Why does my iPad keep crashing?
 

Haven't seen the answer to this by searching, so hoping for a little help. I have a first generation iPad, which over the last six months is becoming increasingly prone to crashing while web surfing. It is also getting slower and slower to load web pages. Is it just becoming obsolete and unable to keep up to the technology, or could it be something else?

Thx much.

Do a full restore and see if that help.

Make sure back up everything first.

Thanks, tried that a couple of weeks ago, didn't help.

Two other things to try:
1. Free up as much memory as you can.
2. Switch to Chrome web browser.

Good luck!

Review your list of Apps running & updating in the background (iOS5 or 6 ??) including iCloud as you can update those as needed instead of continuously - being memory hogs. Available storage - free up internal space if it is running close to / near its full capacity including uninstall of "dormant" Apps. Go with a simple background/wallpaper & switch off some of the bells & whistles.

+1 on using Chrome. Safari is total garbage.

I don't know how much longer you'll be able to use the legacy device. Might be time to upgrade to Gen5.

What you are experiencing is common among us 1st gen iPad owners. It appears to be a combo of the autorefresh, the inability of IOS 5 to handle more than one tab or two at the same time.
Try another browser, that helped me. But of course the biggest help was getting a new iPad air. ;)

Well just know your experience is typical on newer iPads as well. Safari crashes all the time on my iPad w/Retina display. It's gotten worse since iOS 7 came around... not a day that goes by that I don't regret "upgrading."

Chrome crashes as much as Safari. My only solution was an ipad air. I think the first gen just doesnt have the chops.

My iPad Air has crashed a few times; twice simply by opening a web page and once launching the Netflix app. I hope iOS 7.1 improves things; I don't remember my iPad 2 ever crashing.

you could jailbreak and monitor just how much memory it is taking up. Whether you use Chrome, Safari, Atomic or anything else - the underlying browser engine is the same as in Safari - it is only the extra features like the bookmark syncing, file saving, etc that are unique to the other browsers.

:-: Absolutely correct. Many people assume that you should use Chrome on iOS devices because it's better than other browsers on PCs and Macs. Chrome on iOS devices is actually significantly slower than Chrome for JavaScript performance as Apple only allow the Nitro acceleration to be used on Safari. This difference is really dramatic on many modern websites that use JavaScript extensively.

here is another reason to jailbreak especially on an older iPad - you can enable Nitro acceleration at all times, LOTS of apps are really just a wrapper around a webpage, so it comes in handier than just when/if you decided not to use Safari.

Consider upgrading the hardware, even if it's to a gently used 2nd or 3rd gen.

The original iPad only had 256MB of RAM, that doubled with the iPad 2.

Barring that, check your iOS version. The original running iOS 5 was prone to a lot of crashing and that was somewhat mitigated by 5.1.1.

I've found that clearing the Safari Cache helps. Not sure if it was just clearing the history or both Cookies and Data, but it helped my iPad 3g for a while.

Settings > Safari > Clear History / Clear Cookies and Data