Informal Testing Suggests Minor Performance Increase for iPhone 3G on iOS 4.1

[blackrhino]

I have had 4.1GM installed since Saturday and I can vouch that there is a significant improvement over 4.0.

General overall performance is significantly better including apps loading faster and no lag when unlocking phone and only the odd lag when typing text messages and emails however overall, text and email apps are running better and opening/loading faster. Safari is still slow although a bit better than in 4.0.

However I can see that in a couple of weeks, once i'm used to the new speed, it will seem quite slow... *sigh*

 

[ImperialX]

Are you **********g serious
The past? My phone is only 2 years old!
This is total BS.........I can see some features not working due to new hardware but to totally ruin the phone is unacceptable.
My way older MBP still works fine with the latest OS so why the hell not my phone.
This is garbage and for once (in a while) I think Apple has been really lame in with whole situation. Some of us don't need or want to buy a new phone every 2 years and that should not exclude us from using the latest OS upgrades.

Android wants to talk to you. How many phones less than one year old can run Android 2.2 without a custom ROM? Oh right - NONE.

Apple's support for the iPhone 3G as a 2 year old device has been phenomenal in my opinion already.

 

[dvince2]

Android wants to talk to you. How many phones less than one year old can run Android 2.2 without a custom ROM? Oh right - NONE.

Apple's support for the iPhone 3G as a 2 year old device has been phenomenal in my opinion already.

Android 2.2 doesn't work on older phones, because they can't run them without ruining the user experience. Apple's support for iOS4 on 3G does the opposite.

 

[Big90Ben]

Just waiting...

First of all, don't tell me to upgrade my phone without first testing it. Obviously, the 3G is the current red-headed stepchild.

I've been waiting until my family of five's contracts all run out to make a switch to a Droid as they are getting rave reviews. If the 4.1 software makes life bearable for my wife and I then I may stay put so I don't have to spend any $.

I'm surprised there have been no class actions against this issue! I'm also surprised Apple didn't give us a formal option to downgrade back to 3.xxx

Trying to stay positive

 

[QCassidy352]

They should have just left the iPhone 3G at 3.1.3 rather than ruin the entire iPhone experience for users of the 3G.

not to derail the thread, but this is in a nutshell why apple will not even give users the option of flash on the iphone. People say "why not give me the option" but then scream bloody murder when they take the option and it doesn't work well.

 

[twoodcc]

well another one bites the dust if you ask me. apple is basically leaving behind the iPhone 3G

 

[I is Mac]

I bet January cannot come fast enough for those with the 3G. Hopefully anther carrier will be added and u guys can finally upgrade. At least that's the only reason I can see for anyone still keeping the 3G after all these years.

 

[jwhite878]

The old update was like running android 2.2 on my droid 1. Made it practically unusable and I didn't know how to downgrade. Thankfully, it's not quite so horrendous with the new update.

 

[Bodygard]

Were people expecting 20-30% improvements? c'mon guys...3G is a 2yr old equipment and Apple still cares about it.

 

[alent1234]

Are you **********g serious
The past? My phone is only 2 years old!
This is total BS.........I can see some features not working due to new hardware but to totally ruin the phone is unacceptable.
My way older MBP still works fine with the latest OS so why the hell not my phone.
This is garbage and for once (in a while) I think Apple has been really lame in with whole situation. Some of us don't need or want to buy a new phone every 2 years and that should not exclude us from using the latest OS upgrades.

welcome to the 1990's when PC's were obsolete the day you bought them. iphone 4 has 4 times the RAM as the 3G. the 3GS has twice the RAM.

no reason apple should gimp a new OS just to please owners of obsolete hardware

 

[*LTD*]

The iPhone 3G was released in July 2008.

Time to upgrade, instead of bitching and moaning that the iPhone OS released just recently doesn't run so well on a discontinued phone.

 

[Carpe Discus]

The iPhone 3G was released in July 2008.

Time to upgrade, instead of bitching and moaning that the iPhone OS released just recently doesn't run so well on a discontinued phone.

Hey, here's my beef--I don't expect my phone (3G) to be supported forever. I don't expect it to get faster over time.

What I do expect, and why I buy Apple products, is for my equipment to be useable if I run something they allow for the device. They don't allow multitasking for the 3G. Fine. No background images, fine. If they tested the phone and said, "The 3G just can't support OS4", that would be OK, too. You wouldn't hear whining from me. I mean, it would be disappointing, but understandable.

But I don't expect Apple to release something that doesn't work well. They test stuff out, and they devote a lot of time and money into a superior user experience. That's what (usually) sets them apart from their competitors. It's uncharacteristically bad from them.

