that on iOS7 is really, really awful.... :(

 

Dunno, iPhone 4 screen is perfect for 5 and 6 but for iOS7 - You can immediately tell that it was designed for a larger screen, feels somewhat squished together.

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I also upgraded from a 4S to 5S, and I never had any issues with iOS7 on my 4S. The battery life was always great and I could easily go a day or two of casual use without draining the battery.  I never noticed any lag or anything either.  I got my 5S before the 7.0.x incremental update came out that fixed the transition effects, so I'm sure it's even better on the 4S now.

 

Overall, my 4S was always fast, so I haven't noticed any speed difference between it and the 5S.  Battery life is probably better on my 5S since it has a bigger battery and it's brand new vs 2 years old.  

 

Hard for me to say since I went from Sprint, which has an un-usable data network, to AT&T which has an amazingly fast 4G network.  I definitely use my 5S more since the data network actually works.

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How is the difference in battery life? I mean, nowadays at the end of the day with my 4S I have like 3-5% (in some cases 10%) battery left. Whereas this has been 30+%.

And is it (noticeably) faster?

I get about 50%, but to be fair i havent been using it heavily the last few days.  Depends on what you do i guess. But yes its a better battery life compared to the 4s. It is faster feels about 30% faster, i like the fact that its also a lot lighter....

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So basically with practically the same usage of my 4S... yesterday my battery went dead/phone turned off, today (after like 10 hours) battery percentage is 78%.

Something is totally off here. However, I am unable to identify what's causing this.

And, in case of the 5S, whether this issue occurs as well, but only on a newer phone.

The AppStore had measured and tested my 4S battery and didn't find any battery related problems and I also needn't to replace the battery.

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Maybe it's (all) hardware related.... just a reset of my network (carrier) settings just bumped my battery from 76% to 70%.

And possibly in some cases I am lucky to have a full battery and on another day some sort hardware related bug/setting or background app just wipes away all battery power....

My iPhone 4S is a little more than 2 years old at the moment with daily/nightly battery charges (so around 800 charges in total).

Or am just guessing here?

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I will get it retail price/Apple online, so not with a plan. Basically that means for the 32GB version 799 euro.

Still a huge amount of money, but I like Apple and Android/GS4 etc is no option.

Plus, I invested heavily in the App(le) eco-system and hate to see this money go down the drain...

 

If it were me, I'd just get the battery replaced.  The 4S should run iOS 7 reasonably well IMO.  Wait for the iPhone 6 if you are looking to pay full price.  I'm the same, I pay full price for my hardware and use pre-pay networks that are a lot cheaper in the US.  However, I'm on an upgrade-every-3-year schedule so that I can save some money.

 

If you were committed to a service that subsidized a new phone for you every 2 years then the upgrade would be a no-brainer IMO.  I'm always flabbergasted at folks who pay Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint ridiculous amounts of money on overpriced services but they want to save money and not upgrade their phone when an upgrade is available.  Well, those guys charge you and extra ~$35/month for your service that can be chalked up as a "phone loan payment" regardless of if you actually take advantage of their subsidized upgrade.  You're basically not getting your money's worth if you choose not to upgrade with those guys.

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Maybe it's (all) hardware related.... just a reset of my network (carrier) settings just bumped my battery from 76% to 70%.

And possibly in some cases I am lucky to have a full battery and on another day some sort hardware related bug/setting or background app just wipes away all battery power....

My iPhone 4S is a little more than 2 years old at the moment with daily/nightly battery charges (so around 800 charges in total).

Or am just guessing here?

I believe there is some sort of battery percentage algorithm that gets calculated after a few charge cycles.  So if you reset a bunch of your settings, you likely reset the battery calculation.  You'll probably have to wait a few days for the algorithm to get re-calibrated.

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Maybe it's (all) hardware related.... just a reset of my network (carrier) settings just bumped my battery from 76% to 70%.

And possibly in some cases I am lucky to have a full battery and on another day some sort hardware related bug/setting or background app just wipes away all battery power....

My iPhone 4S is a little more than 2 years old at the moment with daily/nightly battery charges (so around 800 charges in total).

Or am just guessing here?

 

I'm just coming into this conversation so I'm sorry if this ground has already been covered.

 

I've had issues with battery life in the past with my iPhone 4 that was really bizarre cell data usage even when I was connected to WiFi.  You can read about the problem I was experiencing in this rather long thread here: https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1056436-iphone-4-is-running-hot-and-battery-draining-faster-than-normal/

 

It may give you some ideas on troubleshooting your battery life as well.

 

The main thing I'm wondering is this: Is your phone unusually warm?  If the device is hotter than normal than it is likely using more energy than normal.  That could be due to a number of things, but it may not be that the battery has gone bad.  There could be something else that is sinking the energy and heat dissipating from the device might be evidence to that.

 

If I were you I would run a reset on the device, clear everything off of it, don't add even your email connections to it.  It may not be a very useful device, but it will allow you to at the very least observe if the problem exists with the iPhone in its "most default state" or if it is brought on by a server you are connecting to or an app that you have downloaded.  I recall having issues at one point with my work's exchange server where I think it was adversely effecting my battery life.

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I just upgraded to a note 3 but had an iPhone 4S previously, last software revision I had on it was 7.0.3 and it was smooth, had some battery issues with 7.0 for the first couple of days but that went away when I did an update to my installed apps fwiw.

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OK. And does this algorithm shut down the phone at 0% even if the battery is still charged at >0% (and technically must remain power and stay on)?

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I have an iphone 4 with iOS 7, as for battery I cannot tell since I use the phone the whole day because of work related stuff.

 

As for performance/speed, it is slow compared to iOS6 (I first did an update and it was slow, after trying a clean install it was a little faster but still I don't like it).

 

The slowdown is not like I can't use the phone but you notice when opening menus, settings, apps, etc.

 

I got to use an iphone 5 yesterday with iOS7 and it was pretty good, no slowdown or anything.

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How is the difference in battery life? I mean, nowadays at the end of the day with my 4S I have like 3-5% (in some cases 10%) battery left. Whereas this has been 30+%.

And is it (noticeably) faster?

 

My fiancee has my old iPhone 5, which I gave her when I upgraded to the 5s. We went out for a run the other day and we use our phones to track the runs. During the run, her phone lost 12% and mine lost 3%. I think this is because of the M7 motion co-processor, which seems to drastically improve battery life.

 

I've used my phone heavily today and I still have 38% left. Took it off charge at 7am and it's now 9pm. GPS tracking, few calls, some texts, playing games, lots of browsing. 

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