∞ Apple investigating slowness of iOS 4 on iPhone 3G

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Apple is reportedly investigating complaints from users that iOS 4 runs very slow on its iPhone 3G.

iOS 4 MultitaskingComplaints from iPhone 3G users began to surface soon after the iOS 4 was released, but those complaints were quickly overshadowed by the iPhone 4′s antenna woes. However, with that crisis behind them, Apple is now investigating how iOS 4 runs on the iPhone 3G, According to The Wall Street Journal.

User complaints have ranged from slowdowns to having the iPhone 3G almost unusable after upgrading to iOS 4. A number of people I’ve spoken with have even tried a complete restore of the iPhone 3G, with varying results.

The problems with iOS 4 do not appear to affect the faster iPhone 3GS or the iPhone 4.


  • Perry Clease

    I can attest that the slowness is almost glacial on my 3G. I am glad that I did not upgrade my wife’s 3G to iOS4. Hopefully Apple will soon get this situation fixed

  • http://Ecamm Ken

    Jim, it was unusable on my 3G. Obviously I would have cared more if I hadn’t gotten an iPhone 4 at the same time. ;)

  • J Hashim

    Mine a 3Gs, couple of times ‘reboot’ whilst on the phone with someone. iOS4 was great and fun but guess some bugs are still there. Hopefully, new version are on the way. Like what Jobs said in the press conference, we want our customers to be happy..

  • Alex

    Same here – calling the 3G with iOS 4.0 “slow” is suggesting that the Sahara tends to be dry.

  • http://mangochut.net mangochutney

    While it’s not good that the issue exists, it’s good on Apple that they actually investigate it.
    This is something that other companies don’t do.
    If your Android driven handset doesn’t support the next .x-update… tough luck, buy a new one. Remember that we’re talking half-year device iterations with Android phones, not a three year old model.

  • brmperc

    Isn’t the 3G basically the original iPhone with a 3G chip? If the OG iPhone couldn’t handle iOS4, I wonder why Apple thought the 3G would?

  • http://mauricekessler.com Moeskido

    Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t this a tiny bit like investigating why Leopard runs so slowly on my PowerBook G4?

  • http://- Laixoi

    very very slow iphone 3G under IOS4 unfortunately!!

  • Stan the Man

    Ever since the 4.0 upgrade my 3G phone has been operating extremely slower. Also, some programs just automatically exit out and return back to home page of the iphone. I’m pretty upset because you would think the apple 4.0 up-date would only make things better and faster but, instead the iphone is a lot slower and causing more problems than I had before the up-date. Please fix it Mr. Jobs!

  • Perry Clease

    I have seen posts around the blogs that if you turn off Spotlight then iOS4 will run faster. I have done that, but am not yet ready to report that is speeds it up. It may, but it doesn’t bring it back to the speed in 3. However, it is worth a shot and you can always turn it back on:

    Settings > General > Home Page > Home Button > Spotlight Search

    • http://liamwillard@hotmail.co.uk liam willard

      thanks your comment helped me loads a huge difference in speed now many thanks :)

  • OK

    Same experience, iOS4 much slower on iPhone 3G than iPhoneOS3. Restart helps every time, but after opening several apps, it slows down again. Most notably does the iPod app seem to slow it down!

  • Jon

    They need to admit that the 3G doesn’t have enough memory to run iOS4 comfortably.

    The only thing they can do is to rewrite the code to be more compact, which is not an easy task.

  • Carlos Euscate

    I agree with Stan the man; after the 4.0 upgrade my 3G phone has been operating extremely slower. Also, some programs just automatically exit out and return back to home page of the iphone. Also it is really slow when trying to run some apps.
    Will expect from Apple an urgent fix!

  • layli

    i regret upgrading my 3g to the ios4, but it makes sense that it wouldn’t run, now that i know that the 3g has 128mb of memory while the iphone 4 (that was designed to run ios4) has 512mb!! the 3gs has 256mb, so i guess it can handle the ios4 a little better than the poor old 3g. there is going to be no solution, since it appears to be a memory issue and the memory on the 3g cannot be upgraded. how is a phone with 128mb of memory supposed to run an operating system designed to run on a phone with 512mb? i only hope they will let us restore our 3g phones to the old operating system.

  • Perry Clease

    “how is a phone with 128mb of memory supposed to run an operating system designed to run on a phone with 512mb?”

    Not being a hardware guy I need to ask. Is the memory used for the OS separate from the memory used for files? I would be willing to give up some music/video/app memory for a faster OS.

    • Chris

      Yes, they are entirely separate. the 128 or 512 MB is RAM – a very high speed memory where the OS stores code it is currently running, as well as images it is displaying, etc… When the OS runs out of space in RAM (such as when you are loading a huge file), it creates more virtual RAM in the mass storage memory, which is your 16 or 32 GB of memory where your apps and music go. This memory is very slow (in comparison to the RAM), so when the OS needs to pretend that this memory is RAM by use of a Virtual Memory File, things get glacial. (Like, 2 minutes to load the iPod app type of glacial).

      An OS designed for a system with 512 MB of RAM will run on an OS with 128 MB of RAM in exactly the same way a race car will run on 70 octane budget gas – It will run, but very poorly and you may experience problems like the engine stalling.

  • Gene

    Agree with Layli….if Apple would make it so the 3G could be restored to the old os it would be a good thing. Better os is a great thing only if it can be used to the fullest.

