All good things must come to an end.
tl;dr - The iPad mini 4 is finally starting to be too old to use with Map Pilot Pro. We have been recommending iOS devices with an A10 processor or better for years but it is now becoming a requirement for anything but the simplest tasks.
The iPad mini 4 and its A8 processor were released on September 9, 2015 and were designed to work with iOS 9 and the next few iOS versions. This makes it over 6 years old at the time of this writing. It was discontinued March 18, 2019 so it did have a weirdly long run for an Apple product. It was our default device for a number of years (as was the iPad mini 3 before that). Since 2019 we have been recommending the use of at least an A10 processor or better for the best experience with Map Pilot Pro.
As new iOS versions come out with all the new bells and whistles to support new software and hardware needs the amount of processing power (CPU), memory (RAM), and graphics processing (GPU) goes up and up and up. As new versions of the DJI SDK come out they too require more and more resources.
All devices have finite resources. As this rising tide of system requirements creeps up on the top end capabilities of older devices there is a reduced capacity on the device to run applications that have high system requirements themselves.
During this same period of time we have made Map Pilot Pro more capable as well, so it too has gotten bigger. Despite making performance optimizations in every release, we cannot go backwards with the app's performance in an effort to keep it running on the oldest of devices. If iOS, the DJI SDK, and Map Pilot Pro all get bigger on a regular basis how can it all be expected to work on an old device with less than 1/3 of today's devices capabilities?
At some point Apple will cease to allow iOS updates for this device much like they have with previous generations.
In the meantime it is still possible to use the iPad mini 4 with Map Pilot Pro for smaller maps if the following recommendations are followed:
- Disable 'Show Nearby Mission Plans' in the Map Pilot Settings
- Enable 'Auto Clear Image Points' in the Map Pilot Settings
- Disable 'Show Image Footprint' in the Map Pilot Settings
- Don't use 3rd Party Data Sources
- Don't use the Radius guide
- Use the Streets basemap, not Satellite
- Don't use Virtual Stick controls
- Turn down the screen brightness to limit load on the battery
- Use in Airplane mode
- Turn off WiFi
- Close all other apps
- Start from a fresh iOS device reboot if possible
- Delete old apps and data to free up storage
- Turn off notifications
- Disable Spotlight search
- Turn off automatic app updates
Doing these steps will free up as much iOS system resources as possible and make Map Pilot Pro have as little need as possible.
Sources:
iOS Version History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history
iPad mini 4 information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_Mini_4
What device do you recommend now with older iOS devices no longer keeping up?
The newest you can afford is the real answer. The iPad Mini 5 is still what we do the bulk of our testing with but it too is expected to phase out at some point. They all do...
But, since DJI isn't updating the iOS DJI SDK anymore the requirements there will at least stay the same now. All we have to worry about then is iOS getting bloaty-er.