iOS 7 on iPhone 4?

When Apple released iOS 7, they made it compatible with the iPhone 4 which is great news. But is it worth upgrading your 3 year old iPhone? ArsTechnica have done a wonderful in depth analysis on this, their conclusion is that you should proceed with caution. The A4 chip struggles with many of the animation demands, even though iOS 7 simplifies them for the iPhone 4. There are some advantages to having the latest iOS on your device with performance of built in apps including Safari, but ArsTechnica sums it up like this “iOS 7 on Apple’s oldest-supported hardware is hardly a disaster, but it’s apparent that the only reason Apple issued this update was because they were selling the iPhone 4 free with contract up until September 10. It has been their value option for a year, and in the Apple ecosystem, even people who bought a new iPhone 4 on September 9 will get at least a year’s worth of updates. The A4 simply isn’t up to the task of rendering iOS 7 as Apple intended, and the upgrade in general performance and apparent smoothness between even the iPhone 4 and year-newer 4S is significant”