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I was sooo close to buying an iPod Touch recently, and then I did a little bit of Google-fu and found out that lots of people with 2G and 3G Touches and 3G and 3GS phones are having their devices get fucked up from upgrading to iOS4. Is this just Internet hot air with dumbasses who aren't tech savvy, or is this a genuine problem?

I was at an Apple Store last week, and no big surprise here, all the Touches for sale had iOS4 on them. Is there a difference between upgrading a Touch and buying one with iOS4 pre-installed i.e. will the problems that have screwed up the upgraders afflict a new Touch straight from the factory with iOS4?

I'd really rather not wait till the rumored 4th Gen Touch comes out in September. I'm even thinking of getting a Zune HD.

I have an iPhone 3G and since I upgraded to 4.0 I've had nothing but trouble. In the upgrade process it decided to delete my music and downloaded ringtones (about £20 worth of paid for downloads which for some reason no longer exist in iTunes either) and two of my email accounts I had set up where deleted.

The new OS itself is pretty shit too, half my apps won't load, the other half crash randomly. Even Safari is dying.

Apple can suck my anus, my contract is up next month and when it is I'm moving to the Nokia N series. I've been using mobile phones for over 12 years and this is the first I've even seen a phone end up as shit as this. I refuse to be forced by Apple in to upgrading continually or ending up with a phone not fit for purpose.

Contrary to Pounder's experience, and a few others, My OS4 update was quick, painless, and it's been working better than ever.
I'm on a pod, not a phone, though, but I've had folks with problems on the pod too.

My only problem, though, has been the accelerometer getting stuck in sideways mode when I'm trying to read a book on the pod, and requiring exiting to menu to right itself with any speed.

I upgraded my iPod Touch when the new os was released and I haven't seen any noticeable problems.

Zak and I have serious slowdowns/crashes on our 3Gs. We considered rolling back but can't be fucked. Sherry's 3GS is fine.

Oh dude OP, go buy a Zune HD for sure. Right now.

Lord Pounder wrote:Apple can suck my anus, my contract is up next month and when it is I'm moving to the Nokia N series. I've been using mobile phones for over 12 years and this is the first I've even seen a phone end up as shit as this. I refuse to be forced by Apple in to upgrading continually or ending up with a phone not fit for purpose.

Don't be such a fat cunt. Turns out version zero software always sucks. 3.0 was broken before they patched to 3.1

My 3GS works fine with the new software. My boyfriend's 3G is VERY slow and crashes all the time. It looks like the upgrade worked for most 3GS' and not for the 3Gs.

Pint0 Xtreme wrote:My 3GS works fine with the new software. My boyfriend's 3G is VERY slow and crashes all the time. It looks like the upgrade worked for most 3GS' and not for the 3Gs.

You'd think they'd have tested it; the 3G hardware is really bad these days, but there's a perceptible delay when it spell checks a word. PS? Can't turn that off.

Stark wrote:

Pint0 Xtreme wrote:My 3GS works fine with the new software. My boyfriend's 3G is VERY slow and crashes all the time. It looks like the upgrade worked for most 3GS' and not for the 3Gs.

You'd think they'd have tested it; the 3G hardware is really bad these days, but there's a perceptible delay when it spell checks a word. PS? Can't turn that off.

My boyfriend's convinced that they intentionally fucked up with the 3G users so they'd have to buy new iPhones. The problems are quite horrendous.

I was planning on upgrading anyway; even with 3.1 the 3G ran pretty poor. But now it's absolutely awful; its impossible for me to imagine they didn't know this would happen.

My own conspiracy theory is that they are trying to force 2and 3G Touch owners to buy 4G Touches in September.

Its just that these problems seem so...Microsoftian, circa 1998 or something.

IMHO Apple needs a dose of humility, i.e. bad publicity.

Though now that I think about it, it does seem like my iPod has been getting a lot less battery life than it did before I installed OS4 . . .

Another 3g owner who's phone is running like molasses after upgrading.

Seconding "3GS works fine", getting better battery life even and it's more responsive, though I haven't even bothered to use multitasking .

PS if you were jailbroken and used upgrade thats why your phone is fucked, you need to wipe the phone first.

My 3G is noticeably slower post IOS4, while my father's 3GS is fine. The problem seems to be there the 3GS has more RAM at its disposal.

That said, the 3G apps crash inconsistently. Sometimes it will run smoothly, sometimes it crashes the moment I open the app. As app writers upgrade their apps for the new OS, it's less and less of an issue.

