iPad - Slowwwwing Down

exocet

Ive got 2 iPads in my household. 

A 32 GB 3rd Generation iPad (4 years old)

A 32 GB 2nd Generation iPad Mini (3 years old)

The mini has absolutely ground to a halt. It's practically unusable. The older iPad still works fine.

How do I restore performance?

The minI was running low on storage so I reset it (deleting all content and non Apple apps) .

It now has 24 GB "free" but is still running like a slow dog. Quite often I struggle to enter text on the keypad without it stuttering along. 

octatonic

Roll back to a previous operating system.
Really though- get rid of it and buy something modern.

RandallFlagg

It's the lack of RAM and processor that's not keeping up with the demands of the latest apps and OS, time for an upgrade.

exocet

RandallFlagg said:

It's the lack of RAM and processor that's not keeping up with the demands of the latest apps and OS, time for an upgrade.

So the older iPad has more RAM  / faster CPU than the newer mini? 

Is downgrading the O/S straight forward?

Danny1969

Mmmm, not convinced of the above advice, my mini 2 runs very quick. You can only go back to an older IOS while it's still being signed, once it's not you can't

Fretwired

Back up apps and reset via iTunes (reformats HD, removes junk and reinstalls OS). Restore apps. I do it every 6 months and my two iPads race along.

Hertz32

Actually the Mini should be better specced than the iPad (A7 vs A5x processors, both have 1GB DDR3 RAM) 
Try resetting through iTunes, then take it to an apple store and see what they make of it. It coud be a bunch of Bad sectors on the RAM of the mini(?) memory does degrade with use and I doubt the memory is the same model between the two ipads. 

Danny1969

If the rams bad then it needs a new board ... it's BGA on the board, has it ever had a spill on it ? iPad mini is quite well protected as there's a large shielding plate under the LCD but this can mean the machines survive initial bad spills only to start playing up a little later

exocet

Never had a spill.

Been trying to find the purchase date to decipher whether it's a v1 or a v2. The v2 had double the RAM of v1 which makes it the same as my older full sized  v3. Lack of RAM capacity would make sense with newer IOS versions. Is there a utility to run that tells you the RAM?

I've heard thathat resetting via iTunes is "better" as suggested in above post - why should that br the case? 

Danny1969

Just go Settings - General - About and scroll down till you see the model ..... something like ME276A\B for example

ThePrettyDamned

But only windows does this over time!

I'd back it up and reset it to clear out the junk, then install what you need. 

spark240

I assume you have done the double tap and deleted all the saved websites?

hugbot

Or the full reset? 

TheBigDipper

Every iOS release makes older iPads run slower than before, whatever you do. My iPad 2 (4/5 years old now?) has been reset/reloaded more than once and still runs so slowly that it's almost unusuable for anything too complex. If I could reload iOS 5 or 6, I would. 

I'm typing this on the iPad Pro that arrived yeterday. Bliss...

Flanging_Fred

This is interesting, I have an old iPad 2 and I noticed recently that it started running VERY. slowly after it updated itself. Apps that ran perfectly well before the 'upgrade' are now unusable.

Have you updated the OS recently?

<TinFoilHateMode>
I wonder if apple are trying to 'remove' their older (but still functional, or was) hardware??
<\tinfoilhatmode>

Moe_Zambeek

Flanging_Fred said:

This is interesting, I have an old iPad 2 and I noticed recently that it started running VERY. slowly after it updated itself. Apps that ran perfectly well before the 'upgrade' are now unusable.

Have you updated the OS recently?

<TinFoilHateMode>
I wonder if apple are trying to 'remove' their older (but still functional, or was) hardware??
<\tinfoilhatmode>

Had exactly the same with our ipad2. The latest iOS update has completely hobbled it.

Mkjackary

Flanging_Fred said:

This is interesting, I have an old iPad 2 and I noticed recently that it started running VERY. slowly after it updated itself. Apps that ran perfectly well before the 'upgrade' are now unusable.

Have you updated the OS recently?

<TinFoilHateMode>
I wonder if apple are trying to 'remove' their older (but still functional, or was) hardware??
<\tinfoilhatmode>

I would say they probably don't deliberately make it slow, but they do spend loads of time optimising it for newer devices and don't optimise at all for older ones.

exocet

I did the reset from the iPad itself. This removed all applications and freed up lots of space (went from 2GB Free to 24 GB free).

I expected an immediate improvement but there was absolutely no difference.

I suspect that it must be RAM which is impacted by newer IOS requirements - currently running 9.3.5.

I'll check specific model number this evening and cross reference with published specs. It looks likely that my "older" iPad 3 has 1GB RAM and the iPad mini only 512MB which would explain performance drop off assuming that later IOS versions requires more RAM. I guess I would have been running IOS 7.x when I first purchased it.

ThePrettyDamned

It sounds like the OS upgrade then. 

It's true on all platforms - I think it was windows xp that went from requiring about 512mb ram to 2gb minimum in the course of its life. 

Bit rubbish - can you roll back to a previous OS? 

ICBM

ThePrettyDamned said:

Bit rubbish - can you roll back to a previous OS? 

Not unless you have the whole thing saved as a backup on your computer, and even then I'm not sure - it may be blocked.

Apple *really* don't want you to.

Danny1969

You can't roll back to an older IOS once Apple stop signing it. I had to change the board in my iPhone to roll back to 8 

I doubt it's the OS though, my Ipad mini 2 has 9.2 on it and runs as fast as you can use it.

The only way you can "full reset" an iPad is to remove the digitizer, remove the LCD and unscrew the motherboard and gently lift away from the mating battery lugs and slide an insulator between them for a while ...... Any other reset is not a full reset