How to Boost iOS 9 Performance on older iPhone or iPad ?

If you are using older iPhones like 4s or 5 than after updating it to iOS 9 you might have felt decrease in performance. It also reduces battery life and also make iPhone sluggish. Of-course they will be fixed in future iOS 9 versions but to boost up your iPhone’s performance right now, I have got some tips which will help you to increase your iPhone battery life and even performance up to certain level.

I personally use iPhone 4s as my daily driver which was launched in 2013 so it is an older iPhone which has very low performing hardware compared to newer iPhones of 2015. Still iPhone 4s received iOS 9 software update and I updated on the very next day from its launch date. I was knowing that as it was the first version of iOS 9, it will have lot of bugs and I was also knowing that older iPhones will not perform as they were performing on iOS 8.4.1 which was the last and most stable update of iOS 8. Though I was knowing all this things, I decided to try iOS 9 on my iPhone 4s.

After updating to iOS 9, I started facing performance issues and it also decreased battery life of my iPhone. I decided to roll back to iOS 8.4.1 but some good features of iOS 9 stopped me from doing that. Than after I started examining my iPhone to find out what things are making my iPhone slower and eating more battery. According to that I made changes in few settings to increase performance and battery life of my iPhone and I have listed them all below. So if you are using older iPhone or iPad and facing problems with your iOS device running iOS 9 than below are some tips which will help you to fix problems with your older iPhone or iPad running iOS 9.

Tips to Fix iOS 9 Slow Performance issues on older iPhone or iPad

1) Reduce Transparency –

Some people might not like to turn on this setting because it reduces the transparency level to zero and makes notification center, control center and iPhone dock opaque but turning it on will dramatically boost your iPhone’s performance. By default this feature is set to off to make iOS 9 look more beautiful by adding transparency at various places but it affects lot to performance of older iPhones and iPads. So head over to Settings > General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast > Reduce Transparency and turn it on.

2) Reduce Motion –

Another feature which iOS users love is, its beautiful animations. It also defines beautiful user interface of iOS 9 and this feature is also set to off by default to make iOS 9 more interactive. But in case of older iPhone and iPad, animations are lagging and it is also responsible for other in app performance issues. So turning Reduce Motion on will be better until it gets better in next iOS 9 software update. To turn on Reduce Motion go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion and toggle switch to on.

3) Background App Refresh –

This feature keeps on refreshing apps which you use more often and in some cases it results into unnecessary wastage of battery and your internet bandwidth. This feature is kept on by default to always keep apps up to date with time but turning it off completely or for some apps can give you extra 1-2 hours of battery life! To reach this setting on your iPhone or iPad, Open Settings > General > Background App Refresh. You can either turn it off for all apps or for some specific apps which you don’t use much often.

4) Reset & Fresh iOS 9 Installation –

While updating iOS device by Apple OTA update program, there are few files of older iOS which are utilized by newly installed iOS version and this results in performance issues sometimes. To fix this problem the only option left with us is either Resetting iPhone or clean installation of iOS using iTunes. To reset your iPhone or iPad, you can go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings. Before performing this don’t forget to take full backup of your iOS device using iTunes.

If this doesn’t fix your problem than make a fresh installation of iOS 9 on your iPhone or iPad using iTunes on your PC or Mac. You can refer this guide to do that successfully.

5) Rollback to older iOS 8.4.1 –

I personally do not recommend you to do this as soon Apple will be releasing next iOS 9 updates which will have improved performance and battery life but still if you want to than you can do that by referring to this guide on rolling back iOS 9 to iOS 8.4.1.

Apart from these, I would recommend you to update your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to latest iOS update available which is iOS 9.0.1 right now. To check if your iOS device is up to date with latest iOS version go to Settings > General > Software Update.

These were some of the tips to boost your older iPhone or iPad performance. I don’t promise that it will completely make your older iOS device smoother but it will surely give you breath of relief from some of the major iOS 9 problems. I hope this piece of suggestions help you. If it really does help me by sharing this tips with your friends.