Moving back to iOS 6

[jt1968]

Not seeing this on AT&T so it must be a CDMA thing.

Same here. I had an AT&T iPhone 5, and actually noticed better battery life when I updated to iOS7. I now have the 5s, and it's wonderful! Battery drain is quite slow.

I'm starting to think iOS7 works best with the iPhone 5s, since both the OS and the phone are 64-bit, and it would seem logical to me that iOS7 was written FOR the 5s.

I've only had the 5s for 2 days, but it's looking like my battery only drains down to 75-80% by bedtime (from a full 100% at 7:00am) - typical day's usage for me is checking and responding to e-mail and text messages several times a day, placing 2 or 3 short phone calls, using the Kindle app during lunch (approx. 40 minutes' reading time), and surfing the web/Facebooking/reading news sites for approx. 2 hours.

I've also noticed iOS7 on the 5s has far better memory management than the 5. I have a memory cleaner app ("SYS-Activity"), which typically reports 200MB or so (sometimes less) as free memory, yet the phone never slows down when I open more apps, and I can switch between apps with no apparent problems. The app will only free up to about 375MB or so of memory on the 5s, but would free up to 600MB on the 5 - this tells me iOS7 is a memory hog, but has much better memory management than iOS6.

 

[MacInWin]

I put IOS7 on my iPhone 4S, CDMA (Verizon) and my battery life is improved slightly over IOS6. I did turn off the automatic updates and I have followed the suggestions here. I did leave the parallax feature on, but the biggest saving seemed to come from managing location services. Seems just about every app now wants to know where you are, but most of them don't actually provide you any functionality based on it. So I turned most of them off.

 

[lindy]

Updated to iOS 7 on my iPad Mini and cannot believe this has been developed by Apple! I truly this sent going to be the way forward for Apple. Asked if it was possible to go back to iOS 6 and was told no, I certainly won't be updating my iPad 3! I use Safari most of all and personally the ios7 has gone down the toilet! The wishy washy fine light blue icons are so faint, and if you have some sight problems then it is very tiring! By merging the old search and URL boxes into a single search box in ios7 has made the simple task of 'googling' a real nightmare. In iOS 7, one tap and either all the text gets deleted, or safari starts searching what IT thinks you want after using it's predictable text suggestion. I absolutely hate this new Safari and once you finally get it to search what YOU want, 8/10 times it crashes or error message that safari cannot open the page! I've never known Apple to go backwards in this industry, but sometimes, it's the basics that work! The new screens are just fussy and no longer plain and simple! I am so glad I didn't install it on my iPad 3, if you are colour blind then the new wishy washy icons in the tool bars are useless. Now my iPad Mini is up for sale.......thanks Apple!

 

[Stretch]

I put IOS7 on my iPhone 4S, CDMA (Verizon) and my battery life is improved slightly over IOS6. I did turn off the automatic updates and I have followed the suggestions here. I did leave the parallax feature on, but the biggest saving seemed to come from managing location services. Seems just about every app now wants to know where you are, but most of them don't actually provide you any functionality based on it. So I turned most of them off.

Well, guess I'm not the only one. I thought battery life increased a bit on my 4S also, and I left auto updates on.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I was digging deeper into my wife's settings on her 4S and reading up more. Here's an article on CNET that has some good tips:
For longer battery life, change these iOS 7 settings | How To - CNET

There are several things in Location Services that can be turned off. One I've not seen before (new to iOS 7?) is "Frequent Locations". I saw no need to keep that on, so off it went. I also noticed that the Location Services icon was permanently on in the top bar on my wife's iPhone despite closing everything that was in the Task Switcher. I had to root through her list of apps that had access to Location Services until I found the culprit... some app she needs for work. I doubt that app need to be using Location Services, but she'll have to look into that.

 

[rainbowcat]

Can this be done. I dislike iOS 7 and feels its very sluggish. It also may toast my battery which is something iOS 6 did not do. If they force me on this one, I may move back to using the BlackBerry.

I just got a 4s with iOS7, and the battery is fine. I've been told that you need to tone down apps, auto updates, notifications and such to save your battery life, but it's not really the fault of iOS7. I'd search for "iOS7 battery saving tips" before you give up. Sorry I don't remember the site I used, but my battery life is quite good. Good luck.

 

[osxx]

The bad thing about reverting is the rest of the world is going forward along with app updates at some point you either have to update or find a new platform and then they experience the same thing.