Last week I made one of the stupidest IT decisions I’ve made in recent years:
I upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0!
Dumb, dumb, dumb…
You see, the “Update” button was just sitting there waiting to be pressed in iTunes… and caught up in all the hype around iOS 4.0 I forgot all about those articles I had read… and so I did a backup of my iPhone 3G, and hit the button…
I should have perhaps seen it as a sign when after the upgrade my old backup WOULD NOT RESTORE onto the phone! It was an ugly process… and a couple of hours and multiple restore attempts later my iPhone was in a weird state where it seemed to have data for some apps, but not all. I wound up syncing the apps via iTunes and got the iPhone 3G back into near normal operation – only minus data for some of the apps.
It was then I realized that the only real feature I wanted in iOS – multitasking – doesn’t work on the iPhone 3G! It only works on the iPhone 3GS and of course the new iPhone 4.0. Yes, there is a way to hack it, but I don’t want a jailbroken iPhone.
And what is worse is this…
M… Y… i… P… h… o… n… e… 3… G… i… s… G… L… A…C… I… A… L… L… Y… S… L… O… W… !
It’s VERY clear that the processor on the 3G just can’t handle the performance demands of iOS 4.0. Everything is slooooow. Opening apps. Composing messages. Accepting phone calls. Switching to the home screen. Bringing up the iPod player. Everything… is… slow.
Unfortunately, it appears that this was a one-way trip to iOS 4.0… looking online it appears the only way to get back to iOS 3.0 is to go to an Apple store (which there aren’t any near me) and get a new iPhone 3G with the old OS. That’s not happening any time soon. So it appears I’ll probably just use the iPhone 3G less and look forward to the time when it is eventually upgraded to an iPhone 4. (It’s a corporate phone, and they’re being upgraded over time…)
My question for Apple, though, is this – if you knew this iOS 4.0 “upgrade” was going to make texting, for instance, so painful on a 3G, why did you allow it? Or why didn’t you put prominent warnings in place? (Saying, perhaps: “Be advised that after this upgrade you will not have multitasking and your 3G will be slow as molasses.”)
In the meantime, if you have a iPhone 3G and have been debating about “upgrading” to iOS 4.0, don’t do it! Stick with what you have – you’ll be much happier!
P.S. And yes, that snail image accompanying this article was drawn by yours truly on my iPad, demonstrating to you all why I need to leave the artwork to my wife and stick to writing! 😉
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Thanks Dan, for the warning. I like the snail, though.
Dan,
I too upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS 4 and am having lots of problems (bluetooth tethering is gone, usb tethering needs iTunes running to operate, slowness, less battery life, amongst other problems).
Afaik though it is possible to restore an old backup of iOS3 onto your 3G. I haven’t looked into it but I have seen a couple of people mention it on Twitter. @dahowlett comes to mind.
Might be worth looking into it further. I can’t as I am away from the machine I backed up on for the next month!
Hey Dan,
I had the same experience with my iPhone 3G and upgrading to iOS4. It was slow to be diplomatic. But, I found, by accident, a way to upgrade to iOS4 and keep the “speed” of the phone intact. You have to restore the phone from a backup. I’ve been running iOS4 for little more than a week with the same performance as I had with iOS3. I haven’t found anyone else who had tried this and had the same results as me. I wonder if I am the exception rather than the rule, but I just thought I’d through it out there.
I have found out exactly the same after the upgrade.
One thing what I have found out also that quite some apps do not work anymore.
I would like to downgrade also.
@Rich – you’re welcome. And glad you like the snail! 😉
@Tom – yes, I’ve noticed battery life has gone down, too. I did try restoring from a backup and after multiple attempts eventually gave up and installed apps to get the phone going again.
@Michael – Interesting that the restore from backup got your iPhone working at a similar speed. Unfortunately, I could never get a restore from my pre-4.0 backup to successfully complete.
@Raul – yes, I waited until the key apps I use had all issued updates that said they worked with 4.0. Sorry to hear all your apps didn’t work.
I have a iPhone 3G on 4.0
Try These Steps…
1)Update to 4.0
2)Restore iPhone as NEW
3)Sync Apps One By One
4)Sync the rest of your stuff
Hope this helps!
Good Luck!
hellow sir iam ramesh i have a one 3gs iphone thats have a one problem its not restore of itunes and not unlocked my phone pls rply its request
Ramesh, unfortunately I don’t have a 3GS iPhone and I, too, had problems restoring from iTunes (onto my 3G). So I am afraid I have no ideas on how to help you. My suggestion would be to try raising an issue in the support forums on http://www.apple.com/
Hope you get it fixed!
I got most of my lost speed back by clearing out all the windows in Safari and setting the last one to about:blank.
Downgrade NOW! (I did, theres no need to jailbreak)
http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3g%5Bs%5D-from-ios-4-to-ios-313
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