Monday 22 September 2014

Apple iOS 8 problems plague users

The Apple iOS 8 update is out for users and while some cool new features are a delight to use, not all users have had a smooth experience with the new OS.

Apple forums are being flooded with new issues that have cropped up since its latest mobile OS went live. Some of the most common problems include slower Wi-Fi speeds, audio issues, sluggish overall performance, faster draining of the battery and problems with iMessages. Here’s a list of some of the most common problems and what you can do to solve them.

Wi-Fi problems

Many iPad owners (including those with newer models) have complained about slower Wi-Fi speeds post the iOS 8 update on this Apple thread. The thread initiator has pointed out problems in the iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display and iPhone 5S after upgrading to iOS 8.The user adds that resetting the network settings or the router band did not help.

Another user with an iPad Air pointed out that the WiFi problem is so bad that his iPad is “just about useless now after upgrading.”  Apparently, it works fine for a few minutes and then the little wheel will just sit there and spin. iPhone 5s users have also reported the same problem.

So far, the iPad 4 that we’ve updated hasn’t experienced any connectivity problems yet, though we did face other issues.

Sound issues

This is another issue which seems to target only iPads. We noticed this even with the iPad 4 we are using. While music and YouTube videos had sound after the update, audio from games and apps disappeared completely. And going by the following Apple thread, we know that we are not alone.

One user on the Apple community forum states: “After updating my iPad mini to iOS 8 I found I couldn’t hear any sounds. It is not muted, all sounds are up, and even tried with headphones. Can’t hear music, games, keyboard clicks, nothing. I also updated my iPhone5 and the sound is fine there.”

Some pointed out that their iPads had no sound at all, while one said that that when using earphones on the iPad, sound passes only through the right earpeice and not through the left one. The earphones worked fine with other Apple devices.

If you are facing a similar problem, try this: Reset the iPad by pressing the Home button and the On/Off or just go to Settings> General > Reset and click on Reset iPad. Don’t worry re-setting the iPad won’t delete or erase the data, it will just mean that you’ll have to put in the Wi-Fi settings again. We tried this on our iPad 4 and it worked.

Performance

As far as performance goes, many older devices are much slower now thanks to the iOS 8 update. This includes the iPad Air and iPhone 5s as well, which come with the 64-bit A7 chipset.

For iPhone 4S owners, the update has proved to be quite a downer in terms of the overall performance. According to this post on Ars Technica, “animations on the Apple A5 SoC are markedly more choppy and inconsistent in iOS 8 than they ever were in iOS 7, something we confirmed by jumping back and forth between OSes a couple of times to make sure we weren’t imagining things.”

Others on this MacRumors user forum pointed out that the iOS 8 update has affected the performance of Safari browser as well. One user pointed out that “Safari loads pages slower and slower as time passes, to the point it simply refuses to load any pages completely. Solution is to disable and enable Wi-Fi or disable Spotlight search in Safari settings,” adding that the app was crashing randomly.

Another said that his iPhone 5s was now heating super-fast and that apps would crash without any reason. Some users users took it to Twitter to vent out their frustration.




Battery life

This is another problem that is plaguing devices after iOS 8 update. Users took to Twitter and the Apple forum to complain about the battery drainage post the iOS 8 update.

According to one user, both their iPad Air and iPhone 5s are down to hours of battery post the iOS 8 udpate. One user noted on Twitter, “My favorite new feature in iOS 8 is shorter battery life.”

To know which apps are draining battery on your iPhone we suggest you go to settings, then usage and click on Battery Usage. It will show you all the apps that are using the battery and under battery percentage. You can shut down apps that you think are using too much. Usual culprits will be Facebook, YouTube. You can also disable location services in the background for a lot of apps that don’t really need them, like Slingshot or Twitter and thus reduce your battery consumption.

In addition, go to General and click on app Background Refresh and turn off this feature for apps that you don’t think need constant refreshing unlike Weather. This too will help preserve battery.

iMessages

As this user thread on Apple Community points out, iMessages are also facing some issues in iOS 8. Some users have complained that they are unable to send iMessages to other iPhone users and instead the message was sent as a text ( that’s chargeable unlike an iMessage, which is free).

One user noted on the thread that after he updated his iPhone 5 to iOS 8, he was unable to send iMessage as the option was switched off. “I turned it back on and it said “Waiting for activation…”. Roughly 8 hours later, it was still waiting for activation.”

One user on Twitter pointed out that she was part of group chat in iMessage but was unable to reply to messages. Once again, the solution to this seems to be the reset button.

Where the list of complaints goes, it seems to be fairly high in iOS 8. Hopefully Apple will solve these issues soon.

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