I installed Apple’s mobile operating system on my almost three-year-old iPhone 4 yesterday afternoon. I had initially thought I wouldn’t bother, thinking the aging A4 wouldn’t quite be up to the task of keeping the user experience as snappy as iOS 6. I have been pleasantly surprised so far.

After reading reports of some laggy-ness and overall slower responsiveness I figured I could wait until November when I will upgrade to the iPhone 5S. But after a couple of clients called with upgrade questions and seeing iOS 7 in action on a friend’s iPhone 4, I decided I would give it a go.

So far I have not really noticed that much of a performance hit. The animated transitions may be slower than they would be on newer hardware, but I don’t have anything to compare them with so they seem fine to me. They are smooth and the entire interface experience seems to flow easily. There is no jerky-ness that I have noticed so it seems Apple has done a good job of accounting for older hardware in their coding.

The only jankyness that I’ve noticed has been within certain apps. For example, the Facebook app is doggy-slow and crashes often. This was the case before iOS 7, so I doubt the problem is with Apple’s upgrade.

All-in-all, a good experience so far. It’s sort of like having a new phone. I look forward to actually getting the latest hardware and seeing this OS upgrade really shine.