  • Chris

    I have a 3G, and it is glacial. I connect it to my car radio to listen to music, and in a 45 minute drive it crashed 3 times! Sometimes, it spends so much time ‘processing’ an incoming call, it rings for less than one second before it sends the call to voicemail. I’m really glad I have an iPhone 4 on the way, or I would be downright mad with Apple. I mean, did they not even test 4.0 on a 3G? I don’t really want the new features if stability and speed is the price. Just give me 3.1 and I will be very happy!

  • http://eberbayona.com R amon Espinosa

    The issues above are right on with my 1-phone my apps jump or blank and the slow part is a problem for Apple NOW

  • Kevin

    The racecar actually WILL run on 70 octane – maybe better than ever – before it detonates from running too lean, and essentially blows up. So maybe not the best analogy, but the point is that the 3G is unusable after “upgrading” to the newer OS, and I really don’t care HOW old the phone is – if it can’t run the new OS – all of the pre-testing by the company should have noticed this, and it should never have been offered as an “upgrade” for the 3G. That’s all there is to it. Apple screwed up, and it’s pretty convenient how they’re killing the old model before the latest model is released. Encouraged me to wait in line for four hours to get the new phone today, since my old one was toast. Not impressed! I’ll still keep giving Apple my money for the meantime though, so I guess none of this really matters anyways. Same way they short the stores on available units for purchase, to encourage long lineups and negative publicity (no publicity is bad publicity!) so they can ramp up production over the next few weeks and redeem themselves and become the heros. [sigh] Just another corporation looking to make as much money as possible – really no surprises here. Don’t read more into Apple than is there. Don’t think they’re doing you any favours. Yikes. In a negative mood tonight…..

    • Perry Clease

      The iPhone 3G running iOS 4 is certainly “usable” and I have been using it for calls, apps, web, et al since the day. No it does it not run as fast as it did under version 3, but it is usable.

  • Thomas

    I got a very slow iPhone 3G with OS4, it reboots very often whilst SMS and calls!
    It’s really a bad luck with upgrading to OS4.

  • Frank

    I wish I had researched these comments last week. I ordered the new I-Phone 4 believing that I had a phone issue with my 3G. It is disappointing that after explaining my issues in the store, they were more than happy for me to buy and new phone and sign a new two year contract knowing full well that my phone was not the issue, the operating system is. All the same issues as discussed by others here.
    Apple has suddenly and very un-apple like dismissed issues what they know they have problems with. Throwing other companies under the bus. This is most disappointing. There are other choices out there, maybe not as good……..yet.
    Careful Steve. Don’t lose your followers to bad decisions and launches that are not ready.

  • Nick Baxter

    Apple should have never let the 3G be upgraded to iOS4. Though my 3G is still usable, it has slowed down significantly. I do appreciate having the iBooks app though, but when I first installed it, it ran so slow it was virtually unusable, and if I rotated the phone on accident, I would have to wait several minutes for the page to reload in landscape. Fortunately, the latest update for iBooks fixes the issues and it is now only as slow as the rest of my iOS phone. Hmmm, just more incentive to get the new one, though I think Apple made a big mistake with updating the 3G as they should not corner users into buying new products by (accidentally or intentionally) making their 2 year old products slow and virtually unusable. Don’t worry apple, we will all get new phones and new iPods, but not everyone needs the latest and greatest. We need time to cycle through purchasing our new laptops, desktops, ipads, iphones, ipods, apple tvs, and all the other goodies, we can’t keep getting new ones every year! Though I would if I could…

  • Mark in MD

    My 3G was also veeerrryyy slow after upgrading; extremely frustrating to use, plus some very weird happenings, e;g., where it would just jump into other apps (as if my 3G was multi-tasking on its own, though at a glacial pace.

    I recently walked into an Apple store in VA, asked for help, and they took it out back and downgraded it back to 3.1.3. Feels like a new phone again now, though I will miss the folders much…

  • Luchorossi1951

    I have the same problem with my 3G i-phone it was frozen and dropping calls, vibrating, beeping, turn it on by itself and practically useless. I am trying to restore to the new firmware 4.2 from the i-tunes is hooked couple of hours now and is stall on back up. Don’t know what to do?
    Should the apple Co. release the proprietary use of the phone to the rightful owner and have the apps. wanted not just theirs and stopping monopolizing this device. If this continues will break my agreement with them.

  • Luchorossi1951

    Some links users should check:
    http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/
    …..Federal regulators lifted a cloud of uncertainty when they announced it was lawful to hack or “jailbreak” an iPhone, declaring Monday there was “no basis for copyright law to assist Apple in protecting its restrictive business model.”
    Jailbreaking is hacking the phone’s OS to allow consumers to run any app on the phone they choose, including applications not authorized by Apple.
    The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked regulators 19 months ago to add jailbreaking to a list of explicit exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions.
    At stake for Apple is the very closed business model the company has enjoyed since 2007, when the iPhone debuted. Apple says it’s unlawful to jailbreak, (.pdf) but has not taken legal action against the millions who have jailbroken their phones and used the underground app store Cydia.
    Apple maintains that its closed marketplace is what made the success of the iPhone possible, and sold more than three billion apps. Apple also told regulators that the nation’s cellphone networks could suffer “potentially catastrophic” cyberattacks by iPhone-wielding hackers at home and abroad (.pdf) if iPhone owners are permitted to legally jailbreak their shiny wireless devices