Iphone 3GS slow after update to iOS 5

Honeycroft, I think you're jumping to conclusions. In my experience it works fine so that shows the 3GS platform itself is OK for iOS5. The exception is that when it has too many background apps stacked up it does indeed start to get slow. This would appear to be a bug and hopefully we'll have a fix (ie automatically flush unused apps sooner). There's an important difference between the platform not being able to handle it (which is not really fixable) versus a bug (which is very fixable).

so hopefully apple either enable the function to disable background / multitasking app.

i know that it's possible to edit the plist file without having to jailbreak,but it require you to do a restore of your phone.

wonder why Apple don't enable that option for the user to choose whether or not to have multitasking enable.

So should I upgrade to OS5 or not?

I found that my iphone can run slow at times anyway and on a couple of occasions has shut itself down mid phone call. A friend (and iphone owner) told me it is probably because I have too many apps installed but it honestly doesn't bother me that much. From what I'm reading here I think I could upgrade to OS5 and prob not notice any difference in performance. The main complaint seems to be regarding speed of app loading and the occasional sluggish response from screen swipes, but is that the end of the world? As long as the iphone still works, right? The problems with wifi and bluetooth might trouble me though, but I think someone mentioned disabling icloud to fix that? What other negative effects are there?

Anyway, what should I do? All advice welcome and eagerly anticipated.

iPhone 3GS (32GB) iOS 4.3.4

Mac OS X 10.6.8

iPad (Not yet but I'm saving up! 😁)

Yeah I have major issues with Apple inc system apps like messages (just took 15 sec to load), phone, camera etc... its started to filter into other apps like whatsapp. Taking forever to function.

Annoying as ****

So it's not just apps that I'll download that are affected, system apps get messed up as well? That's crazy! Apple released upgrades that screws up it's own software? That's almost as bad as MicroSoft (don't know if I'm allowed to mention that name here? But don't worry Mac lovers I've washed my mouth out with soap 😁).

So I guess I should avoid OS5. 😟

I upgraded my 3GS as well...and have same issues as noted on all these pages. I was able to restore my battery life by turning off all iCloud features. I now sync my phone when I plug it into the computer, but I am now left to ponder what the benefit of iCloud is. My MobileMe was working fine and had for years, I guess one gets what one pays for....

Apps that take a long time to load or fail in loading are a major irritation

My 3GS is nearly at a stand still all my basic stuff like messaging is taking ages to open, I am unable to upgrade until May 2012 so that is me slowed down, everything was fine until the last firmware, so Apple are you sorting this out because there is a lot of folks still paying for there 3GS through contracts.

******* Again everyone experiencing issues / performance with their 3GS please call applecare 800myiphone if they discuss applecare support mention issue is due to update to 5/5.0.1... *******

The more of us calling the more gets the word out...

We have a similar problem with my wifes 3Gs. We updated to 5.0.1 (same as my 4s) and initially lost all of her apps. After doing an update of the apps from the phone, they were all restored, but they don't work. When you click on them they open and then apparently close again imediately. Everything else seems to work ok. 1Password worked initially but does not seem to now.

The other curioius thing: When hooked up to iTunes (Win 7 computer) If we select pats cell phnone and then the apps tab, it says 0 apps and does not show any apps in the list on the left side, but all the apps are shown on the phone screens on the right side of the iTunes screen. Backing up purchased items from Pat's phone does not seem to fix this,

Any thoughts about a fix for this? From reading this thread it does not look too good.

Meogeo - have you tried closing all your background apps? This worked for me.

I just updated to iOS5.0.1

I ALWAYS wait for the first update after a major release update, no matter what the platform - I didn't update to iOS 5, needless to say.

Everything works fine. I lost no apps, my videos and music play just fine.

I did notice that things got sluggish though. And I noticed that I was getting "low memory" diagnostics. I keep my "background" apps low now and have turned off notifications for all but the essential (messages, calendar, reminders). I turned off iCloud for everything but "find my iPhone".

Things got better and I stopped getting "low memory" diagnostics.

It is slower than it was with iOS4 or iOS3, but the new features are nice, if not as nice as my wife's 4s.

I've heard said that the Genius Bar folks can do a "vacuuming" of the system to speed it up too, but I don't know about that, it sounds kind of scary...

DLC

Hi Mum 🙂 Happy New Year to you too! Sorry to hear that it's slow even without background apps in the way. Occasionally mine gets sluggish but I've always forund that closing the background apps fixes it right away. Anyhow, hopefully there will be another patch soon...

Ski-patroller - That sounds like the worst problem I read here. Most people only seemed to get slow iphones, but yours sounds like it is completely busted!

Isn't there a restore option on itunes for your iphone? I thought you just linked up and then reset to factory settings. This may help, but you would probably lose all your non-backed up data.

Sorry if I'm wrong.

Just noticed that iOS release 5.0.2, which was expected this week, has been delayed to fix "memory leak issues". That may be good news for slow-down sufferers because the gradually accumulating nature of the slowdowns sounds very much like it could be caused by memory leaks (and would be worse on 3GS because it has less memory in the first place). So, here's hoping that the eventual release of 5.0.2 will solve the slow-downs being reported in this thread.

My phone crashed - so I ended up upgrading to the latest OS - hate it !!!

Apps are slow to load - even pressing send for a text can take ages

We need a fix before I go buy a different product