Four biggest iOS 7 complaints and how to fix some of them

Apple’s radically redesigned iOS 7 has been available for more than two weeks now, and users are upgrading to it at a record clip.

Reports of satisfaction are generally high, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been hiccups. In fact, a handful of problems have prompted a swell of complaints from some users.

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Here’s quick rundown of the four biggest ones so far, and what if anything can be done about them:

1. iMessage: This popped up in recent days when users began complaining that messages sent via Apple’s iMessage service weren’t, in fact, being sent and received. Or worse, appeared to have been sent but were not actually sent.

Apple has acknowledged the problem and says it’s working on a fix. In a statement, it said: “We are aware of an issue that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update. In the meantime, we encourage any users having problems to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users.”

In the meantime, try this. It worked for me, though I’ve had to do it twice now.

Go to Settings, then scroll down to Messages. Tap that, and where it says “iMessage” slide the button to the off position.

Go back to Settings and choose General, and then Reset. Tap “Reset Network Settings.” Once the phone comes back on, go back to Settings and turn iMessage back on.

2. Dizziness: The swooping icons and new animations have prompted some users to complain about feeling dizzy or queasy. Checking the discussion forums on Apple.com, the thread about this issue has received 38,749 views and 515 replies.

“The zoom animations everywhere on the new iOS 7 are literally making me nauseous and giving me a headache,” says a post by one user. “It’s exactly how I used to get car sick if I tried to read in the car.”

What can you do? Go to Settings, then General, then Accessibility. Tap “Reduce Motion.” That should help some, but not entirely if you’re particularly susceptible to motion sickness.

3. Battery life: iOS 7 contains lots of nifty new features under the hood designed to save you time and effort. But some folks are also finding that they’re draining their phone’s battery at a faster clip.

The four likely culprits are: background app refreshing, automatic updates, frequent locations and Spotlight search.

To turn off background app refreshing, go to Settings, then General, then Background App Refresh. Disable it.

To turn off automatic updates, got to Settings then iTunes and then Apple Store. Disable the updates option.

To turn off frequent locations, go to Settings, then Privacy, then Location Services. Scroll down to System Services and disable any features here you don’t want or need. Then go back to Frequent Locations and turn that off as well.

Finally, to limit Spotlight’s battery consumption, go to Settings, then General, then Spotlight Search. Uncheck things you don’t need Spotlight to index.

4. iPhone 4: Many users were excited that Apple made iOS 7 available for this generation of iPhone. However, after installing it, many are reporting that it seems to have slowed their phones way down.

If you haven’t upgraded your iPhone 4 to iOS 7, I recommend reading this detailed benchmarking by Ars Technica. It’s pretty thorough, and it mirrors the experience we’ve had with our family’s iPhone 4 after installing iOS 7.

“The iPhone 4 and iOS 7 just can’t quite provide an experience that’s up to Apple’s usual standard,” Ars Technica writes. “Apply the update if there’s an iOS 7 feature (or an iOS 7-only app) that you need in your life, but our recommendation now would either be to wait for potential performance boosts in a future iOS 7 update or to start looking into a new iPhone 5C or 5S.”

In the meantime, it doesn’t appear possible to roll back to iOS 6 at the moment. But it appears some folks are working on an unofficial workaround to make that possible.

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