Will Disabling iOS System Animations Help Speed Up Your Old iPhone? [Video]

If you are toting an older iPhone, like perhaps an iPhone 4s or an iPhone 5, then you will already be well aware that keeping the thing running smoothly can be a full time job on its own. With each new release of iOS, Apple adds new features to existing hardware, but sometimes, those features don’t translate to older devices and even worse, those devices usually take something of a performance hit in the process.

In order to try and counteract some of that performance hit, we told you recently how it was possible to disable iOS SpringBoard / system animations without jailbreak that the OS likes to carry out when you do things such as open and close apps. The process of disabling those animations is no big problem for most people, but sometimes, the lingering question remains – just how much quicker are older iOS devices when they have had their, often superfluous, animations disabled?

iOS-animations

A YouTuber performs this test on two iPhone 4s and two iPhone 5 handsets with iOS 9.2.1 installed onto them. The test then involved disabling animations just as we showed you recently, and then filming how quickly both devices go about completing some common tasks side-by-side.

The results make for interesting viewing, because while it’s true that some tasks and actions benefit from the reduction in transition and animation time required, sometimes the difference isn’t all that impressive, if there at all.

iPhone-iOS-9.2.1-speed-glitch-comparison

iOS 9.2.1-running iPhone 5 with SpringBoard animations enabled (left) versus one with the same disabled (right) shown opening a folder

We suggest you check out the full 13-minute video embedded below in order to get an idea of whether disabling these system animations in iOS is a route you want to go down with your older iPhone model. Implementing the change is quick and easy, and importantly, it’s easy to back out of too, should you so wish. Even so, there are worse ways to spend 13 minutes of your life, especially if you’re carrying around one of the devices that were tested.

(Source: iApplyBytes [YouTube])

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