[Rant] Couldn't resist upgrading to iOS 7.1

Only days after I jail-broke my iPhone 5S, Apple came out with the much anticipated iOS 7.1. The update is supposed to solve two big issues - fixing the sudden crashes of the OS and brining some perceptual speed improvements. (I hope they are real speed improvements though.)

Even though I didn't mention this before, I've been having frequent crashes with my iPhone 5S. It would crash about twice a week. Apps also crash - Safari being the most frequent.

The speed improvements are always welcome. All of them cannot be fixed by a jailbreak tweak. With NoSlowAnimations, it would speed up the animation but sometimes take the same time for the app to refresh its view. In other words, there is a lag between the time the animation ends and the UI is usable. Not all the time, but it's pretty frequent.

So I decided to try out iOS 7.1. Since I've decided that I don't need to have an unlocked phone anymore - as I'm not going back to Sri Lanka anytime soon, and if I do go back for good, I would sell the phone and take an unlocked phone with me - the only question that I had was whether I would miss the silent shutter of the camera. But I figured that the changes is the new OS outweighed the silent shutter. So I went ahead with the update.

Like always, I updated through iTunes. Over the air updating is prone to issues, especially as I had it Jailbroken. When I had the phone jail-broken in the old days, I couldn't easily update the phone. I had to go into DFU mode before I could update. But this time, I could simply hit the update button and it went through without any hiccups. Perhaps the Jailbreak wasn't that extensive as the old ones.

Anyways, now I'm using iOS 7. Is it faster than 7.0.6? I didn't feel that way even though the ArsTechnica review shows a video comparing iOS 7.0.6 and 7.1's animations side by side and there is an improvement in iOS 7.1. Obviously it is not same as completely getting rid of animations. That would have been perfect. I’m looking forward to a Jailbreak so that I can enjoy the best of both worlds.

Well, at least I hope it will be much more stable than iOS 7.0.6. Well, I’ve only used it for a day. No issues so far. I will keep a sharp eye on crashes – both apps and the OS.