Threads like these make me wonder if anyone has come out with benchmarking software for iPads and other iDevices. It would be nice to have definite performance measures...

To answer - my iPad 1 doesn't seem slower since iOS5, just more prone to crashing when I'm working with apps that use a lot of memory. As far as opening, closing, playback of various files - it seems as fast as before.

Threads like these make me wonder if anyone has come out with benchmarking software for iPads and other iDevices. It would be nice to have definite performance measures...

To answer - my iPad 1 doesn't seem slower since iOS5, just more prone to crashing when I'm working with apps that use a lot of memory. As far as opening, closing, playback of various files - it seems as fast as before.

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I would agree with the apps crashing more often, overall speed seems about the same.

Guys, one thing which has been a common theme over the last 4 years I have been upgrading and restoring Apple devices is that the "upgrade" process can sometimes give significantly different results to the "restore" process, particularly when you are upgrading major OS versions. The very same subjects were discussed here when 4.2.1 was relased and folks upgraded from 3.x.

An "upgrade" keeps your existing file system and upgrades the operating system over the top. IMHO, I have witnessed this causing lots of problems in the past, notably poor performance, crashing, and badly behaved apps.

A "restore" formats your iPad back to factory freshness with a brand new OS installation. Whilst this can be a bit of a pain in terms of having to start fresh (remember your apps, media, etc, can still all be synced back from iTunes, it is the app settings when get wiped), in my experience this resolves things in the vast majority of cases.

All I can tell you is I have an iPad1 running IOS5 (via restore, not upgrade), and it performs perfectly well. There is no noticeable drop in performance. My advice is that if you are really struggling with performance, bite the bullet and perform a full restore of IOS5. To do this, connect to iTunes, sync so that you have a back up of the device, and then press the restore button. Once the restore is complete, choose to set the device up as "new" and see if the performance is as you would expect.
If it is, you could then try to "restore from backup" by right clicking on the iPad in iTunes. Once the restore from backup completes, check performance again. If it is unchanged then your problems are solved! If it performs badly again then you know there is a setting carried over from 4.x which is not compatible with IOS5. Unfortunately you will have no way to discover what it is and remove it, but at least you will know that you need to start afresh...

Also, as regards crashing, the iPad1 does have very limited RAM (it was never enough at 256MB in my opinion), and IOS5 does use more RAM than 4.x, therefore less is left to run apps... Closing apps are 99% a result of low memory. The best tactic to help alleviate the problem is to close down apps from the app switcher regularly. Double tap the home button, hold an icon till they giggle, then close them all from the switcher by pressing the "X" next to each one... A pain, but again, another tactic to deal with the limitations of the device...

Also, as regards crashing, the iPad1 does have very limited RAM (it was never enough at 256MB in my opinion), and IOS5 does use more RAM than 4.x, therefore less is left to run apps... Closing apps are 99% a result of low memory. The best tactic to help alleviate the problem is to close down apps from the switch regularly. Double tap the home button, hold an icon till they giggle, then close them all from the switcher by pressing the "X" next to each one... A pain, but again, another tactic to deal with the limitations of the device...

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Yeah I would agree. When I double tap the home button then press and hold an icon all I see is minus signs on my icons not X's. I bought an app called Process Killer, it basically shuts down apps using memory

Yeah I would agree. When I double tap the home button then press and hold an icon all I see is minus signs on my icons not X's. I bought an app called Process Killer, it basically shuts down apps using memory

5.0

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Thanks for the heads up on Process Killer. Seems to work better than XSysInfo in releasing memory. Agreed, iOS 5 won't let you run as many apps on iPad 1. Maybe Apple can fix some of this in the next release. The iPhone didn't play well after version 4 came out. Not holding my breath.

Thanks for the heads up on Process Killer. Seems to work better than XSysInfo in releasing memory. Agreed, iOS 5 won't let you run as many apps on iPad 1. Maybe Apple can fix some of this in the next release. The iPhone didn't play well after version 4 came out. Not holding my breath.

Just to confirm as well, I also experienced lame behavior after the upgrade to iOS5, which subsequently found to be a result of lack of memory. I bought Process Killer, and makes a great improvement. Almost like it used to be with 4. Just that now I have to be careful not to leave too many apps open.

It should slow down on a new release of OS if it is larger in size and or a significant amount of improved functions are made and the amount of memory has limited space available. I had no difference in speed but I also have the most memory you can get on a IPad2.

It should slow down on a new release of OS if it is larger in size and or a significant amount of improved functions are made and the amount of memory has limited space available. I had no difference in speed but I also have the most memory you can get on a IPad2.

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"Memory" and "storage" are terms that are often confused. Just to be clear, all iPad 2's have the same amount of "memory" or RAM, 512MB . They also have the Apple 1GHz A5 dual-core Processor. More here:

RAM and processing power are the two biggest factors in system performance. As you pointed out, iOS 5 does more and demands more from the iPad and that may affect performance depending on the task and/or app(s) being used as well as the model of iPad. Having said that, other improvements in iOS 5 generally compensate or negate those performance hits.

What you have is the maximum amount of flash storage (64GB). Although storage is sometimes referred to as "memory" it has no bearing on the iPad's performance.

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