Q: Iphone 3G slow after update to IOS4

Thanks for the reply but I think I'll be OK from here. I did visit my local Apple store today one more time and FINALLY I was given a new 3G device. Apparently there was some weird hardware error going on with the other one which made all the iOS 4 issues even worse than some of the ones that the Genius bar normally deals with. It also had some water damage as the moisture indicators were pink (no idea where that came from) but none the less my frustration and frequent visits proved to be justification enough.

No official diagnosis but it appears to be a memory leak since iStat said I had 1 MB of RAM free through most processes. I'll have to restore my backup and if that happens to slow it down then I know that's all on me at this point.

Mad props to Emily at the Northpoint Apple Store in Alpharetta GA for listening to my rant and getting me all squared away. Apple Customer Service always seems to rescue me from the brains out in Cupertino. I'll be sending in a letter about her stellar performance to the main office.

I updated to 4.2.1 a week ago and i have to say im happy with it. My iPhone 3G is faster now, the 4.2.1 is by far the best iOS so far.

Now some problems, i get disconnected from wifi frequently, my signal is always low because the router is quite for, i did get disconnected at older firmware versions but with 4.2.1 it is happening more often. I have to turn off wifi then back on to get it working.

When i move springboard icons, it is quite laggy and slower than before, this is a problem with 4.2.1 only.

I had been updating my 3G for the last 2yrs and have finally gotten fed up with the doggedness of the 4.X updates. I don't need the expense or functionality of an iphone4 so I have gone back to 3.1.3.

It took all of 20min to make this "downgrade" but it took 3hrs of finding the right combination of instruction, OS, and RecBoot software. This was frustrating since I know that there could be a button placed on the iTunes updater that would let you do this without scrolling through endless drawl and dead links. Why doesn't apple respond to the thousands of 3g users that are complaining.

As much as I like apple products, this experience has made me look towards Android products with a jealous open source and speedy eye.

Hi H0stile, glad you had some joy at last and hope the restore goes to plan. You mentioned a suspected memory leak and it sounds like a good bet to me too. I was going to post to you again before you replied, wondering if it might be a leaky or badly behaved app that is sucking up the juice. I was going to suggest backing up apps then deleting all apps from iPhone only and then loading them back one at a time while checking the memory. K

yeh ive been having the same problems as everyone really slow and unresponsive, my screeen even goes pink sometimes when a game is loading. it takes an age to open messages and settings and camera doesnt work at all anymore. i mean it just stays in that shutter view... FOREVER, no joke, it actually would just stay there forever if i didnt get annoyed and just press the home button. i took a video of it and it went for 5:57secs before i got to breaking point!

this may sound stupid but...er.... u cant actually check how mch of the ram is being used in settings can you? all i can see is the capacity (which always annoyingly is 2 gb below what u paid for) and then available, which is not the ram but the hard disk... so where could i find ram?

i found out how much ram was being used. ok listen to this... 86mb of ram is being used out of 116mb however i dont have a single app that doesnt come with the phone apart from the app im using to view how much ram is being used

oh and i also have nothing extra, eg music video photos etc

I also have had significant issues since upgrading to ios4. Like you I've been to Apple Store several times and am told what I should do at home but nothing helps. I have never jailbroken or done anything to my phone but now its slower than a 64k dial up connection. Most time the the little wheel just spins and spins and I never get to where I'm trying to go on the web. The battery drains in a fraction of the time it used to. Screens randomly appear when i press the home key. Yet at the store they make me feel like I'm crazy. Last time the Apple rep suggested an Android phone. No kidding. One rep told me that the phone had possibly outlived its useful life. Its less than two years old. I have friends still using the original iPhone they just never upgraded it, they have no problems. It looks like Android here I come after this contract is up. Between these problems, the resistance to Flash and the tethered to iTunes its time anyway.

I went ahead and got the "Free Memory" app several people mentioned. The first time I used it, I showed about 22 mB free after several "taps." Then I used the phone app to make a call, and checked the memory again... less than 2mB free afterwards. From a native app. Talk about a memory leak.

I don't know how to interpret the list of tasks running, as they don't seem to change even when I tap the button to free memory.

The most I've gotten freed is about 32-35 mB, but sometimes the app seems to top out at 18 mB or so. Using a single app often takes me to less than 5 or 6 mB after I close it. If there's any accuracy to this app's data at all, no wonder everyone is having problems. The OS seems to allow apps to grab memory and not release it.

Shelia Addison wrote:
If there's any accuracy to this app's data at all, no wonder everyone is having problems. The OS seems to allow apps to grab memory and not release it.

Exactly!

must say, we can only agree ...

only, the point's been raised before, more than once, in the history of this debacle ...

so, can it really be true, that Apple could be unaware & so haven't already addressed it ??

Who knows, given the story so far, anything's possible ...

Christopher John Hunter wrote:
so, can it really be true, that Apple could be unaware & so haven't already addressed it ??

When 4.0 first came out I went back to 3.1.3 and FreeMemory never seem to read a level below about 15 megs. So maybe they're aware and don't know what to do or don't really care to find out at this point.

I could revert back to 3.1.3 using Itunes. Just download the ipsw file, and when you start Itunes, yo get the option to restore using any custom file, so point to 3.1.3 file which you downloaded, and click restore.It should boot back after restoring. After that you can even go back to 4.1 (last stable configuration known to work fine with iphone 3G).
In my case, after restoring to 3.1.3, I then got it back upto 4.1, and restored my phone to the point it was before this 4.2.1 upgrade was announced.

Does your apps work fine? Especially the iOS4.0 tested ones? Even on 4.2.1 I am experiencing some issues and I assume it is related to the old hardware not being optimized for the new software. I know most apps indicate that they are iOS4.0 tested but have support from 3.0.