Should I update my iPhone 3g to ios 4.0.1

No

I seem to be one of the few who've not had problems on a 3G with IOS4, aside from speed issues. It's noticeably slower. However I won't be touching 4.0.1 from the amount of people I've spoken to with issues!

Do not "upgrade" to 4.0.1...

You will end up losing reception also...

I was concerned about updating after reading that it bring slower performance. The update went smoothly, I did not loose anything including SMS, phonebooks and apps. Maybe you won't believe me but it even felt faster. If only home screen wallpapers were available.

I'm staying away from this update with my 3G.

However, I haven't updated the 20+ apps that are now OS4.0 compatible.

Does anyone know if updating the apps will render them useless on your 3G running OS3???

I spoke with a representative in tech support today and they mentioned two things to me to help resolve the issue of iOS 4 on the 3G.

1. I'm sure it's been mentioned on here somewhere, but you can do two hard resets of the phone by holding down the power and home buttons simultaneously until the phone shuts off. Then immediately doing it again once the phone turns back on.

2. Something I haven't seen or heard of yet - He said that some Apple Stores have a machine that is capable of downgrading your OS and suggested I check with my local Apple Store. This may be an alternative to following some of the tutorials out there on Google. At least if Apple downgrades your phone and breaks it, they'll be responsible for fixing it. Just make sure the phone is backed up before any downgrade is attempted.

My opinion: If you haven't upgraded your 3G yet, don't! Unless you really want to sacrifice speed and performance for folders, a spell check, and a zoom for your camera. I could easily do without that. By the way, all of my events were deleted. The only ones that remain are the ones that were dated previous to day I upgraded. This goes for my iPhone as well as my iCal. Hope I didn't have anything too important to do..

As stated earlier - "If it isn't broke, don't fix it."

Agree with all the comments above, but would like to add one of my own. Don't hold your breath waiting for Apple to come with a fix. They will not. Many years of previous experience tell me that they focus their resources on fixing issues with the latest hardware platforms, and developing for the future. Supporting earlier hardware versions gets no priority, and maybe that's the way it should be.

Personally I would have appreciated a warning prior to applying the iOS4 update. There was a lot of fanfare about all the new features, but only a few actually apply to 3G owners. Threading of mail is cool. Folders are ok, but not essential. The speed penalty is highly inconvenient. Having to reboot every few hours to restore mail access is a real pain.

Now I've gone back to 3.1.3 and I'm happy again.

@bizmarc - if the apps are just iOS4 compatible, they'll probably still work on OS3, but some are now requiring 4 to run in the first place. I've got backups of my app folders from before the upgrade, and since I reverted to OS3, and have replaced a couple with their earlier versions as the updates would no longer sync.

Basically, check the App Store pages before updating individual apps and see what the new requirements are, and keep a back up of earlier versions to replace them with if you need.

Ultimately, new and existing apps will want to run on OS4 and the software that proceeds, but this is a short term work around until Apple release the rumoured 4.1 fix for 3Gs.

Hope that answers your question.