It seems as though iOS 7 was inordinately buggy when it shipped. With iOS 6, apps would crash multiple times per day, but iOS 7 is an entirely new level of buggy-ness. Springboard crashes regularly. My lock button stopped working after upgrading (I've researched this, and apparently this is an issue that has been known about since Beta 2. Evidently, Apple never got around to fixing it.) The phone routinely becomes unresponsive. The Apple TV version of iOS 7 was bricking devices and had to be withdrawn by Apple. This is not a functional operating system.

iOS 7 is a complete and utter embarrassment for Apple. It was nowhere near ready to ship, and it's become apparent that Apple's hardware release schedule dictated the iOS 7 ship date, and compelled Apple to release iOS 7 prematurely.

Although I've long been a fan of the iPhone due to its superior app ecosystem, I simply can't take my chances with another Apple mobile product. Apple has forced me into a situation whereby I can either elect to continue using a phone that does not turn on and off and crashes perpetually, or use a functional Android device with an inferior ecosystem. Basically any sane person would chose the latter.

iOS 7 was in no way ready to ship, and is still a major regression from iOS 6 even after several subsequent minor releases. The fact that Apple released such an incomplete OS to millions of users really makes me question their judgement.

This is a rather frightening trend that I've seen from Apple over the past couple years.

Other aspects of iOS aside, I would say there are many sane people who would consider the Android app ecosystem superior.

Weird. I haven't had any issues with iOS 7 and it is hardly been a complete and utter embarrassment.

The more likely explanation is that there are issues with the 64-bit transition e.g. drivers or kernel bugs.

This will be fixed I am sure - it's just a result of Apple's hit and miss QA. The real problem is updates. When Apple encourages everyone to upgrade to latest iOS and even forbids rolling back to earlier versions - they should really really get the updates right. We've seen this with iPhone 3G/iOS 4 and now we are seeing it again with iPhone 4/4S and iPad 2/3 on iOS7.

I think that's what has the biggest potential to hurt. I personally know couple friends who jumped ship after the iOS 4 update made their iPhone unusable and they've stuck with Android ever after. My iPad 3 was a stellar device until iOS 7 when it became very unpleasant to use. Luckily I was able to roll back to 6.1.x on the day when they were still allowing it. That's unnecessary pain inflicted on users - and people remember that kind of thing for a long time.

Really? I have a 5S and haven't seen any major issues at all. Certainly not this BSOD. In fact, I quite like iOS 7, overall.

I think part of debugging large, complicated software is shipping it to customers and continually releasing updates. There's no way you can catch every bug a user could possibly run into without releasing...

Depending on what type of Android device you get, you might deal with similar issues. I'm looking at you, HTC.

I don't think it's a full restart, just Springboard crashing and restarting. After a real restart, I think the phone is supposed to required a PIN, instead of allowing the fingerprint sensor to unlock it. But when this happens to me, the fingerprint is sufficient to unlock.

I've had that too, I think around 2 or 3 times, however the restart after that only takes a couple of seconds, so it doesn't bother me too much. I hope this will be fixed with the next software update.

In the middle of a long browser session with multiple tabs open and I receive a phone call boom. BSOD !

The phone restarts and the browser tries to reload all the tabs but the session is lost.

It bugs me even if this is once a week event. iPhone has been around for 6+ years and by now it should be mature enough to not go kaput when a piece of code misbehaves. Android (nexus 4) doesn't do that. They support hundreds of devices. Apple had only a handful and that too with much less diversity.

If you think that Android doesn't crash, you must have never used it. My Samsung Android phone crashed on me so consistently on a daily basis - I couldn't even use apps like Google Maps or WhatsApp because they ALWAYS crash the system. Trust me, it isn't any better.

The HTC Desire X that I've had for a year and a half hasn't crashed once.

Anecdotal, I know - just like your Samsung experience.

Btw, I wonder if the heavy customisation that Samsung does could lower the reliability of the system?

Read carefully. I'm talking about Nexus. I've gone through several iPhone & Android phones & I have a fair amount of idea about how stable each of them are. Samsung UI is a crappy experience.

These bugs are specific to iPhone 5S so the 6+ years reference is irrelevant. And if you actually know how OSs work then you would know that bugs in the kernel or driver will always cause problems regardless of how mature the entire OS is.

It's not written from scratch... iOS 7. The bugs aren't specific to iPhone 5s either. They are causing random crashes on iPad 4 too. I'm not sure where did you learn about kernels and drivers but they don't rewrite it every with OS upgrade. Stability is directly proportional to 'field time'. If you are regressing, you can't blame the flat 2D icons.

Slightly off topic but related, iOS 7 has made iPad 4 less stable too. It reboots ~ once a day while browsing, reading flipboard...

Changing the wallpaper takes a good 10 seconds. The "set home screen" button has no visual feedback so you keep on wondering if it's busy changing the wallpaper or you didn't hit the button correctly. Granted that you don't change wallpapers everyday, but the delay in wallpaper change coupled with no visual feedback makes it an unwelcome experience.

