page 4 of 4
Battery Life?
Before upgrading, I took a screenshot of my battery usage (General > Usage). iOS 7 doesn’t seem to be a battery drainer. Of course, it depends on how you use your device. It’s always a good idea to recalibrate your battery after the iOS upgrade. Simply use your iOS device until the battery runs out. Wait a few hours, then charge it until it is at 100% for a few hours. Allowing the device to go the full charging range calibrates the battery. The extra hours of draining and charging will ensure that the full range of the battery is “exercised”. Some may doubt the validity of this process, but I have found this to work. Apple’s documentation recommends draining and charging the battery once a month. You may have to go without using your iOS device for a few hours (gasp!).
You can also turn off automatic background updates for apps (Settings > Background App Refresh). Depending on the apps you have installed, turning this off could save battery life.
There is one strange anomaly I noticed after upgrading. I had my iPad plugged in while upgrading and it charged up to 100%. I left it plugged in during the upgrade process. When iOS 7 launched, the battery meter displayed 97% battery life. Perhaps the iPad stops charging while the update is installing, but it’s also possible that iOS 7 has a different algorithm for detecting battery life. I have read that one should recalibrate the battery after each upgrade, specifically for this reason. Apple engineers tweak all sorts of battery parameters. They even admit to this in their product literature.
Worth Upgrading?
It is definitely worth upgrading to iOS 7, however, the operating system was just released recently. I’ve used it for over a month, and so far it’s pretty solid. That said, I don’t advise upgrading your mission critical iOS device right away. I will be updating this article as new issues are found. Feel free to add a comment below. Please mention your device and carrier, if applicable.
I have already noticed that some of my apps do not work. They need to be updated. I have 56 apps pending updates. It’s going to be a long process. I can’t fault Apple for this. They can’t ensure that every developer updates their apps. Make sure that any app you absolutely need will work with iOS 7.
You can finally stop apps from updating! I still do not recommend tapping “update all” when you have numerous apps pending updates. At least now, if you make that mistake, you can stop them from updating. That was always a glaring deficiency in iOS. iOS 7 also fixes the apps that are stuck updating. You no longer have to delete these and re-install them from the AppStore. Unfortunately, the AppStore app is a little buggy. If you have many apps pending updates, you’ll see that after you update a few, the list of apps pending updates is gone. You see the updated apps with “open”. To get back to the list, you can usually close and re-open AppStore (flick it upward from the multitasking view to close it). Sometimes that doesn’t work. I had to open a few apps to get AppStore out of memory, and then close them all and re-open AppStore. What a pain. I find more bugs every day…
It’s always a good idea to follow a process when upgrading iOS. Check out this article on how to safely upgrade iOS. Keep in mind, when you upgrade to a new version of iOS, you cannot revert back. At this point, I strongly advise users to only upgrade non-essential devices.
Apple is known for high quality releases, and so far I have found iOS 7 to be a bit buggy, but useable. You have to find workarounds to deal with some of these bugs and get your task accomplished. It takes some time to discover any deeper flaws. So far, I have no regrets.
Ready to upgrade? Follow this upgrade process to ensure that you don’t lose anything.