Since being released about a month ago, there are already more devices running iOS 11 than iOS 10. According to the latest data from Mixpanel, the installed base of iOS 11 devices currently stands at 52.3% compared to 40.75% for iOS 10. As tends to be the case, most iPhone and iPad users upgraded to Apple’s next-gen mobile OS rather quickly, especially when compared to Android where most users are running variants that are two years old or more. What’s unusual about iOS 11, though, is that it seems to be unusually and exceedingly buggy. While new iOS releases often have a few wrinkles to be ironed out, the problems users are seeing with iOS 11 are more pervasive and troubling than any iOS release in recent memory.
In the build-up to the official iOS 11 release, Apple rolled out a number of iOS 11 betas that were themselves a bit fidgety. It was assumed, though, that many of the more problematic issues would be fixed for the official launch. Alas, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Speaking to the varied problems many iOS 11 users are encountering, a Reddit thread titled “iOS 11 is the buggiest i have ever seen any of my iphones” has already garnered hundreds of comments from iOS 11 users all too eager to share their own experiences, or in this case, tales of woe.
The author of the Reddit thread relays a few worrisome issues that arose only after upgrading his iPhone to iOS 11, including being unable to hear other people on phone calls, the temperamental behavior of the music control widget on the homescreen, and last but not least, the poster adds that his iPhone periodically freezes up for minutes at a time periodically throughout the day. The only way to work around the above issues is to reset the device.
Hardly an isolated experience, a number of commenters chimed in with similar tales of woe and frustration, some of which involve keyboard malfunctions and a noticeable decline in battery life.
A representative comment can be seen below:
I’m seeing all sorts of issues as well on my SE. Third party iMessage apps will just re-populate out of nowhere, forcing me to go back into the edit menu and disable them at least once every few days. The media player widget problem – if I’m playing something in a number of apps (HBO Now, TED, Netflix, Podcasts, Spotify), especially if I’m Casting something, that media won’t show up in the CC widget or the lock screen which forces me to return to the app itself to control playback.
Where iOS 10 was juggling an impressive amount of apps in RAM I’m getting half that performance in iOS 11, re-loading apps I had open 10 minutes ago.
I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen the volume slider. I press the buttons, nothing happens on-screen (I have “buttons control volume” turned on). If I have Control Center open and I drag it down from a little too high it’ll pull the notification shade / lock screen over the Control Center…not to mention the lock screen shade has its own identity crisis. What are you, exactly? Can I pull you down and wait a few seconds for the phone to lock? Are you just for notifications?
The whole thing is very, very sloppy.
Apple this week released its third beta for iOS 11.1, so hopefully the official update will help rectify at least a few of the problems many users are dealing with.