The whole deal with Apple is that I don't have to look at software updates and figure out which ones are going to break my phone. That's for other people. I'm a software developer, but I can't be bothered screwing around with this--I've got better things to do.

 

[peperoni]

So what do you do with your two years old Apple tech that has been demoted to junk? Do you throw it away and purchase a new and shiny one just because it's new? What if the old junk is perfectly fine and you would want to continue using it (or pass it to someone else in the family)?

After the subsidy is over, I don't need to pay the extra 20€/month for the phone in the phone bill so it would be nice if you could continue using your phone after that without Apple ruining the OS with updates and without Apple devotees telling how the hottest phone in town a few years ago is dog s*** now and I must update into paying yet again the extra 20€/month. That would be easy to avoid if Apple would only test their updates and not push them onto HW that clearly can't handle it.

 

[trixiesirisheye]

The 3G is pushing 3 years old. I would love to see any other phone get upgrades 3 years later, let alone, 2 years later. People need to stop holding on to old hardware for so long. Especially phones. Maybe it's just me, but who keeps a phone longer than a year anyways?

I just bought my 3G in April 2009. That would be less than a year and a half. It would be fiscally irresponsible for me to buy a new phone every year.

iOS4 hosed it. The last update helped a lot. But I still have no service in my apartment or in the parking lot outside my apartment, and not even enough of a signal to send a text message 3/4's of the time without ending up with the red exclamation point indicating it hasn't been sent. The signal didn't suck this bad until the 4.0 update, and even sucked with the rollback. Maybe the fact that right after the update and during a 20-minute phone call, my phone heated up enough to burn my cheek, jaw, and thumb. Maybe the heating up killed the antenna.

So I still want to pitch my beloved iPhone out the window just about every day. Because I can't use it as a phone. I wonder if the 4.1 update will let me use my phone as a phone again.

BTW, I'm holding out until the first of the year, when I can supposedly move over to Verizon.

 

[Dr McKay]

So... a minor speed increase after a cripplingly slow update?

 

[winglet69]

I would consider myself an early adopter of Apple technology, a power-user of most devices. But I skipped the 3GS, and the 4G's issues made me leery. And the 3G was working fine, so there was no pressing reason to upgrade. I have no unreasonable expectations of either manufacture support or performance for such an "old" device (sarcasm intended).

What I do NOT expect, however, is for a massive performance hit from an OS update that is claimed to be compatible with this device.

Carpe Discus expresses it perfectly.

The folks whose solution to the issue is just to run out and buy a new handset are completely out of touch with reality. But such is the disposable world we live in, I suppose. In my case it isn't about affordability, I'm fortunate that cost isn't a factor in my present situation. It's about accountability.

It would be different if the 3G had always been doggy and slow. But to have performance SEVERELY degraded, without a reasonable way to revert to the previous OS, is ridiculous and something unexpected from Apple. Why would I buy a 4G? So that it can be carelessly crippled by an OS update in a couple years? No thanks. After using Macs since 1984 I'm rethinking my whole relationship with the brand!

The obsolescence argument is wrong. There is plenty of technology far older than 2 years still working fine, thanks! lol Feel free to keep throwing money at the shiny latest, but it's a fool's game. I want stuff that WORKS, reliably and for a reasonable amount of time. That was why I've used Apple stuff for so long and been loyal to the company. We'll see.

 

[DB2k]

I'm really hoping 4.1 fixes my 3rd gen ipod touch.
Prior to 4.0 it was fine in my Alpine car kit. Now its nigh on impossible to use. Works fine without the car kit but browsing artists via the head unit is ball breakingly slow. However playlists/podcasts are fine - I presume its because there are a lot less of them.

 

[nconnella]

Hey, here's my beef--I don't expect my phone (3G) to be supported forever. I don't expect it to get faster over time.

What I do expect, and why I buy Apple products, is for my equipment to be useable if I run something they allow for the device. They don't allow multitasking for the 3G. Fine. No background images, fine. If they tested the phone and said, "The 3G just can't support OS4", that would be OK, too. You wouldn't hear whining from me. I mean, it would be disappointing, but understandable.

But I don't expect Apple to release something that doesn't work well. They test stuff out, and they devote a lot of time and money into a superior user experience. That's what (usually) sets them apart from their competitors. It's uncharacteristically bad from them.

The whole deal with Apple is that I don't have to look at software updates and figure out which ones are going to break my phone. That's for other people. I'm a software developer, but I can't be bothered screwing around with this--I've got better things to do.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[itsmeok]

Were people expecting 20-30% improvements? c'mon guys...3G is a 2yr old equipment and Apple still cares about it.

hey, the 2yr old equipment is still better than the 90% of the non-iphones in the market. even today. so, what is wrong with expecting bigger improvements?

