Iphone 3G slow after update to IOS4

Irons you can try this "magical" process to get to 3.1.3 again, just takes a few steps to follow closely but yes you can.

For both PC and MAC:
http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3g%5Bs%5D-from-ios-4- to-ios-313

I just downgraded my 3G from 4.0 to 3.1.3 and it works just as before. Familiar icons, speed is back. Just pay attention to all the steps as there are unique files for 3G versus the 3GS model, each of which are listed there.

Thanks to all whom made suggestions, I used a combined approach. My 3G with iOS4 is now "snappy". I was having problems across multiple applications, screen not responding, etc. FWIW, here's what worked for me:

-Deleted Safari history, cache and cookies
-Cleared recent search history in Google Apps
-Cleared recent search history in Maps
-Cleared all text message threads
*These 4 were giving me fits

1) ->Settings->Reset->Reset All Settings (I did NOT select the one to erase all content)
2) Allow reboot to home screen (or power off, power on, can't remember)
3) Upon fresh boot, do the hard reset (hold power/home buttons, ignore slide to power off, keep holding till black screen)
4) Power up
5) Repeat hard reset (step 2)
6) Go back in an tweak all your settings back the way you like (I assume if you were changing them, you'll know what you wanted..iOS4 had a bunch of new stuff anyway)

I did all this in about 15 minutes. Everything is as fast or faster than with 3.x of the OS. Text message new window is only thing I noticed that might be a shade slow...but its "fixed" compared to what it was after initial upgrade to iOS4...it no longer hangs when sending new text in a thread (which was driving me NUTS!)

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone. I work from my iphone, 6 hours of calls a day and could not afford to be down for a restore or attempt hacking back to 3.x

Message was edited by: dmcdayton

Message was edited by: dmcdayton

Well, I did a couple of things and my iPhone is working well now. I will not say it is totally as fast as it used to be but it is DEFINITELY faster than it was directly after upgrading to iOS4. For me it is now zippy enough to use without getting frustrated by long waits...

I also did a factory restore:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2478473&tstart=0

Then a hard reset:
http://www.cultofmac.com/speed-up-iphone-3g-ios4-with-a-hard-reset/48070

But from what I have been reading in this discussion it seems like just the hard reset will do the job. If it doesn't, try the factory restore.

It's very frustrating that so few people actually seem to read these threads. Instead of posting "me, too" after "me, too" reply, you would know that completing a double hard reset fixes the problem.

After conducting two hard resets of my 3G, the only sluggishness I experienced was when I activated the phone from standby. There would be a delay and occasionally the pass code lock keyboard wouldn't appear unless I went back into standby and woke the phone again.

This problem was caused by memory use. The new OS takes up significantly more memory than the OS 3. My 8GB phone was maxed out after the upgrade. I went into iTunes and deleted about 1GB of songs to provide the OS with some headroom.

The phone is now working flawlessly. My wifi kicks in after standby much faster than before. Swiping through screens of apps is much snappier than with 3.1.3. The folders have allowed me to consolidate seven or eight screens worth of apps down to two pages (one with my frequently used apps, and one with folders containing all the rest). I can live without digital camera zoom; digital zoom always looks terrible.

I too was frustrated immediately after installing the new OS. But your upgrade isn't finished after the installation. Do a double hard reset of the phone and carve out a little free memory. If this still doesn't work, you have issues with your phone or installation unrelated to iOS 4.

Robert: Yes, just takes a few steps, follow them closely.

For both PC and MAC-
http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3g%5Bs%5D-from-ios-4- to-ios-313

Take your time, pay attention to all the steps (and video) as there are unique files for 3G versus the 3GS model, each of which are listed at that link. An app called RECBOOT will be used to get your phone back out of recovery mode near the end of the process and help get you going again for your phone to be recognized as normal by iTunes.

I've been reading through the posts now for two days, and want to post my experience for someone else to get through the update. READ THROUGH THE THREADS AND YOU WILL TROUBLESHOOT YOUR OWN PROBLEM.

I upgraded my 3G to 4.0 over the weekend, and didn't seem to have any big issues so I went in and started configuring all of the new apps and re-arranging everything--WHAT GREAT NEW FEATURES APPLE!! Unfortunately (not long after that) for me, I then dumped my phone in the toilet. After much "freaking out," I dried it off and hoped for the best. Mind you, the phone sunk to the bottom of the toilet and I was flinging water out of it as I shook it back and forth to remove the water. This was a full dunking! A little cool hair dryer air and then some outside sun...

A few hours later I was surprised to see that it came back on, but it was locking up after sleep mode and I couldn't get it to unfreeze. Thinking this was all related to the toilet incident, I completely forgot to check on the update. As I continually worked with the phone, trying to turn it on and off, I found that the more I synched it up the more it seemed to help, but it was slow and un-responsive and it loooked like this was going to be a continual problem. As I now thought all was lost, my husband felt so bad for my loss that he actually paid for an upgrade to the new iphone for me, so I went ahead and took the opportunity to get it ordered.

