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My 3GS is running incredibly slow and seems to have lost some responsiveness when typing and entering URL's. It's very frustrating.

My 3GS is running okay. I would say the battery life has been greatly diminished since the 4.0.1 update. And I know I'm not the only one suffering from that problem.
 
It's a little more complicated than a simple restore, but there are instructions on the google that will help you out. I followed them step-by-step and it worked out just fine for me.

However, what they don't tell you (or at least the instructions I read) is that you cannot restore a 4.0 backup to a 3.1.x device. So you're going to have to decide how valuable your data is to you.

Here is quick summary:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1685112&postcount=32
You can restore from a backup after that, you just need a backup that was made when the iPhone was still running 3.1.x. (Probably one should still exist your Time Machine backups, how to select this older backup and where exactly it should sit, you'll have to google.)
 
Its simple, all you have to do is get the firmware version you want for the 3G (1,2) then you can probably just do a restore, but hold option then click restore, not sure what it is on the PC. Then just point to the FW you want and let it go. Simple. There are also TONS of videos tutorials on the web. A quick google search will find one.

thanks so much, i've been trying to figure out how to restore my little sister's 3G. I felt terrible after praising iOS4 for weeks on end and downloading it as soon as it came out only to find that it royally jacked up her phone. Then felt even worse when i got the iP4 and it ran amazingly on it. Don't want to ruin her first :apple: experience (although she's a damn good Starcraft 2 player on my MBP)
 
Make sure you finished the upgrade...

My iPhone 3G takes a full minute to boot with iOS4, used to be much quicker. Also the iPod is glitchy as hell - it refuses to play numerous songs loaded on the device, it just skips them every time I select them. iPhone 4 is great, figures.

Check that you actually finished the upgrade. My kids had the same problem with some of the songs on their iPod Touch. The song would be there but when you tried to play it it would jump to the next song. When they did another sync it said that it did not complete the upgrade. They let it finish and then all the songs worked properly.
 
a cell phone is not a computer

If I'd been more aware of just how bad my iphone would run under 4.0, I never would have bothered to upgrade. I didn't expect it to run like an iPhone 4, but I didn't expect it to run so slow. If they'd said "Don't upgrade an Iphone 3" I would have complied.

However, Apple doesn't seem to understand that a cell phone is not a computer. Prior to the iPhone I used cell phones for years without an upgrade because it was a dependable piece of hardware that made calls and sent messages etc. (all Nokias). The iPhone has many useful functions, but if I'm going to be on the path of buying a brand new one every year or 18 months, it's not really of much value, especially stuck with a **** network like AT&T.
 
Downgraded and happy about it

I eventually gave up on iOS4 and downgraded it back. I didn't lose much because when I upgraded, the restore broke and I lost all of the stuff on my phone.
 
For someone to have made that, time placed into the production could have gone into gone into something more profitable that could have earned him an iPhone 4.

Same could be said for the time it took to write this response. :rolleyes:

The video is literally the truth, iOS4 is horrible on a 3G. But I am glad Apple is looking to fix the issues, as they should. Multitasking we might not get, but the update shouldn't be any slower for it, otherwise they shouldn't have released it for 3G's in the first place.
 
I can definitely attest to it. I cannot listen to the iPod and check my email at the same time without the song locking up. I also noticed that push email puts the phone to a halt. :(
 
So, I'm running iOS 4 on my 16 GB iPhone 3G and it runs better than it did before. ;)

Not to discount those who are having problems but, we are running software on hardware that is 2 generations behind. I can't run Snow Loepard on my G4 and G5 Macs at all!
 
OK, I just read the WSJ article. Looks like this topic only refers to the 3G, not the 3GS. In my case, my 3GS has been suffering from substantial slowdowns since I upgraded to iOS 4. Can anyone else corroborate this behavior with the 3GS?

Thanks.

Yeah, in a nutshell it's all the apps now being "iOS 4" aware and not shutting down when you exit them (aka starving your phone for memory). Under "iOS 3" or whatever you want to call it, when you hit the home button, the app shut down, thus freeing up all the RAM it's using (the 3GS only has 256 MB of RAM, while the 4 has 512 MB of RAM). Now with the new improved "iOS 4" when you hit the home button the app stays running. I've been running into a multitude of slow downs, and sure enough when I hit the home button twice to bring up the list of all the apps running that I can swap too, their all there. If I shut them all down that way (hold down the app until the little X button shows up), my phone returns back to normal speed. Heck outside of a few apps, I wish there was a way to tell them to NOT KEEP running. It'd be like opening every single app you have on your computer and NEVER closing them all.
 
Haha I sold my iPhone 3G after upgrading to iOS4 and never looked back.
It was already a pain in the a** with 3.0 but 4.0 made it much more obvious.
And I won't be buying an iPhone4 :)
 
Same here on 3Gs

OK, I just read the WSJ article. Looks like this topic only refers to the 3G, not the 3GS. In my case, my 3GS has been suffering from substantial slowdowns since I upgraded to iOS 4. Can anyone else corroborate this behavior with the 3GS?

I had the issue, too. And it forced me to downgrade the software. I miss the folders.
 
