how does iOS 8 particularly voiceover run on an iPhone 5s?

By Mike, 19 September, 2014

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi all,

I am going to be upgrading from my iPhone 4s and wanted to know if iOS 8 will be better in regards to voiceover on an iPhone 5s. I would like to use iOS 8 to be up to date with its features but realized on my 4s it is basically unusable. Can anyone provide me any feedback on how voiceover is running on their 5s device?
Thanks all,

Options

Comments

By Seanoevil on Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 23:55

Hi Mike,
You say that your current phone is unusable, if you want some specific feedback as to whether an iPhone 5S may work for you, try telling the forum how you use it.

I have an iPhone5, on IOS8 and not one of the bugs has caused me any issues.
I am not saying that the bugs don't exist or aren't serious but they just don't get in the way of what I do with the device.

I don't use Braille, Blue tooth keyboards but do you? With out knowing what is important to you, neither I or anyone on this forum, can offer any real advice.
Sincerely,
Sea No Evil.

By Mike on Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 23:55

Hi,

I should have been more specific for sure. I use it as my personal phone but also to demonstrate for work. I will sometimes use braille displays and bluetooth keyboards. I suppose that I really want to know if voiceover restarts its self in the middle of reading a web page, scanning through apps, and is it responsive. On my 4s voiceover crashes, restarts, and responds very slowly to my gestures. Do these things happen on a 5s running iOS 8? Can I still use a braille display if I do not change the status cell from the off setting? Does Alex read as good as or better then Samantha? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best to all.

By dvdmth on Sunday, October 5, 2014 - 23:55

Since you said you will be using Bluetooth keyboards, I advise against running iOS 8. The current Bluetooth keyboard support in iOS 8 makes such keyboards practically useless. I was actually going to try to post this reply on my iPad Air, but I had to give it up and switch to my Mac to post this.

On my iPad, VoiceOver works okay with iOS 8, until I turn on my keyboard, at which point all sorts of bad things start happening, including crashes. As I posted in the bugs conversation, most VoiceOver commands, including all those involving the Control and Option keys, don't work at all. Expect to encounter duplicate keys, keys not registering because of VoiceOver crashing, frequent announcements of VoiceOver On, and an overall lousy experience.

Without the Bluetooth keyboard, using the touch screen instead, the iPad Air works well enough for me to use it. However, I am too use to typing and web surfing with a Bluetooth keyboard, so I am forced to switch to my Mac for those functions until the Bluetooth issues get resolved. I am trying out the braille input feature, but it will be some time yet before I am comfortable enough to use it regularly, assuming I ever get there.

Though I don't have an iPhone 5S, I imagine it will be similar to the iPad Air since the hardware is similar. Plus, several of the bugs posted on this site will impact the use of a phone, as opposed to a tablet, such as problems in the Phone and Messages apps. Since I don't have an iPhone of any kind, I cannot speak for those, but from the chatter I've seen, the issues are significant enough to impact usability.

If you want to compare usability with the iPhone 4S, I suspect the overall experience will be better. I've heard that even sighted users have problems running iOS 8 on the 4S, and since that's the oldest model Apple officially supports, it's no wonder to me. Having said that, the iPhone 5S will run much better with iOS 7 than with iOS 8, at least until Apple works out the bugs.