madison

The Mobile Gadgeteer

Matthew Miller & Joel Evans
Home / News & Blogs / The Mobile Gadgeteer

Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon

By | August 21, 2010, 6:23am PDT

Summary: If you don’t want to rollback your iPhone 3G to iPhone OS 3.13, a fix may be coming soon from Apple

Almost a month ago we wrote about how Apple was swapping out iPhone 3G devices that were running iOS4. The process was sometimes pretty involved, but in most cases if you went to the Apple Store and complained enough, the Genius would pull a fresh iPhone 3G running OS 3.1.3 out of the box for you and swap it for your iPhone 3G running iOS4.

Now we’re hearing that Steve Jobs has sent another one of his quick e-mails, this time confirming that the software update is coming soon. The text of the e-mail is literally:

“Software update coming soon”

Less than a month ago we heard that Apple was “looking into the issues,” and we even called out Apple and asked that the company advise against upgrading the iPhone 3G to iOS4. If this latest e-mail from Steve Jobs is to be believed, though, it does seem that the company will finally release an update to fix the issue.

So, what exactly is the issue? That’s the part that isn’t clear since some people have updated their iPhone 3G device to iOS4 without issues, whereas others have restored from factory, and then re-installed all of their data, and then not experienced any issues. On the other end of the spectrum are the people who have tried just about everything, and the performance is just unbearable when running iOS4 on an iPhone 3G.

We’ll have to wait and see what Apple offers up as a fix. At this point I figured they’d offer a way to restore your iPhone back to 3.x, but that probably opens up the phone a bit too much for hackers to have their fun.

Are you still struggling with your iPhone 3G running iOS4? If you don’t want to wait for the fix, Lifehacker has a great how-to on rolling your iPhone back to 3.1.3. Since it’s the weekend, this might be the perfect project for you.

Have you rolled back your iPhone or do you have other tips for improving the performance of iOS4? If so, share your thoughts below.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “The Mobile Gadgeteer”

Topics

Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Apple iPhone 3G, iOS4, 3G, Smart Phones, Cellular Phones, Wireless And Mobility, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands and technologies into the mobile and wireless space.

Disclosure

Joel Evans

Joel is a serial entrepreneur with his most recent business, CronkSoftware (cronksoftware.com), focusing on consulting and building games and applications for mobile devices. Joel has consulted for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile division and advises other companies on how to incorporate mobile into their existing brands and products. Joel purchases many of his devices and others are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the supplier. If any devices are provided as “keeper” Joel will clearly disclose this in his reviews.

Biography

Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands, technologies and services into the mobile and wireless space. Joel is currently serving as the Managing Director of Cronk Software, Inc., a company he founded to offer full-service, end-to-end mobile strategy, design and development services.

Joel is the former founder and "Chief Geek" of Geek.com, a website praised by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and others as one of world's best sources of information for technology professionals and enthusiasts.

Joel also serves as a technology expert for a number of well-known publications and regularly advises corporations, analysts, journalists and bloggers on what the future of technology will bring. He brings decades of relationships with leading game publishers, online communities and publishers, along with both hardware and software product management and delivery expertise. Joel can be found online as "JoelGeek" and you can follow him on Twitter @JoelGeek.

Talkback Most Recent of 14 Talkback(s)

  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    with a lot of work, you can roll back a 3G to 3.1.3, but with a 3GS running 4.0 it is currently impossible to revert back to 3.1.3.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Pederson
    21st Aug 2010
  • No need to rollback the 3G to old code
    I disabled and then re-enabled Spotlight Search and haven't had any slowness since. It's simple:

    1. Turn off Spotlight Search: Go to Settings | General | Home Button | Spotlight Search, and uncheck everything

    2. Hard reboot your iPhone 3G: Hold down power and home buttons when you shut down.

    3. Turn Spotlight Search back on: Go back to same screen as step 1, and re-check everything you unchecked in Step 1
    ZDNet Gravatar
    RationalGuy
    23rd Aug 2010
  • Concerned about iPad v.1 and IOS4
    The iPad has the same amount of RAM as the 3Gs (256Mb), which is likely going to be an issue when large, more RAM-hungry iPad apps start being released.

    Why the hell couldn't Apple put 1Gb of RAM into this thing?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    trickytom2
    21st Aug 2010
  • Because...
    640k should be enough RAM for anything.

    Or, in a more mature vein, they had to start somewhere. That and a minimalist mobile device like an iPad shouldn't have all that much of anything (big spiffy processor, oodles of RAM, vast storage devices etc).

    For me, I'm wondering if it could be made into a decent front end to more powerful back end systems.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    zkiwi
    21st Aug 2010
  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    @trickytom2 And this has what to with the iphone 3G on iOS4? Especially since the iPad has 2x the ram and at least 2x the processor that the iPhone 3G does... the iPad specs are closer to the specs of the iPhone 3Gs than the 3G. And really why are YOU worried about a hardware you won't buy running an OS you don't like?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Pete "athynz" Athens
    23rd Aug 2010
  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    what, Apple software flaky...? Nooooo....never.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    max_wedge
    21st Aug 2010
  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    @max_wedge This is a new OS for a over 2 year old device... ease up a bit.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Pete "athynz" Athens
    23rd Aug 2010
  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    @athynz .. So now we have to replace perfectly good phones every 2 years? What a waste.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    arisaperstein@...
    23rd Aug 2010
  • Fix? What fix???? there's nothing that needs fixin'
    This is Apple software man, A-p-p-l-e   s-o-f-t-w-a-r-e, capice?.

    Keep your stinkin' fix, ok? it's not needed here.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    OS Reload
    22nd Aug 2010
  • As many a proponent of Apple products would say
    that the fix is not needed as there is nothing wrong with the phone.

    The loss of control of one's own product is acceptable as in the end they receive a product that "just works", so using their logic, there is nothing wrong with the phone, it is an Apple product, so therefor, it must work.

    So what would they need to "fix"?

    plain
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Mister Spock
    22nd Aug 2010
  • Won't even install.
    Every time I sync it asks to install OS4. Then it hangs for hours. Won't install.

    I have more problems with my iPhones than I do with all my windows PCs put together.

    The calendar is still a joke. Two days reminder is the most notice possible? (but within the 2 days you can have 2 reminders) What nonsense. My Clie Palm device from more than a decade ago has more functionality. So every event I need to enter 2 calendar items. One for the event, and one for the reminder a week ahead.

    I am just thankful that I don't own any Mac products.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Jetranger
    23rd Aug 2010
  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    I have not had any problems on 3Gs and I don't think that my wife has had any problems with her 3G. She is not a hard core user so maybe it has something to do with a particular app or how much memory is consumed.

    My 3Gs is pretty full and I have not noticed a thing. I sync everything with my Windows PC. Maybe this is a Mac on Mac issue.

    Good luck to everyone having issues.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    MLamont
    23rd Aug 2010
  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    Adding to RationalGuy's post, I just unchecked all of the items in spotlight search and that gave my 3G a big boost as nothing else seemed to help. Go into Settings,General, Home button,Spotlight search and then just click every item in this list until all checks are gone and then back out of every menu.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    jamccor71
    23rd Aug 2010
  • RE: Apple's fix for iOS4 on 3G coming soon
    News today that iOS 4.1 includes 3G fix happy
    ZDNet Gravatar
    advancedbourland
    1st Sep 2010

Talkback - Tell Us What You Think

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

Blog Roll

Blog Archive

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources