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Tell HN: My iPhone 3G is unusably slow since upgrading to iOS 4.0

37 points by blehn ↗ HN
Apps (even Apple apps) take forever to load, and routinely hang while performing simple tasks (typing, focusing on a form field, switching tabs, etc). I'd have to recommend staying with 3.x if you haven't already upgraded.

34 comments

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micaelwidell
Strange. I have a 3G and 4.0 feels slightly faster compared to 3.1.3. Did you jailbreak it and enable multitasking + extra animations?
sans-serif
On the other hand, multitasking helps with apps that take forever to load since their state can be saved/loaded now. Work out the cost/benefit in your case.
billturner
I haven't really noticed much of a slowdown with the apps and tasks on my 3G since upgrading, but it does seem to eat up the battery a little quicker.
jbriguet
Try a full restoration, it helps.
blehn
Thanks, I'll try that.
jeb
My 3Gs internet stopped working after the upgrade and I have no idea how to reenable it.
allwein
This one is pretty easy to fix.

Go to Settings>General>Reset and select Reset Network Settings.

Do that and a quick reboot and you should be all set.

eelco
My phone simply forgot the mobile internet configuration after the upgrade. Annoying, but (probably) pretty easy to look up on your carrier's website.
carbocation
Would anyone be willing to share their experiences with tethering on iOS4?
eelco
Still works fine here.
semanticist
Tethering's working for me fine under iOS 4, although I'm also seeing the general app slowness which is really frustrating.
gkefalas
Same, with both the upgrade and a full restore, and my phone is stock (no jailbreak.) A good friend had great success with his after iOS4, so it's not affecting everyone. I followed a guide online and manually rolled back to 3.1.3 and haven't looked back, and soon I'll pick up the 4G. It's not like most of the compelling features were compatible with the 3G anyway.
thomasswift
Do you by chance have a link to this guide?
gkefalas
Sure; there are a couple out there. Lifehacker's was the most straightforward and detailed. The process is much the same as jailbreaking. http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3...

I had some shenanigans with it being an older backup and so had to re-transfer my email accounts from my compy to the phone, but that was just a couple checkboxes in iTunes and setting up MobileMe.

allend
My 3G seems to be the same in terms of speed. iBooks has pretty lousy performance on it though.

The new mailboxes make it worth it for me.

Jailbroken? Don't enable wallpapers and multitasking. You'll find out why it isn't supported officially by Apple. Absolute shit performance if you do.

blehn
Yeah I upgraded mainly for the new Mail features (grouped conversations and archiving for gmail). The phone isn't jailbroken, but I'm going to try a full restore and see what happens.
ctingom
A "Genius" told me the same thing yesterday. Said I should wait to upgrade.
deco
I updated my 3G to iOS4 and noticed a serious performance hit along the same lines as the original poster. Rebooting the phone brought things back up to speed though, with some functions seeming snappier than they were under 3.x (Safari being the stand-out example). The phone has been running fine over the past couple of days since the reboot, so I'm not sure if there's a problem with how the upgrade is carried out on the phone that causes the slowness, or if there are some memory issues in iOS4 that will necessitate periodic rebooting of 3G models.
tomwans
If you have data on the phone, like texts, emails, etc. your iPhone 3G will be unusable. Mine is also terrible, but I'll live with it until I make a fresh install when I buy an iPhone 4.
yesimahuman
I'm also having a really slow experience. I guess I have a lot of texts, emails and photos (thank the interface lift app for that).

The problem is that it wasn't this slow with 3.x, yet I've really not gained any extra features, so it's basically a downgrade.

thought_alarm
Your device is slow because apps are constantly triggering low-memory conditions. Memory was very tight on the 3G, even before iOS 4. This is precisely why multi-tasking isn't enabled.

Safari alone is consuming most of your device's memory, by a very large margin. It stays resident in memory when you return to the home screen, and it's one of the last apps to be killed in low-memory conditions. The problem is that much worse if you do a lot of browsing on your iPhone or iPod; Safari just grows and grows. This is why the problem appears to be fixed when you reboot your device.

Here's the tip: You can quit Safari by closing all of its tabs and then returning to the home screen. You should do this periodically; I did this whenever I was finished with a browsing session. With Safari out of the way the rest of the software on your device should run at normal speed without triggering any low-memory conditions.

My primary devices now have 256 MB of RAM instead of 128 MB, and I no longer have to worry about Safari's memory consumption.

sverrejoh
You can also kill Safari (and all other running apps) by holding the sleep button until it shows the slider screen, and then hold the menu button until you get the home screen.
thought_alarm
Yes, but that should not be necessary unless an application is hung.

It's much easier and quicker to quit Safari by closing its tabs.

Ivatar
You can also bring up the task tray, press and hold the icon for safari(or any other app) like you would for moving apps on the home screen, then press the - sign that appears to close it. Discovered it by accident, but it's quite useful.
daveilers
My experience was that it handled having low storage space (Less than 400MB free out of 16GB) less well than 3.1.3.

Once i freed some space the odd app crashes seemed to stop.

pplante
It is completely unbearable on my 3G. I did install a jailbroken rom which has multitasking enabled, however it seems odd that "Backgrounder" ran apps just fine yet iOS4 cannot.

Oh well back to 3.1.2 for me.

cjus
My 3Gs works just fine after upgrading to iOS4. I agree with @thought_alarm's comments regarding the lack of memory being a likely candidate cause.
cl3m
Mine is now very slow at getting back on wifi at home after the phone went to sleep. That's annoying!
megablast
I heard that one of the updates for ios4 is that it would maintain a wifi connection when put to sleep.
sverrejoh
I had the same problem with 3G and iOS 4.0, but after a hard reboot it became fast again (Hold the sleep button for some seconds, and push the slider). It took me almost a week to figure it out (during which the phone was next to useless), but now it seems as fast as 3.x.
kiwidamo
I'm finding it slow. I'll be rolling back to 3.1.2 Jailbroken with Backgrounder. At least with Backgrounder you could kill Mail, Safari etc easily if the system was running slowly or you needed extra to play a heavy game (eg. Worms)
ubaldo
My 3G is generally slow as well after the iOS4 upgrade. Is there a way to disable multitasking? I just want to see if it makes a difference.