Wow, they've appropriated yet another standout feature of Android phones, especially my craptastic Galaxy Nexus (unfortunately still under contract). I was going to dump it for a 5S in the near future, but between this, the HW sensor issues, and a technical conversation I had with some Apple engineers recently, I'm really scratching my head about what's going on with the company.

This will probably be fixed in a soon software update.

HW sensor issues are strange, but understandable in a new product. Also, it's a pretty small impact.

The damning thing in your statement is your conversation with apple engineers...but you don't provide any information from that conversation.

Two minor quibbles with the new phone, and a secret, don't really add up to a reason for us to doubt Apple. Can you elucidate your claims, or do you just have 'a bad feeling about this'?

I'm not asking you to doubt Apple. All I'm giving is an opinion based on my own recent data, a small amount of which is privy to me (and for purposes of tact will remain so).

If it's just me, then I'm an anomaly and I should be soundly ignored. Time will tell.

That said, I flirt with dumping Android for IOS every time my contract comes up for renewal. Given the reports of 5S performance relative to everything else out there, I was enthusiastically looking forward to getting one. Now, not so much, and I'm considering sticking with the devil I know yet again.

Yes, both these first world problems will be addressed - I spent many years doing driver work so I know that's a given - but it seems like a real step down given that IOS 7 was in the hands of testers for at least 7 months prior to release (according to friends who revealed themselves as such post-release).

FWIW I'm a very happy 5s user. It's crazy fast, and I love the upgraded camera (I'm shocked how well it works). TouchID is also nice (I didn't previously use a PIN). I was using an iPhone 4. I also develop for iOS.

I'm not very fond of iOS 7, the "fuck Scott Forstall" release. The management on the software side is acting like teenagers, trying to rid his contributions without giving a shit about the customer in the process (c.f. the new Calendar app...).

Tim Cook should have kept Forstall and fired the other SVPs who supposedly couldn't get along with him, especially Craig Federighi. My god that was a bad decision, and iOS 7 is just the beginning.

Firing Forstall reminds me of firing Jobs back in the 80s, and I fully expect him to be Apple's CEO in the next 10-15 years. In the meantime, my expectations on the software side are low. They simply have no one qualified to steer the ship at this point.

You're not making any sense. These are 5S specific bugs not general to iOS7.

So you're claiming me that IOS7 wasn't tested on pre-production 5S phones before the release of both of them?

That Apple didn't catch such flaming obvious usability issues blows my mind, but whatever floats your boat. They shipped Apple maps so I guess I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore.

Since we have no idea what the root cause of these bugs is, I would not immediately conclude HW until it is proven so (because usually it's not). And even then, I doubt they will admit it's HW if there's a SW fix for them (which there usually is).

No of course I am not saying that.

What I am saying is that the majority of testing would have been done with iOS7 on shipping devices which have had no issues. The issues seen are specific to 5S which clearly indicates driver or kernel problems.

I actually had a BSOD in the first few minutes of my 5S arriving. It's been rock solid since apart from the usual iOS7 issues.

Do you mean that it actually showed you a blue screen, or just that it rebooted once?

(My phone has rebooted a couple of times - iOS7 clearly has bugs, but I've never seen a blue screen or a pause)

It's actually showing a blue screen. The color blue.

Microsoft: You'll be hearing from our lawyers.

It's a blue screen.

http://www.imore.com/ios-7-blue-screen-death-caught-video-wi...

> This is extremely likely to be a paid piece placed by a competitor.

Oh, the way that statement can be interpreted.

If you read the article, it says that the screen actually turns blue for few seconds and goes blank.

Moreover, even Windows has not shown me the blue screen in a long while ( since Windows 7, now on 8.1 ), but still people call the restarts BSOD. Get over it.

Although very rarely, it does show the BSOD in Windows 7 for me. I think it's like 3 to 4 times in total, in past 2 years.

Yeah I know the Blue screen comes on Windows 7 ( and 8 ) Just that it has not happened to me ( I have had the crashes )

The default setting is to reboot, without showing BSOD.

Your statement was a little disingenuous, because they changed the color to red. I had an RSOD in Win7 about a week ago due to a driver issue.

There's nothing to get over. The article is a dishonest attempt to smear iOS with the reputation for reliability that was associated with early Windows,

If there is a blue screen, and it crashes after showing it, it can be called the BSOD.

Anyway, it's official, it's on Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Screen_of_Death#iPhone_5S :)

Two days ago, my phone's screen turned a snowy blue-on-black; what I suspect is the LCD's test pattern when no data is being sent to it. Then the phone rebooted, showing the Apple logo and then the unlock screen.

This site is haunting my eyes.

Microsoft fanboys bitched that Apple took the flat UI from WP, but they'll probably give this one a pass.