The iPhone 3G Hates iOS 4. It's a fact.

iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G sucks. I can say this from experience, as I have a bogged-down, slow as dirt iPhone 3G sitting beside me right now. I loaded up iOS 4 on the thing a week or two ago, and after tweaking and fiddling with the darn thing since then, I’ve been unable to increase performance. If you have an iPhone 3G and want the latest and greatest Apple OS on it, HOLD OFF. Help may be coming.

In a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple is busy looking into the no doubt thousands of reports of poor iOS 4 performance on the iPhone 3G. Again, speaking from experience, app crashes and slow-as-molasses performance are just two side effects of installing iOS 4 on the 3G.

If you’ve already made the update to iOS 4, and want nothing more than to get back to a build with the performance levels you’re used to… the good folks at lifehacker have published a must-read guide. It will step you through the process of downgrading your iPhone 3G’s OS to 3.1.3 from version 4. The instructions are clear, heck, there’s even videos of each step to help walk you through the process. Check out the guide right here.

Again, if you’re on an iPhone 3G and are running iOS 4, you’re probably experiencing some issues. To fix these issues, try the downgrade via the guide above. If you haven’t upgraded yet, DON’T. Your daily life will be much calmer as a result, not having to fight a laggy iPhone 3G all day. In the meantime, know in the back of your mind that Apple is addressing these issues… quite honestly, whether they fix the issues or not, I don’t really care… chances are I’m upgrading to an iPhone 4 anyway. But for those that are going to stick it out with the iPhone 3G, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that these performance issues get fixed.

About The Author

James Falconer

James was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. Almost 15 years ago he started out in the 'real world' as a web and graphic designer. Through the years he has finely tuned his skills in SEO, internet marketing, conversion strategy, and project management. To date, he runs his own successful consulting business where he advises companies all over the globe. A co-founder of www.crackberry.com, and sole proprietor of www.mactropolis.com, James in recent years has become very active in the tech blogosphere. Online community building and strategy is fast becoming one of his passions. Watch for James' no frills attitude, unique perspective and to-the-point comments here on IntoMobile!

smikema

I read somewhere that if you go into settings and turn off the spotlight search you can get a little better performance. I told my friend who has a 3G and he said he definitely noticed a difference.
Ryan

I downgraded using that method, for the exact same reason – bear in mind, however, that you CANNOT restore to 3.1.3 from a 4.x backup. So you'll lose anything in your 4.x backup.
Brian M

Try another reboot after the 4.0.1 update. it made a difference for me. When I first loading 4.0, anything requiring the keyboard was very slow. After 4.0.1 and an extra reboot (which I did for a different reason) my performance was back around 3.1.3 levels.

It may not work for everyone, but I'm happy with iOS 4.0.1 on my iPhone 3G
RobInNZ

4.0 was horribly slow for me on IOS4.0. I have found 4.01 FAR better, much less laggy, but still not as fast as 3.1.3.

Try a cache-clear reset (power + button for 10 secs together), as this is what brought my phone back up to speed.

The other thing that seems to make a difference is a Safari cache clear, and not leaving webpages open in Safari. I also usually kill Safari, rather than just exiting. To be honest, the biggest grizzle I have about IOS4.0x has been the horrible performance of Safari and the impact it appears to have on the rest of the phone (since Safari is memory resident, even after you exit back to springboard).
Jeff

You almost tempt me to try it. If someone else has similar results I'll take the plunge…
@haraldfelgner

@RobInNZ That's a good one!

I was wondering why upgrading to 4.0, restoring, then upgrading to 4.0.1 and restoring again led to mixed results – apparently depending on moon phase more than on how I used the phone.

Identifying Safari as the main culprit on the other hand is quite bad news for Google on the iPhone. Buzz, Latitude, Reader, everything relies on Web apps …
Jim in Floirida

Did anyone else see a dramatic decrease in battery life with the update to iOD 4?