A slide into obsolescence: iOS 8 on the iPad 2

In case you've been so content with your iPad 2 over the last few years that you've drifted away from paying attention to the Apple product cycle, here is some six-month-old news: Apple finally stopped selling the iPad 2 model back in March. After it hung on at the bottom of the tablet product line for a couple of years to be a rock for the education and corporate markets, Apple kicked the iPad 2 out and resurrected the iPad 4 as the new full-size budget model.

But for now, Apple is continuing to update the iPad 2, in part because it has so much in common with the non-retina iPad mini, including the Apple A5 processor and 1024x768 display. But the iPad 2 hung around so long because it's also a legacy device. There are students depending on updates, as well as companies who used the iPad as a default device, like Square.

iOS 7 didn't do a whole lot of damage to the iPad 2, and even improved it in some aspects, like how fast the browser could load webpages. But this time around, the new version of iOS 8 appears to make the start of a much bigger decline, not only in performance, but in appearance.

Where we miss out, and what goes wrong

There were some features added to iOS 7 that were not available on the iPad 2, and iOS 8 adds to this list:

• Apple Health
• Handoff features in Continuity
• TouchID
• Support for OpenGL ES 3.0, the Metal graphics API, and 64-bit ARMv8 apps.

The last time we wrote about an iOS transition, we noted that the bolder version of the OS-wide font helped everything look slightly better on the iPad 2's non-retina screen. With the font changes in iOS 8, though, this is no longer good advice—the bold font looks fat and unwieldy, especially on the everpresent clock time at the top of the screen and on the keyboard. Fortunately, Apple seems to have beefed up the standard font a bit in places where it needs it, so switching to bold is no longer necessary.

In addition to font problems, the iPad 2 also still doesn't get any of the watercolor translucency effects Apple introduced iOS 7.

Generally, iOS 8 is noticeably slower and choppier than iOS 7, in everything from opening apps to typing. Back when we switched from iOS 6, we complained about how we could get 10 characters into typing something before the keyboard realized what was happening. This problem has returned with a force in iOS 8, especially on first opening an app. Screen rotation is stuttery, and any time some part of the OS needs to slide into place (text centering, apps minimizing), it can't do it smoothly.

To quantify the difference in performance, we tried opening several stock apps on each version of the OS, as well as cold-booting to the lock screen.

Application	iOS 7.1.2	iOS 8.0 GM
Safari	1.07 seconds	1.81 seconds
Camera	1.01 seconds	1.04 seconds
Settings	1.16 seconds	1.63 seconds
Mail	1.60 seconds	2.61 seconds
Messages	0.92 seconds	1.19 seconds
Calendar	0.97 seconds	1.48 seconds
Cold boot	29.12 seconds	31.53 seconds

IOS 7 was overall slower at opening apps than iOS 6 last year, but a lot of the difference could be attributed to the sweeping and slow animations that Apple introduced between the two versions. Even after Apple expedited the animations in newer versions of iOS 7, iOS 8 is still one half to a full second slower to complete certain tasks than iOS 7 on the iPad 2. Cold boots take a couple seconds longer, too.

None of these opening times are huge roadblocks, but they add up to a noticeable poky feeling that wasn't there (or wasn't as strong) coming from iOS 7.

Surprisingly, the browser performance on iOS 8 is marginally better than on iOS 7 according to benchmarks. iOS 8 barely edges out 7 in Kraken, but it loses out in running SunSpider. The iPad 2 could not run Google Octane v2 on iOS 8 without crashing, but when we ran v1 on both versions, iOS 8 beat iOS 7 by a solid margin.

Experientially, though, iOS 8 feels like it reloads tabs and reacts to input slower than iOS 7 did. Because of all the reloads, browsing is a disjointed experience with either version.

Do I upgrade, or not?

Last year our attitude toward the iOS 6-to-7 upgrade was "how much worse can things get," and it turns out we'd never find out. iOS 7 stayed roughly on par with 6 in terms of performance. After that experience, we could advocate for an upgrade with few reservations.

But now, iOS 8 has convinced us that things can, in fact, be worse. Not a whole lot worse, and not all the time, but it's enough of a regression with few enough upsides that acquiescing to the "download software update" prompts may actually be a bad idea.

With that course of action comes some caveats: opting out of software updates can be risky from a security standpoint. There is also the possibility that later versions will become more stable, so closing your device off permanently may not be the best decision in the long run. It is possible, though not strictly sanctioned, to roll back to iOS 7 from 8 if you do want to give it a try but are worried you'll find it lacking.

Ultimately, the iPad 2 is still our couch Internet-surfing device, occasionally a night-reading device. We don't demand much at all from it in terms of performance and expect it's the same for others who are still using this model a full three and a half years after it came out. This means that upgrading to iOS 8 won't ruin the experience; then again, neither would just staying on iOS 7.