I'm now in to my problem about 48 hours and I'm feeling good about upgrading to the new phone, so I sync the phone up one last time to remove everything from it and go pick a gophone until my new phone arrives. My husband offers to destroy it for me, but I said "no," I said, "let's keep it for awhile and I'll go ahead and clean everything off via the computer." Before doing that, I just happened to hit the forums and started seeing the hundreds of posts regarding issues like mine from the upgrade. I didn't think there could be anyway my problems were all related to the upgrade and NOT the water? But, it was. Post after post indicated several steps that led to me saving my phone from the recycle bin, so please read below because this might help you....

1. When I first went to update I had some issue with the "update" button, so I read that using the "restore" button instead was the way to go so I did that adn it worked seemlessly.

2. Many resets (i.e. holding the sleep button and the home button. My phone wouldn't come out of sleep on it's own without synching to the computer until I deleted a bunch of stuff. Like mentioned above, I have the 8gb, so my memory was basically gone after the upgrade which was another detail that caused me problems. Delete your music, photos, apps, whatever is taking up space. The new software is really, really fast, but you can't overload it with too much stuff until you get things running smooothly.

3. Take out your sim card, clean it off and replace it. Sync again if you need to. I had to repeat these steps a few times, but every time I took care of something it sped up and started responding.

4. Finally, RESET ALL SETTINGS IN YOUR PHONE! Go to settings, rest, reset all settings. Yes, it's a bit scary, but that reset is there for when you are having issues like this. Just make sure your phone has been through repeated back ups. Sync again and again.

5. This was the end of the road for my issues....my voice mail page dissapeared on my phone and when I hit the icon to review my voice mails, it rang my mailbox. Since I haven't every remembered calling my voice mail, this surprised me but I followed it through, followed the prompts and reset my password and VOILLIAH!!!...not only am I getting a new iphone, but my husband got a smokin 3G with the new 4.0 upgrade! IT'S SUPER FAST!! And, oh, the toilet incident?? No damage. I had never removed my sim card unti after this happened, so it was so tight, I don't think anything was damaged. THANK YOU APPLE FOR SUCH A FANTASTIC PRODUCT!! And, the new software--awesomme!!

...if you have an 8GB, MAKE SURE YOU GIVE THE NEW SOFTWARE ROOM TO BREATHE! DELETE SOME OF YOUR MEMORY--IT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

FINAL BIT OF ADVICE...read through the threads first, during AND AFTER your updates and BE PATIENT! If I hadn't spent hours and hours trying to bring mine back to life, I would have lost the opportunity to pass this phone to my husband--of course, not to mention, the new one coming for me. Can't wait to get my hands on that new iphone.....good luck!

Message was edited by: kcenter

iPhone 3G Owners, you are *WASTING YOUR TIME doing all these restores and resets and reboots*. That will only TEMPORARILY fix your problem, but, after a little bit of use your iPhone 3G will go right back to being slow and problematic. I've tried all of these various remedies on two different 3G iPhones. While at first the problem seemed much better, after using both phones for a little while everything slowed down to a crawl once again and apps started crashing again.

The problem is that the hardware on the 3G is not powerful enough to run iOS 4. So, just like rebooting a computer, initially the computer will be fast, but, after running some applications, the system will eventually become bogged down. No amount of reboots, resets and restores is going to make this problem go away.

The only thing that will fix this is another update from Apple that addresses this problem with 3G iPhones.

Christopher John Hunter wrote:
Our 3g 8Gb iPhones are both suffering - besides being slow in the various ways, we're also getting occasional memory running out messages ... even though checking Settings / General / About tells us they both still have over 20% free (1.7Gb free, out of 8Gb total) ...

@Christopher,
The memory that's running out is not your 8GB main storage (or 16 GB on the bigger version of the 3G), but the 128MB of RAM.
http://www.everyipod.com/iphone-specs/apple-iphone-3g-specs.html

The iPhone 4 apparently contains 512 MB of RAM, and iOS 4.0 was optimized to run in that larger memory space. When the limited RAM in the 3G gets filled up (perhaps by having a couple of Safari pages open), it would seem that things come to a grinding halt. Other 3G owners have reported that closing any open Safari pages will speed things up, presumably because some of the RAM has been freed up.

I'll post the "magical" downgrade fix again for those who missed it, follow the steps closely and you'll be back from 4 to 3.1.3, the only solution right now to get your speed back like it was (pre OS4) on the older (3G) hardware.

For both PC and MAC-
http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3g%5Bs%5D-from-ios-4- to-ios-313

Take your time, pay attention to all the steps (and video) as there are unique files for 3G versus the 3GS model, each of which are listed at that link. An app called RECBOOT will be used to get your phone back out of recovery mode near the end of the process and help get you going again for your phone to be recognized as normal by iTunes.

OK! I finally did it! If you are like me and are still using a PPC Mac running OS 10.5.8 you were saddened by all the fixes that only worked on Intel machines. So here's how I did it.

