Why does syncing take so friggin long?

Yep... exactly the same issue here...

My old iPhone used to take about 30 seconds... this one is taking 25 minutes to sync, and there's nothing of any note new on it since the last sync.

What's going on!?

I still have the old iPhone, but with the OS 2.0 update, and it takes a lot longer to sync (even after the initial sync). Looks like it's spending a lot of time "backing up" the phone...not sure why this is. Perhaps it's having to backup all the 3rd-party applications' data (I have 11 apps on my phone).

For some reason apple is having the phones all back up before it syncs

i found this out too and its really annoying

HOWEVER, you can just click the little X next to where it says backing up... and it will cancel the backup and proceed to the sync

Yeah, but prior to 2.0/3G/iTunes 7.7, the phones always backed up in a matter of seconds. You almost couldn't catch it say "Backing up files." Now that step takes minutes. And I hate the idea of always having to "x" out my backup step, because I don't want to get so use to doing it that I never back up.

I hope this issue is addressed soon.

I noticed the constant backing up taking ages. I don't see where it can be turned off, or at least limited to maybe once a week.

Okay, this morning I had the same problem, it took 30 minutes, I've synced it about half a dozen times since then, each time completing the backup process, now it only takes about 20 seconds, so I don't know if the problem just fixed itself or you have to just sync it a few times, but it's fine for me now. Hope this helps

having the same prob. out of curiosity, how many apps have you installed? i have 33 apps. also how many contacts? i had major sync issues with my first gen iphone bc i had more than 536 contacts, which is the magical number revealed in a past post. i can't speak to its validity but i keep it at 535 out of paranoia. wondering if the number of apps and/or contacts have something to do with this.

The original phone had no apps to backup. The iPHone 3G backs up all your app data every time you sync.

There is no way to schedule this -- but you can click on the X next to it while it starts backing up and it will skip over it and continue on to regular syncing.

I don't know why people are having such time delays though.

I have 17 apps on my new 3G -- it takes about a minute for it to backup everything, then a few seconds to sync, pretty much like my old first generation with the exception of the backup time.

Spoke to iTunes today, they know about the problem and it is thankfully an iTunes issue and not our iPhones. They are going to send an update out shortly. In the meantime, when the iPhone goes into backup click the X next to that and it will then sync as normal.

Interestingly, I have literally thousands of files in my backup folder. I could see them being generated during the backup process with the iPhone 3G. The folder in question is ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/<long hex id>/. Not sure why so many files. My last long backup (done after acquiring several new apps) took 30 minutes and resulted in hundreds of backup files. Subsequent backups took about 2 minutes and resulted in about 15-20 files.

Anyone who knows how these individual files related to what's actually resident on the iPhone, I'd love to hear the explanation.

Thanks.

Well, for me - EVERYTHING takes forever to sync. All my iPods, my iPhone (1st gen), and my Macs syncing to MobleMe (and .Mac prior). This started about two or three weeks ago. It takes hours to synce anything. Right now I am watching iTunes say "Syncing Contacts..." to my iPhone - it has been doing that for like an hour. Calenders will be the same way. I have tried eveything I can think of. This is getting old.

I finally found a solution to long sync times. All my sync times were long - iPhone, iPod, .Mac (mobileme). They all took hours just to sync...

First, I figured out what the culprit was by using the system preference "advanced" button under mobileme sync. Only sync one thing at a time by checking the items in the list and hitting the sync button. This led me to my calendar (everything else synced very fast). So I "backed up" my iCal using the command under the file menu. Then I deleted all my calendars in iCal. Then I rest my ical data in the "cloud" (mac to cloud), then I sync'd the blank calendar (probably overkill, but I wanted all the data gone from the apple server). Then I "restored" my iCal from my back up. Then I synced with .Mac.

Now, for 24 hours and about 20 test syncs.... every thing is going fast again. I am a happy mac user again.

Randy

Try this: Unplug the iPhone from computer. Open up iSync. Go to Preferences and click on "Reset Sync History" -- then plug iPhone back in and sync it again. It worked for me.

This worked for me also. ;-}

It worked!!! I am sooo happy! Thank you!! I have been frustrated with this problem for over a month! I have an old iphone and it would get stuck in the syncing calendar mode for hours; re-setting the history in isync solved the problem. I still have a calendar duplicating problem because I use the entourage calendar, but dupe delete takes care of that problem. Thank you again; I now have all of my calendar info on both my phone and my laptop. Yaaayyyy.