Skip to main content

iOS8 on iPhone 4S: Is it worth it?

Last week I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my household iPhone 4S's to iOS8.  The rumors on the street have been mixed, but I usually don't pay much attention to rumors because they are very often wrong.

I am very happy I upgraded.  All the fear-mongering about bad performance and bad battery life simply wasn't true for me.  I'm quite confident that those folks just had a bad app that they didn't know how to update, or a heavily-used 3 year old battery.  iOS 8 isn't going to fix your refrigerator, but it isn't going to break it either.

So what do I get?

First of all, I get a refined UI.  iOS7 was a great upgrade, but now iOS8 is simply smoother all around.  It erases all doubts I had moving from iOS6.

Family sharing is in place.  If you have a household with more than one device, this is a big deal for making Dad's life easier.  Or mine.

I get better battery management, with the incredibly useful Battery Usage feature.  Unlike the similarly named Android feature, Battery Usage fully sums up the load of your apps on the battery and gives good advice on improving battery life.  (The Android feature is just a modified top and has limited utility).

Pan-device searching with Spotlight is amped up.  New keyboards.  Notifications.  Photo and Audio filters (VERY awesome, smoothly executed, and well behaved).

So far I have yet to have a single crash of either the OS or -any- application.  ROCK SOLID.

Should you upgrade?  You certainly don't have to.  But I think you might want to.

Popular posts from this blog

Fixing a SodaStream Jet, part 1: Disassembly Guide

I've had my SodaStream Jet for years, and once in a while something has gone wrong. Disassembly is the first step to repair.  Start with this article to see how to disassemble the SodaStream, and then once you have that down, scroll through my other articles to see how I repaired specfic SodaStream problems. SodaStream Jet Disassembly Guide Tools Required Flat head screwdriver Phillips head screwdriver 1. Remove the Carbonator.  Duh. 2. Remove the black panel lever The front big black tilt lever needs to be removed first. Removing this panel is tricky, but it isn't impossible. Looking up at the bottom of the black panel, there are two tabs, one on the left and one on the right. These tabs fully secure the panel in place. The trick is to use a flat-head screwdriver under the plastic to gently lever the tabs out of the way.  Note in the pictures how I approach these tabs with my screwdriver.  I usually release the left side first, and then I release ...

Fixing my Wahl 9918 Groomsman Beard and Mustache Trimmer

Not everyone would bother repairing a $25 beard trimmer, but why not fix something for under $5 instead of spending another $25? My  Wahl 9918 Groomsman Beard and Mustache Trimmer  has admirably performed its beauty duty for many years, but the time came when the battery just wasn't holding a charge any more.  Most people would just put the trimmer in the trash and buy a new one, but I figured I could repair my otherwise excellent Wahl and save some money. In fact, even high priced trimmer and rotary shaver brands, like Norelco and Remington, can be easily repaired using a process similar to the one I used to fix my Wahl.  Read on to find out how. I opened up the Wahl by popping off the black plastic faceplate with a tiny flathead screwdriver, which revealed two screws.  By removing the two screws I was able to easily open up the unit, revealing the guts of the device. Backplate off, Revealing the screws The internals are rather simple: a motor, a...

Robust Installation of an HDHomeRun Networked TV Tuner. 64 OTA channels!

I added an HDHomerun (HDHR) over-the-air (OTA) streaming box to my home network, bringing over-the-air broadcast TV to my computers, phones and tablets.  The HDHR is a big upgrade from my previous setup: using a simple "window mount" antenna directly connected to my TV. A TV-attached antenna is good for watching some TV for free, but the HDHR offers so much more flexibility. Figure 0: HDHomeRun on my basement wall   My original OTA TV setup was haphazard at best. It was finicky, ugly, and hard for other people at home to use. I would actually tape my antenna to a window whenever I wanted to watch OTA TV. Plus, it only worked on my TV and not with my other devices. I wanted a cleaner and more modern OTA setup. After looking at possibilities, I developed two goals: (1) bring my OTA TV into the modern Internet-connected era, and (2) set it up in a reliable and pretty way so that other family members wouldn't have to fool around with the antenna or anything else.  With that,...

Dustbuster Switch Repair

My Dustbuster vacuum - a CHV-1410, gets a lot of use.  We use it several times per day, every day.  It is a workhorse. Sadly, it was becoming unreliable.  It would be fully charged, and I'd hit the switch and maybe it would begin to start and then stop, or it would lurch and stop - or maybe it would do nothing. My CHV-1410 had a broken switch At first I thought it was the battery, but then I found that by carefully wiggling the switch I was sometimes able to get the vacuum to work.  All that on-off action over the years made the switch unreliable. Instead of throwing away an otherwise perfectly good vacuum, I decided to replace the worn switch.  It's an easy and worthwhile repair with the right part. The one special part needed: A specific $5 Switch There seems to be two types of switches used in these, based on the charging mechanism: For the Lithium models (CHV-1410L and similar), I notice that there are only two conductors are attached to the sw...

MacBook: burnt out magsafe connector repair

My MacBook (A1342 model from 2009-2010) stopped working, thanks to a cheap knockoff magsafe charger. The magsafe connector looked burnt with heat-distorted melted plastic and some black carbon surfaces.  Plugging in the charger resulted in no lights and no action.  My MacBook was dead. First I tried to clean up the connector with some Q-Tips, tooth picks and solvent, but that did little, as seen in this "after" picture (below).   The heat generated by the aftermarket charger permanently deformed and distorted the MacBook's magsafe connector.  Clearly the damage was significant. Burnt Magsafe Connector - Replacement Required! Looking at iFixIt , I determined that it would not be difficult to replace only the magsafe connector with the right tools.  I hoped and prayed that the problem was isolated to the connector assembly and not the logic board. I bought a replacement magsafe connector assembly (available from Amazon) for under $20 and started to rep...

Excellent DD-WRT Router for Me: Netgear WNDR3400 / N600

My WiFi performance was suffering, and so I decided to do something about it and upgrade my router. When I say my WiFi performance was suffering, I really mean it:  I live in a large high-rise apartment building and there are 100+ WiFi access points visible from my home office.  All of the contentious traffic was severely curtailing my WiFi reliability.  I was lucky to get 1 Mbit/second throughput.  Sometimes I was lucky to stay connected even with my WiFi router in the same room. I decided it was time to go for 5 GHz, which is a WiFi band which is used less frequently and which has a tougher time traversing walls.  And of course I wanted DD-WRT support.  The set of features I was looking for included: Trouble-free DD-WRT support 5 GHz 802.11n Support Simultaneous dual band capability Inexpensive.  Maybe even cheap.  For me this means under $50.  Under $35 is even better! It sounds like an easy task to bring all this together: A...

Other Posts

Show more