iOS 4.1 brought much-needed stability and performance improvements to the original release; iOS 4.2 brought iOS 4’s features to the iPad, which arguably needed them even more badly than other iOS devices; iOS 4.3 is polishes the original iOS 4 release to a dull sheen without changing anything fundamental to the experience.

For those of you with supported devices, there’s basically no reason not to download the iOS 4.3 update. You might not notice or use each and every one of its enhancements, but it’s certainly not going to break anything. This is just about as mature as iOS 4 is going to get - we may see the odd update to fix security or stability issues or possibly to bring the Verizon iPhone 4 into the fold, but this is likely the end of the line. If you don't like what you see in iOS 4, your best bet is to wait patiently for iOS 5, which we'll probably see more of later this spring.

Other Features
Comments Locked

41 Comments

View All Comments

  • Stuka87 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link

    These things are all great, but what I *REALLY* want is a "Mark all items read" inside mail. I get my mail in several locations, so I don't always need to read them on my phone. But to clear out the count, I have to go and select each one, let it load, then move on to the next.

    But, maybe in iOS5!
  • Spoelie - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link

    Use IMAP instead of POP?
  • aguilpa1 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link

    Why else would they cut support to devices so quickly and release the ipad 2 so quickly behind the heels of the ipad 1? They see so many other manufactures working on dual core and even quad core devices that easily mimic or exceed the performance standards of their own devices and they have no choice. The problem is when you start pushing your development cycles up to try and stay relevant you risk pissing off the very people that support them. I have only one apple device which I bought against my better judgement (iphone 3G) and when they released the iOS that literally crippled my device I saw what they were doing. Upgrade to our new devices or we will break or make your old one useless. That is the one and only apple device I will ever purchase.
  • chris1317 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link

    Fragmentation :)

    lol it feels good to get some revenge

    Regards
    Eric Schmidt
  • bplewis24 - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link

    lol... in deed.
  • strikeback03 - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link

    Yeah, I don't see why the article says this will prevent fragmentation. Users aren't going to get rid of those devices just because they don't support the newest OS version. I'm sure there will be plenty of 2nd gen iPod touches still in use a year from now, not sure how that wouldn't be fragmentation.

    Nevermind that even devices with the same OS version don't necessarily have the same capabilities. There seems to be more fragmentation than reviewers want to admit.
  • solipsism - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link

    You call one company that doesn’t give away its OS to any and all vendors and who updates their products on a yearly cycle “fragmentation”? Seriously?! Your ass probably bitches about Apple not updating more frequently as soon as some new component gets into a test phase or for not giving iOS away just so it can be fragmented across hundreds of devices that never see an update, unless iDevices that get 2.5-3 years of rich updates.
  • mikael.skytter - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link

    Hello!
    As previously pointed out here, the scores for 3GS in 4.3 seems abit low.
    My friend and I have 3GS phones, he has a 32Gb model and I have the 16 Gb model.

    He got 5333.1 and I received 5479.1

    We had just updated to 4.3 and had no other Safari windows open.
    We also both have alot of applications installed so it´s not a "clean" phone.

    I ran the sunspider benchmark twice yesterday with the 4.2.1 software to compare it to your results. The result were similar. Within ~35 on both runs.

    The other scores, with the 4.3 software have also been re-run and we are 7-800 below you.
    This opens up a question on how this phones were tested.

    Is it possible for you to re-run the 4.3 benchmark on the 3GS phone?
  • philipus - Friday, March 11, 2011 - link

    On my 16GB 3GS 4.3 seems faster. Safari is snappier, but also the OS interface seems perkier. 4.2 seemed a lowpoint on my phone. 4.1 was good. But 4.3 is much better.
  • davidm71 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link

    Anyone test battery life improvements if any over previous iOs versions?

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now