 

[tvamvarg]

On the fence

I'm happy if 4.1 stops the UI hangs in Safari, Maps, using the keyboard etc. General slowness is not too much of an issue to me.

It's hard to say whether iOS4 should have been let onto the 3G. No other phone gets upgrades like the iPhone (maybe Android phones will be more upgradable but so far it's a mixed bag it seems) but for some reason half of the iPhone community (the loudest part?) expects it (and then cry-baby about it, because it's slow and doesn't contain multitasking). Go figure.

I can live with 4.0 although there have been times of irritation, so I'm pretty sure 4.1 will make the cut and deemed worth upgrading from 3 to 4 for me (can't even remember what the extra features from 3.x were but I think there were a few).

Bug fixes, as opposed to major upgrades, should always be rolled out of course, even on older hardware.

My next phone will probably be an Android, but because of better features in the OS, not because I haven't loved my iPhones.

 

[JS77]

I would consider myself an early adopter of Apple technology, a power-user of most devices. But I skipped the 3GS, and the 4G's issues made me leery. And the 3G was working fine, so there was no pressing reason to upgrade. I have no unreasonable expectations of either manufacture support or performance for such an "old" device (sarcasm intended).

What I do NOT expect, however, is for a massive performance hit from an OS update that is claimed to be compatible with this device.

Carpe Discus expresses it perfectly.

The folks whose solution to the issue is just to run out and buy a new handset are completely out of touch with reality. But such is the disposable world we live in, I suppose. In my case it isn't about affordability, I'm fortunate that cost isn't a factor in my present situation. It's about accountability.

It would be different if the 3G had always been doggy and slow. But to have performance SEVERELY degraded, without a reasonable way to revert to the previous OS, is ridiculous and something unexpected from Apple. Why would I buy a 4G? So that it can be carelessly crippled by an OS update in a couple years? No thanks. After using Macs since 1984 I'm rethinking my whole relationship with the brand!

The obsolescence argument is wrong. There is plenty of technology far older than 2 years still working fine, thanks! lol Feel free to keep throwing money at the shiny latest, but it's a fool's game. I want stuff that WORKS, reliably and for a reasonable amount of time. That was why I've used Apple stuff for so long and been loyal to the company. We'll see.

+1

That sums the 3G/iOS4 situation perfectly. So much for the "At apple, we love our customers" line... well, please TEST your damn updates on hardware that is listed as SUPPORTED, or just don't bother making it available for that specific model.

My 3G is just awful to use since updating and it shouldn't be like this. it was hands down the best phone I owned up until iOS4.

Could I upgrade to an iPhone 4? Sure.

Should I have to upgrade to an iPhone 4 because Apple crippled my 3G? No way.

 

[mrelwood]

The 3G is pushing 3 years old.

No it isn't. It was introduced 2 years (and soon 2 months) ago, and still sold a few months ago. Phones are not milk, they really should work for longer than that.

And the ones saying we shouldn't expect it to run as well as iP4... Ofcourse not. You really should try iOS4.0 in a 3G to know what we are talking about. Opening contacts takes 15s, being able to add a new contact another 10s. That's not "so well", that is dead.

Maybe it's just me, but who keeps a phone longer than a year anyways?

It really is just you. When I ditched a phone within a year, it was a terrible product. iPhone 3G is a great product, so why in the earth would I ditch it?

Besides, when I bought it, we could only make 2 year contracts.

no reason apple should gimp a new OS just to please owners of obsolete hardware

Agree. But why did they make the 3G useless without the option to go back?

I agree with Carpe Discus and winglet69 completely.

 

[michaelsviews]

On version 4.2

According to the latest update, and my 3G is slower than SH**. Supposedly Apple is going to update the antenna / fix the current model, at least that is what I have gathered from different articles.

I'll hold out for a while but this really is NOT FUN and Verizon + Droid = Superior network and a device that may not be all that the iPhone is, but I know people that ported back and have the droid x and the newest one and there happier because of what I mentioned already.

There's still active talk that the iPhone is coming to Verizon in January, so since I have been dealing with this SLOW iPhone running slower for this long I may hold out till then

 

[iPie]

4.1 will be a quality update for 3G owners. I think it's safe to say that the 4 series iOS will be the last for 3G. You have to drop the past sometime.

I am happy to see that some of the issues were addressed, but let's drop the past when it's more than 2 years old. Many iPhone 3 users just want a phone that works about as well as when they purchased it.

iPhone4 users will also wail when Steven Jobs tells them to stop whining and upgrade their hardware next summer.

 

[ranReloaded]

Gotta love the 8bit music...