iPhone 3G Slowness Problems Helped by iOS 4.2?

Apple doesn't abandon customers. Technologies advance.
Anyone buying tech should learn this lesson within the first year of purchasing. How many three years old articles of clothing does one take from a wardrobe?
Consumers buy and buy and buy again…The fundamentals of capitalism. Americans worship it then constantly whinge when it bites them on the bum.
As Prince Charming found, one can't shoehorn a fat woman into a small shoe.

I'm going to just say as a user who had a 3G when IOS4 came out that wtf was apple thinking! No technology company just releases a new version for their proprietary decide and not test it with existing hardware that users will most likely have. I'm pretty sure it was a bogus push to make 3G users bail on their phones to get the iPhone 4 out of frustration (i was one of them!). With a year still left on contract and a near useless phone that would crash when trying to text, I couldn't take it anymore and didn't want to break contract.

I know for my next phone i'm bailing on the iPhone because of this BS.

I thought Apple products were supposed to be user friendly.

Buddy, next time your car breaks down you don't want to get the same response from the manufacturer/dealer as these customers (paying customers) got from Apple. It's not about capitalism, it's about providing support for a device that you released only 2 years ago and the customers paid for. That's called good business and in some circles even basic courtesy.
To make matters worse, the same company came up with newer tech that, guess what, is more expensive than the 3G, and simultaneously crippled the 3G (see nmsumike's experience). How convenient is that?
My computers are not new, but I can still find updated drivers and support on their websites.
That should tell you something.
/troll feed

im still convinced this isnt true...i resolved the problem on my 3G after i found performing the restore from backup (SEVERAL TIMES) made my iphone un-usable.
it appears the backup function was the problem..not sure if the 'restore' causes problems on 3G phones using 4.0.
simply perform a factory reset, when the option in itunes asks you to restore from backup, click no and select 'new phone' (or whatever the setting is). and then once the phone is built, click Sync..all contacts/apps will be restored and your phone runs nice n fast.
yes this isnt ideal because u lose sms messages etc but at least you have a working phone.

Pro tip: do not buy a product that was designed by Apple. You WILL get shafted if you do.

The real question is about if apple knew about this and rolled out the "update" anyway, i have a hard time to accept that any competent Q&A department could miss a thing like this. That leaves a more sinister plan as option! Let the 3's suffer enough to purchase a 4... after all their locked up in their kindergarden and aren't likely to change brand to the more free world outside!

Seriously, either way wouldnt surprice me with what the company operates today!

While I would like to agree with your sinister plan approach, it seems that Apple's QA department is just plain useless. The breaking glass, bad antenna, this. I feel like they put too much into marketing and possibly r and d and basically nothing into testing. QA and QC are the two most important aspects of a big company, and they seemed to have lost their edge with quality, which leaves........nothing.

How could they not know it? They only have like 5 actual products that use this update, with as much money as Apple has they should very easily have enough Q&A people to test each product with this update and find this problem. It's not like they use 700 different hardware configurations, it's basically the same set of hardware with a few differences in different models (RAM, Flash Space) it shouldn't be hard to spot something like this problem.

Who needs QA and QC when the marketing team will guarantee sales and retention through clever gimmickery and balls-out attacking of competitors?

Are you all serious. All the press I read prior to the roll-out of ios 4 was that it would not work acceptably on a 3G and it would slow down a 3GS noticeably, but add the multitasking functionality to be able to use programs like Pandora Radio in the background. Your issues stem from addressable memory constraints with not CPU horsepower. You had to make an educated decision.

But but but shouldn't ''it just works''?

X2 - exact same situation I'm in, I now have an iPhone 4 because of it as well. Pissed off (even though I like the new phone a lot, minus the very EASY to scratch glass) about the whole experience. My 3G is a paperweight thanks to iOS4.

I can do one better on the "car analogy" front. It's like taking your sportscar into the dealership every 3 months for a routine maintenance/checkup/tuneup, and one day when you go to pick it up, they say "oh by the way we updated some software on the on-board computer. It doesn't run that well on cars that aren't the newest model, so it'll limit your speed to 40 mph at all times."

If that happened, there would be an outrage. Now it's happened in the phone world, and the outrage is entirely justifiable.

usersname: I've dealt with Apple since 1980, ten years as an Apple retailer. The company has a _long_ established tradition of abandoning its customers.

i had an ipod touch 3G and i skipped 4.0 but i upgraded to 4.1 and never notice any slowness

I am the owner of an iPhone 3G, and I will be jumping ship after this whole debacle. Seriously, I don't care at this point if the iPhone 4 is the greatest device ever. No more money from me Apple. Between the iPhone 3G that I suffered with since summer, and this new Macbook I just got at work (which feels slower than the 3.5 year old Macbook it replaced), I am sick of Apple.

Microsoft, as evil as they used to be, seems to be working hard at improving their customer's user experiences.

I'm tired of these overpriced status symbol Apple products,with their piss poor performance and horribly arrogant customer service.

Ok just for a bit of balance, it seems like a lot of people are complaining loudly that they're hanging around like lemons on a tree waiting for their Android devices that are less than a year old to get the latest update. I wonder what the prospect is of getting those devices running the latest version when those devices are 2 years old, and what the experience will be like. Methinks it is also going to be a lot of pain and disappointment.

{not a fanboy of any shade}

tired of applez~, I want to throw my apple 3G soon and get a WP7

Just a thought: I've never had this problem on any Nokia that I've owned.

Any Blackberry users have this problem?

At least the 3G (2008) is still getting updates.

Here is a list of some phones that won't even get Froyo:

Droid Eris (2009)
HTC Hero (2009)
Samsung Behold II (2009)

Can you believe that? Not even a year after you own a device and they stop updating it. I'll take a few months of sluggish performance (which I can choose not to even update to) with constant improving updates over no updates at all.

