No other feature is more important to iPhone users than iOS’s vaunted smooth performance. While some iOS releases did make our devices run slower, that has changed with iOS 10 which laid the groundworks three years ago for what would come in iOS 12 the following year: significant speed gains. iOS 13 continues on that trajectory with additional under-the-hood tweaks and optimizations that bring notable speed advances over iOS 12.
Thanks to other software enhancements and feature tweaks, iOS 13 doesn’t just make your device run faster but also lets you perform certain tasks quicker than before.
Here’s what you can expect from iOS 13 in terms of speed and battery performance.
iOS 13: speed improvements
- Faster app launch: Two times faster app launches on the iPhone XS and 2018 iPad Pro series vs. launching the same apps on the same devices running the iOS 12.3 software.
- Faster app downloads: The size of iOS 13 app downloads will be cut in half.
- Smaller app updates:Â App updates will be 60 percent smaller.
- Faster unlock: 30 percent faster Face ID unlock on iPhone X, XS, XS Max, XR and 2018 iPad Pro vs. using Face ID on the same devices running the iOS 12.3 software.
iOS 13: Battery enhancements
It’s recommended to top up your iPhone multiple times per day versus leaving it on the charger until it hits 100 percent as that’s bad for battery health. There’s now a new option in iOS 13 that helps slow the rate of battery aging by reducing the time your phone spends fully charged.
Because Siri intelligence learns from your daily charging routine, iOS can can wait to finish charging past 80 percent until you need to use your phone.
iOS 13: quicker ways of doing things
- Faster cursor navigation: Just pick up the pointer and drag it to where you want.
- Faster share sheets: Share sheets appear faster and Siri now recommends apps and people you might want to share your content with.
- Quicker text selection: Double-tap to select addresses, phone numbers, emails and more. A triple and quadruple-tap selects a sentence and paragraph, respectively.
- Effortless cut, copy and paste: Pinch up with three fingers to quickly copy, pinch up with three fingers two times to cut and pinch down with three fingers to paste.
- Multi-select: Select emails, files and folders by tapping with two fingers and dragging.
- Seamless checklist reordering: In Notes, quickly reorder checklist items with drag and drop. Swipe to indent items and move checked items to the bottom.
- Sign in with Apple: You can sign in to apps and websites that support this feature quickly without filling out forms or creating new passwords. Just tap a button labeled with the text “Sign In with Apple”, then use Face ID or Touch ID to sign in easily.
- Favorite places in Maps: Create a list of frequently-visited places—such as your home and work locations, your favorite gym or your kid’s school—for one-tap navigation.
- Typing by swiping: The QuickType keyboard now supports swipe typing like on Android. Just swipe your finger from one letter to the next and so forth , without removing the finger from the keyboard, to enter letters and words.
- Quick toolbar in Reminders: The redesigned Reminders app has a new quick toolbar above the keyboard for entering times, dates, locations, flags or scanned documents without needing to navigate away to another screen.
- Daily overview in Calendar: iOS 13’s redesigned Calendar app nw gives you quick view of the day, and you can just tap to get directions or dial in to a meeting.
- Safari improvements: A redesigned start page takes you to favorites, frequently visited and most recently visited websites in a tap. A menu in the Smart Search field provides quick access to text size controls, Reader view and per-site settings. You also get tappable search suggestions. Like on desktop, Safari now lets you save a set of open tabs to your bookmarks so you can quickly reopen them later with a tap.
- One more minute: When a Screen Time limit is met, you can tap the option One More Minute so you can quickly save your work or log out of a game.
Tidbits
Aside from the aforementioned perks, iOS 13 helps get you things done faster while preserving battery life with a range of core OS enhancements and various techniques, including these:
- Improved kernel thread scheduler
- Reduced memory usage on Super Retina displays
- Auto layout improvements
- Enhancements in system frameworks
- High-efficiency memory allocation
- APFS cache delete
- DYDL3 closures
- More efficient shared caches
- Improved background process efficiency
- Compiler improvements
- Cached system state
- Asynchronous Metal shaders
- iCloud optimization
- Swift code optimization
- Dynamic network switching
- Optimized FairPlay decryption
- Lunchtime daemon throttling
- Prioritized pageouts
All the performance and battery features in iOS 13
Here are all the changes in iOS 13 when it comes to performance and power consumption.
- Faster app launch: Apps launch up to 2x faster in iOS 13.
- Faster Face ID unlock: Unlocking iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR is up to 30 percent faster.
- Smaller app downloads: Starting this fall, apps from the App Store will be packaged in a new way that makes them up to 50 percent smaller.
- Smaller app updates: App updates will be up to 60 percent smaller on average.
- Optimized battery charging: A new option helps slow the rate of battery aging by reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged. iPhone learns from your daily charging routine so it can wait to finish charging past 80% until you need to use it.
For more on iOS 13, read the press release or visit apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features.
Your thoughts
What are your favorite performance and battery-related improvement in iOS 13, and why?
Let us know by leaving a comment down below.