Yesterday, Apple launched its next major update to its mobile OS: iOS 8. However, some iPhone 4S users are already seeing issues in their overall user experience.
The iPhone 4S was first released back in 2011. Only since then has Apple introduced features like Touch ID and LTE connectivity into their iPhones. And in terms of performance, the iPhone 4S has a significantly slower processor than the models succeeding it, and it lacks support for many of the core performance features included in iOS 8, such as OpenGL ES 3.0, 64-bit ARMv8 app support, and the new Metal graphics API.
As a result of what the iPhone 4S lacks app performance is noticeably slower, and animations more unsteady.
Due to the lack of iOS 8 support on the iPhone 4S, Apple has also omitted several integrated features in the iPhone 4S-specific update, including Air Drop and Handoff.
Additionally, the iPhone 4S is the last iPhone to feature the 3.5-inch screen. The iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S feature 4-inch screens, and the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have even larger 4.7 and 5.5-inch screens, respectively.
Apple designed iOS 8 with these updated screen sizes in mind. The result of this decision on the iPhone 4S is a reported sense of “crampedness” within the phone’s apps.
There is a good chance that Apple will acknowledge these issues in the coming weeks and release an iOS 8.1 update to address at least some of them. After all, the iPhone 4S is ‘officially’ supported by iOS 8.
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