Go ahead, 'jumpship'. And pray that you don't have a unsupported phone after a mere year.

I gotta say, I love the "car" references.. As inaccurate, and rediculous as they are. As much as some of you people may want to ignore it, all products.. ALL, are designed with a "life expectancy in mind. For example:

Most cell phones are designed around a 18-24 month life cycle.
Most computers 2-3 years for an enthusiast, 4-7 years for the normal crowd. 20+ for the baby boomers ;P(however with comps.. this is due to tech advancements, not physical breakdown. I know of 8086's that are still running. )
Most cars 7-11 years.
Most dryers, washing machines, and refrigerators 14-20 years.

No company is going to design something to last forever, and outside of that life span, support rapidly deminishes, and becomes exponentally more expensive. Welcome to Capitalism people. They want your money first and foremost, and will balance everything else in whatever way they find to be the cheapest way to get the most money. Your feelings, beyond that, they could care less about. The buck rules, not your tears.


Yes, it appears iOS4 ruined some peoples iPhone 3G's.. That sucks to hear.. definitely.. Then again.. I didn't upgrade to iOS4 until I got my iPhone 4 anyway.. I saw that train wreck coming a mile away.. Running software designed for much better hardware, and expecting the same experience is a little much. The 2G and 3G are the same hardware-wise.. if it can't run on the original.. why expect it on the 3? I'm surprised Apple even allowed people to try!

Now, for anyone that says "Then why offer it for anything below a 3G at all?" True, that's "kinda" valid. They knew it wouldn't work on 2G, so they blocked that out (and of course.. I'm sure we can remember all the anti-apple crap that was said after that decision >.>) and now, with the 3G they had to decide again. And on top of all of that, a consideration that doesn't seem to be remembered is that for the most part.. haven't ALL of our smartphones slowed down with age? The older tech gets, the slower it performs.. It's just the way of things. And a two year old 3g would have not been performing as well, or as quick, as a brand new one. One that had been used on a daily basis, for hours a day, and then to try to upgrade to iOS4 just because it was "allowed"? When considering the short life-span that cell phones are designed around.. that would be the equiv of trying to install win7 on a computer built in 2003. Yes, it might have the "minimum" spec's to run the darn OS.. but you ar
ignorant to think it's going to run it well. (which ties into why I think the car reference is funny.. If you got an optional upgrade for your car.. One that is designed for the current model, and your car is at or nearing the end of its projected life... Why in the world would you even begin to think it would work?!)

Also, this makes me think about how everyone yells at apple for it's "controls". How Apple likes to make the decision on what works with what, and what is is/isn't allowed. Seems like they "loosened" the reins on this area, and the general consumer.. The "know-it-all" consumer.. fudged things up. Which I unfortunately can't say surprises me in the least bit. And as everyone knows, Apple tends to do things aimed from the bottom up, which works out well for everyone (hence the "it just works" mentality.), while the PC crowd tends to aim for the TOP down.. (Which, in my opinion, is why so many people end up screwing up their machines, goofing around with things they really shouldn't be messing with, installing, deleting, etc.)


And in the end, I realize that they were damned if they allowed it, and damned if they didn't. Maybe they tried to see if the reaction from the Apple-Hating PC crowd would be diff this time. It wasn't. Plain and simply, pc users, for the most part, are just going to bash apple without any real reason, or purpose. When they are successful, they are bashed for their tax, business model, and Steve Jobs. When they aren't really doing anything, they are bashed for wasted space, outdated hardware, and Steve Jobs. And when they fail, they are bashed for the failure(whether commercial, HR, PR, Human error, or otherwise), everything they've ever done, and Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs. True.. good ol' Steve does like to say some very humorous, and un-PR friendly comments sometimes via email.. but it's still very pathetic behavior from people who claim to be better than then "stuck up" Apple crowd. You'd think some people could just act their age, and shut up and ignore and not purchas
what they don't like, but that, obviously, is too much to expect from some people. The amount of people on the internet that LIVE for this drama is sickening. Nobody is stealing your money/checks/credit cards at night, or selling your children to purchase Apple stuff for you. So grow up, shut up, and move on.

On subject however, I hope it does speed it up..and i hope it also scales uphill. More speed, even if not needed(is there really such a thing? ;P), is always welcome in my book.

I'm sorry but cannot believe that apple didn't test the iSO4 out on the 3G before it was released. They must have known this was going to happen but they didn't even put on a warning about the slow down. Now most of the people probably posting here are into gadgets and PC's big time. What about poor Mrs Smith that loaded up itunes and thought she was doing the right thing by upgrading because a push came through itunes saying it would upgrade her phone? To compond this she wouldn't know how to downgrade back to 3.1.3 and more over it is against apples draconian rules user agreement.

I feel for the bulk of the populus that do not understand or know a great deal about any tecnology that are taken for a ride by these companys when all they want is something that works. Apple should have told the customers with a warning through iTunes before upggrading and secondly they probably should not have released this update for the 3G.

I have a 3G and an 4G and in the last six months I have had prblems with them both. The 3G slow down and the 4G antenna problem and other issues where the 3G worked fine.

Previously owned a Nokia, Motorola and Sony/Erricsson and have never had any of these difficulties.

I dearly hope that 4.0 on 3G pissed off enough people that they'll consider moving to WP7/BlackBerry/Android now.

I did upgrade from iPhone 3G to iPhone 4 after this happened, but only because it worked out dirt cheap to do so (£15).

No more iPhones for me. I'll be looking at WP7 handsets next Summer.

Quote: "i thought apple products were meant to be user friendly" , true that mate! my iphone is shit now since 4.2!!!