*1. Download old OS*
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=750
download the file {3.1.3 (3G): iPhone1,2 3.1.3_7E18Restore.ipsw} or the file
{3.1.3 (3GS): iPhone1,2 3.1.3_7E18Restore.ipsw} depending on your model phone

*2. Download RecBoot*
http://www.sebby.net/443-recboot-final-release/

*3. Read and follow instructions here*
http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3g%5Bs%5D-from-ios-4- to-ios-313

Now here's where it gets hincky. I am lucky that I also have an Intel laptop. Yes, +you will need another computer+, your spouses, your friends, one at work.... sorry. It's the only way. It took me two attempts, but I was successful.
You'll have to transfer all the downloaded things to the Intel machine (or just download them there to begin with). I found it easier to put the files on the desktop, as for some reason, the 3.1.3 OS file always got put into the trash when I plugged the iPhone in.

Follow all the instructions above in #3, but when you finally get the RecBoot program to dump you out of the re-boot process, you eject the iPhone from the iTunes app, plug it into your old PPC (where all your apps and iTunes library are), and DO NOT RESTORE FROM BACKUP! Set it up as a new phone.
Yes, you will have to re-install all your music, apps, etc. but you'll be back in OS 3.1.3 and life will be good again.!

Hi all,
I found the 3G about useless after the upgrade. I restored as a NEW PHONE.
This has made the system much more stable.
It is still a bit laggy but this is to be expected with the older hardware.
Realize the pace of development in this industry is much faster than what we as consumers would think.
Apple has never been one to support major system advances back many generations.
We as consumers have to make the correct choice. Apple should have been a bit more upfront about the performance hit the 3G would take installing iOS4.
The fact that on the Keynote they replaced it with the 3GS says something. Its done in their eyes. We say what!!, We just bought it a couple of years ago!! So very true but this is a consequence of the development pace. We just need to be carful if we are choosing not to keep up with the leading edge.

I like iOS4 on the 3G. I have to wait for a few things but it mostly works. I reboot ( home+power till the apple logo) each morning. Folders, spell check and the new email are great features.

So... Restore as a new phone. You will have to re set up all your apps and media. Network passwords ect. Just jot all that down before you do the restore. This will make your phone usable again. I will never be an iPhone 4 or a 3GS. But it is pretty cool still.

Cheers,

Greg

I too had unusable Iphone 3G after a 5 hour update. I did try the double reset a few times but it always reverted back to sluggish performance after an hour or two.
I have seen tips in this topic, to restore from a backup. I was a bit reluctant to do so but....
I did just that. I made a backup from my updated phone. I did not attempt to get back to V3. Then I did a restore from backup. Took about 10-15 minutes I think, not long.
Result was the original speedy performance that I got before the upgrade. It is been like this now for 3 days with no sign of slowing down.
It is worth a try if you haven't already.

I had the same issues as the other persons in this thread. My 3G became painfully sloe after upgrading. Rebooting made it a tiny little bit better, BUT only for a very short amount of time. Afterwards it became as slow as before. Worst is the loss of responsiveness when typing mails or surfing in the web.

Downgrading solved the problem for me for now. It was rather easy. I just downloaded the 3.1.3 recovery file (approx. 200MB), clicked in iTunes 9.2 with Alt on the recovery button and waited some minutes. Afterwards there was an error 1050 (I think). I needed to run the program RecBoot to finish the process. Afterwards I got a clean 3.1.3 3G phone, that just had to be filled with content.

On the other hand I plea to Apple to bring an upgraded OS that can be run on the 3G! You shouldn't be forced to use an old browser when surfing the web!

I got so frustrated, I went to the genius bar. He pretty much acknowledged that "some" iphone 3Gs are sluggish after upgrading. He immediately said to do the following:


1. Plug into iTunes, sync (backup) and then restore to factory default.
2. Once it's wiped your phone, it will reinstall a free iOS 4
3. Then re-sync you iphone

I have to admit. It's MUCH better than before. Still not as good, but very usable. In a way, this is like doing a clean install.

Hope this helps.

not sure we're all using the same terminology - reboot (*) & restore (**) & reset ( *) are all different ...

we found double reboot ( **), which takes under a minute, fixed our's (3G with iOS4) pretty OK ...

-

(*) reboot is what can be done at any time on the iPhone by pressing Home & Power buttons simultaneously ...

(**) restore is what can be done from the iTunes / Devices / (name of iPhone) / Summary screen when the iPhone is connected to iTunes ...

( *) reset is what can be done on th eiPhone from the Settings / General / Reset screen ...

( **) double reboot = press power button and home button at the same time, hold until 'phone reboots (ignore the power-off prompt slide bar, keep holding) ... let 'phone start-up normally (Apple logo) ... when it's all done & ready for action, immediately do it again - ie: repeat this process (don't be tempted to do anything in-between) ...

Message was edited by: Christopher John Hunter

Message was edited by: Christopher John Hunter

Message was edited by: Christopher John Hunter