Oddly for me, the 4.0.1 update greatly improved my iphone 3g's performance. Might have had a bad update when i went to ios4 (which sadly is more and more common these days).
 
3G with iOS4

Yup, that's pretty much how mine behaves. My favorite is when I go to turn 3G off to conserve battery life, I have to wait after moving the switch until I see it drop the network, or it will miss the fact that I've slid the slider, and just stay on 3G.

Mail loads slowly (to be expected with the unified inbox), but it really did slow down significantly. I'm looking forward to the upgrade, after the initial rush is over.
 
Exactly my experience. I even had occasional audio stutter (in the iPod app). The other 3G owner I have talked about this is also reporting random restarts.
Resetting helps, restarting helps, switching of Spotlight helps, doing a DFU-Restore also helps but it still sucks.

I am getting a 4G anyway but I will definitely restore 3.1.3 before selling the device.
 
Workaround

Didn't John Gruber (Daring Fireball) report a workaround of cold-booting your 3G phone so that the OS had to rebuild it's memory image from scratch (rather than saving and restoring it, as a normal shutdown would do)?

Have people tried that?

I had the iOS 4 experience on my 3G before getting a 4. I didn't really perceive it being any worse than iOS 3 was... which was still pretty sluggish for a lot of things.
 
I have a 3GS and 4.0.x has been horrible.

Performance has been a nightmare, and the bugs have been driving me nuts.

- Camera can take 10-60 seconds to load.
- Taking a picture can take 10-30 seconds.
- Loading SMS can take up to 10 seconds.
- Entering lots of text under SMS (>200-400 characters) will cause text "jittering" when I scroll up and down (to review, correct, or proof read text).
- Safari has rendering errors. Sometimes text changes size, form submission boxes (like when posting on Forums like this one) resize at random. Text may overlap and become unreadable.
- Sometimes a device using GPS ("Location Services") gets hung or something, and this drains the battery super fast. I'm talking 100% to 0% in an hour and a RED HOT iPhone from 100% CPU usage.
 
I still don't understand why 3G owners expect, no, demand that iOS4 run on their phone at all, let alone flawlessly. It's old hardware. Just like a 2 cycle prior mac is, regardless of purchase date, a 2 cycle prior phone is also old. They should look at this as a blessing; the fact that Apple even cared past 1-revision prior is a gift in it of itself. Personally, it would have been easier if they just didn't support it, and then we wouldn't have to hear about people and their expected entitlements so much.

There's too many people with a sense of entitlement, and not enough people with a shred of logic or reasoning.

But that's just me.
 
That video reminds me of my 1st-gen iPod touch ever since upgrading to iOS 3.
 
Heck outside of a few apps, I wish there was a way to tell them to NOT KEEP running. It'd be like opening every single app you have on your computer and NEVER closing them all.

This would be an extremely useful "bug fix' in my opinion. My fingers are crossed for iOS 4.1 but I'm not holding my breath.
 
I'm sure Apple knew OS 4 performance was going to suck on the 3G, even with the limited feature set, but to tell people "2 years of supported upgrades" and then to not deliver may have been worse. Apple was bound to get complaints either way.

Or they could just keep supporting iPhone OS 3 for another couple years. It's not that hard. OH, but I guess that would actually mean delivering value, instead of delivering frustration.
 
My 3G is *painfully* slow after upgrading to iOS4. I bought a new iPhone 4 and plan to sell my 3G on ebay, but I can't (with a clear conscience) advertise it as having iOS4 on it when it runs as slow as it does. It takes 8 seconds to open my email.
 
LMFAO - OK, seriously; It took me a long time to realise with the iPhone, but you will be saying that for another 10 years! Every time major glitches are discovered, a fix is offered a few months later which creates it's own glitches - FFS it drives me crazy! Why should you need an update now? It is unbelievable that they would bugger it up this much.

Why? Because they had a world wide launch of their best selling product set for a certain date. That's why. I use to be a senior product manager at one of the top 10 software developers and you make trade-off's to hit launch dates. I'm sure they knew they were going out crippled... but also knew since it's software they can fix it quickly and cheaply. Stopping the iPhone launch by even a day would have cost Apple and their partners millions of dollars a day. That is why they did it.
 
Performance degradation, downgrading and 4.01

My 3G's performance degraded considerably after the initial iOS4 update. In general, it was rendered unusable (slow response to almost every action).
Based on recommendations, this is how it's played out over the last week or so.

1. Deleted all cached/open Safari windows and removed some applications and media to increase space did nothing noticeable. In essence, no improvement.
2. Based on recommendations, I performed 2 hard resets which did improve responsiveness slightly, but only transiently. It quickly (about a day's use) degraded again to its state after updating to version 4.
3. I then downgraded back to 3.1.3 based on an excellent article by Adam Pash on Lifehacker. This effectively restored it to the performance I had before upgrading to version 4 (thanks Adam!).
4. Yesterday I backed it up again and restored it by updating to the most recent version (4.01, or is it 4.1?). Subjectively it's almost back to 3.1.3 performance, but I do sense some slowness. Overall, it's useable again and I'm happy so far.

YMMV
 
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