TL;DR: If you’re running an older device, iOS 9 is iOS 8 is iOS 7.

These are my thoughts for iOS 9 running on a 4 year old iPad 2 (not the iPad Air 2, just the iPad 2. Yeah.) and an iPhone 4s (back when the ‘s’ was understood to still stand for ‘siri’. We don’t know what it stands for anymore).

I’m a little surprised iOS 9 was released for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s. Actually, I was a little surprised iOS 8 was released for iPad 2 and iPhone 4s. These little machines have seen 5 generations of major iOS versions in a little of 4 years.

App Switching

As far as the feature list goes in iOS 9, well, neither of my devices are seeing a lot of the new features. The first thing I did notice was the new app switcher screen that appears when you double tap the home screen or swipe up on the iPad with four fingers. That’s probably the screen I visit the most since I make sure to always close my last app since the device’s memory is small and the battery has been degrading for awhile now. Your ‘most recent’ contacts aren’t shown there anymore. I guess Apple noticed that the last person who called me (thanks mom), isn’t who I’m trying to find when I’m switching between Flipboard and Safari. The new layout works way better on the larger iPad screen than the tiny iPhone 4s screen, but I’m assuming on the newer iPhone’s it would be less squished.

The app switching screen on the iPad. BTW, this is 2 too many apps open for an iPad 2. Woah, alliteration.

News

First I used Pulse, then there was the reign of Flipboard, now iOS 9 has it’s own news app. The news app functions a lot like Flipboard in it’s style but it’s style reminds me A LOT of Windows 8/10’s news app. The only difference is iOS 9 news might be a little cleaner. The best feature for me about Flipboard is the Pocket integration, which iOS 9 news also has (the Windows 8/10 news app was missing this, but you could save articles to the inferior reading list app).

This is what my one and only app screen. Watching videos and reading web articles are what the iPad 2 is best at…still.

Notes

The Notes app is significantly improved in iOS 9, including the ability to organize notes into folders and inline images into your notes. There are still plenty of better note taking apps in the App Store though.

Speaking for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, I’ve always found note taking inferior to pen and paper. Notes should be handwritten, not typed, and there are no great pen stylus’s for older devices like there are for some of the newer ones.