Hello and welcome back to this sixth installment of our series of articles dedicated to performance tuning by iOSthe operating system developed by Apple and used in the vast iPhone lineup.
In the previous one lesson we have described the quickest way to upgrade your smartphone firmware, in order to optimize device performance and increase battery charge life and, consequently, also its longevity.
Today we will focus instead on the disabling system animations. The graphic environment developed by the Californian company’s coders is full of countless aesthetic details and graphic frills of various kinds, designed to make the user experience of the various tools and applications integrated into iOS aesthetically appealing.
Animations and performances
Obviously, to be correctly processed these graphic elements require a considerable amount of CPU, GPU and RAM memory resources. In essence, animations can lead, especially in older iPhone models, to a significant slowdown in performance and, in the most serious cases, even a series of lags and jamming during normal daily operations.
Fortunately, these aesthetic frills are completely optional and are not absolutely necessary for the correct execution of daily tasks. These are precisely aesthetic elements designed solely to improve the graphic environment, therefore disabling them can above all lead to a performance advantage.
Furthermore, removing these animations allows you to increase the autonomy of your mobile phone. In fact, the graphic effects have a significant impact on the battery charge, this is because the processor and the graphics card must perform a series of calculations to operate the correct 2D and 3D rendering of the elements on the display.
By removing the animations, not only are precious resources freed up which can then be dedicated to other tasks, but a large amount of less energy is physically consumed. Reducing the impact on the battery also helps preserve its longevity, as fewer recharge cycles will be required.
Precisely for these reasons, some smartphone manufacturers implement very aggressive power management systems which provide for the disabling of most of the aesthetic components present in the Desktop environment of mobile devices.
Disabling these elements of iOS allows you to obtain great performance advantages and helps to lengthen the life of the smartphone. The procedure for removing the cosmetic components of the operating system is not complicated. This is an operation that can be performed using an integrated tool, so you don’t need third-party applications and you don’t risk damaging or compromising the correct functioning of your smartphone.
As previously mentioned, the removal of graphic effects is particularly indicated on models with more years above the shoulders. So if you own an old iPhone 6/6S, 7, 8 or a SE (2016 edition) this guide is perfect for you.
Disable iOS visual effects
To disable system animations and optimize the performance of our phone we must go inside the control panel of the device.
It is a procedure that can be performed by any type of user, even by those who are beginners and have recently purchased an Apple smartphone. In fact, disabling the graphic effects is an operation that does not require previous computer knowledge, it is enough simply to disable the options that we are going to indicate.
First of all we unlock the iPhone using the FaceID, or with the classic TouchID if we have an iPhone SE or less recent models, and we access the home screen.
So let’s browse through the various screens available until we find the application called “Settings” which has the stylized cogwheel icon. Alternatively, if we do not find this software, we can find it through the convenient iOS integrated search function present in the “App Library”.
We always swipe to the right until the end of the user-customized screens. Now we should be able to view a text field in the upper part of the display where it is possible to type the word “Settings”, so as to obtain the application we are looking for.
There is also another search mode or voice search using Apple’s digital assistant, Siri. So from the unlocked iPhone we say aloud the keyword “Hey Siri” and then “Open Settings”.
Once inside the iOS “Settings” a long list of categories will be displayed. What interests us is called “Accessibility”. So let’s tap on this option to access a new window with various items, then select the “Screen Effects” category.
At this point it will be necessary to tick the “Reduce Movement” item, in order to decrease the movement speed of the UI and reduce the consumption of processor resources.
This option also includes theparallax effect of icons. Furthermore, always from the same panel, we remove the check from the “Automatic iMessage effects” and “Automatic video previews” options.
In this way we will prevent the self-playing of the videos, avoiding useless battery consumption, and we will stop the automatic playback of the full-screen effects in the iMessage application.
Confirm the new settings
To confirm the settings just entered into the system, we advise you to restart the iPhone. To do this, go back to the “Settings” again, then move to the category called “General” and finally tap on the “Turn off” option at the bottom.
At this point, the prompt with the slider for turning off the phone will appear.
Once the reboot process has been completed, the timing of which depends entirely on the iPhone model and the power of the processor integrated into the device’s SoC, iOS should already appear considerably more responsive and performing than before.
This is because the system resources previously occupied by the video card for rendering 2D/3D animations can be used for the user’s various daily tasks.
We should also notice a considerable increase in battery life, this is because a significantly smaller amount of energy will be consumed compared to the normal stock settings present in iOS.
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