The phone hangs for about 10 seconds (in any app) about once an hour, then it goes back to "normal."

When my iPhone 4 arrives sometime next week (my month-ago pre-order and its guaranteed delivery the day of release notwithstanding), I will likely be downgrading to 3 and jailbreaking the current phone and will use it around the house as a supplemental WIFI unit.

Another 3GS works fine here on 4.0 without any issue, although I'll qualify that by saying I didn't actually WANT to download 4.0 but got tricked into it by an app (paid app as most of mine are) 'updating' and as part of its update, installing 4.0

Annoying. But ultimatly, uneventful.

iPod Touch, 2nd generation 8GB, and the upgrade was painless. Works fine after the upgrade.

iOS4.0.1 was released yesterday.

Whatever else it does, the most obvious change is that the signal strength bars have been modified:

In case you haven’t noticed, the iPhone 4’s antenna design has come under considerable scrutiny. In our iPhone 4 review, we investigated the iPhone 4 antenna and came to two conclusions. First, that iOS 4 was displaying signal bars in an overly optimistic manner, compressing the dynamic range of possible signal bars users can see. Second, we identified a worst case signal drop of around 24 dB when the iPhone 4 is cupped tightly in the left hand, covering the black strip and possibly detuning the antennas and adding additional attenuation from the presence of the hand.

Since those initial measurements, we’ve been working tirelessly to both characterize the problem, fully understand the mechanisms behind it, and report on a number of possible solutions.

The Bars Have Changed

On July 2, Apple released a letter noting that the formula used in iOS 4.0 to calculate how many bars are presented for each signal strength is “totally wrong.” This mirrored our conclusions that the effects of the signal drop were exacerbated in part by the way the iPhone visualizes signal strength - the dynamic range is compressed so much that the 24 dB drop from cupping the phone without a case could make all the bars go away.

They went on to promise that in a future software update they would make bars 1, 2, and 3 taller, and make the bars more “accurate” by displaying 2 bars fewer in certain circumstances.

The rest of the above really requires the reader to see the inline images and I don't have the time or the inclination to copy all that here, so check out the site for an explanation of what is going on.

Incidentally, here are my 3G's screen bars, before and after. Note the bars are different (taller, on the right side screen, post-update). I'm running iOS4.0.1, no jailbreaking or other changes. It's a stock setup.

My cousin has a 3G and his sister has a 3GS like me. Both of them upgraded, his phone is slow as fuck (he believes it is due to less memory) and hers runs just fine. I was going to upgrade later this weekend.

What's up with those icons at the end? Does it group them automatically now? And the calculator icon is uglier now.

Phantasee wrote:My cousin has a 3G and his sister has a 3GS like me. Both of them upgraded, his phone is slow as fuck (he believes it is due to less memory) and hers runs just fine. I was going to upgrade later this weekend.

What's up with those icons at the end? Does it group them automatically now? And the calculator icon is uglier now.

It is definitely related to the fact that the iPhone 3G has 128MB RAM whereas the 3GS has 256MB.

Icons at the end? One of the new features of the new OS is that you can put apps into folders. You just tap/drag one app icon over another an a folder is formed, with a total of 12 apps per folder. I like that feature a lot, as it reduced my 10 pages of apps to 3. Aside from the security fixes, the only new feature I cared about was getting the folders, but it will be moot if the new phone ever shows up.

Cecelia5578 wrote: I'd really rather not wait till the rumored 4th Gen Touch comes out in September. I'm even thinking of getting a Zune HD.

Really? Well shit, I was thinking of buying one (a Touch), but now I might delay doing so.

[R_H] wrote:

Cecelia5578 wrote: I'd really rather not wait till the rumored 4th Gen Touch comes out in September. I'm even thinking of getting a Zune HD.

Really? Well shit, I was thinking of buying one (a Touch), but now I might delay doing so.

Well, it really depends on whether or not the Third Gen Touches being sold now that come with iOS4 pre installed suck. I don't want something that will overheat, cause my Pod to be as slow as molasses, and have other little bugs. I think if you upgrade right iOS4 should be fine on a 3G Touch, but I have yet to hear from someone who has bought a Touch since iOS4 came out that already has it on it.

I think the Zune is really nice, other than the severe lack of apps (though TBH playing stupid games on the train doesn't really appeal to me) and that I'm not sure MS really has a future for it. Though I guess that might depend on how MS integrates Windows Mobile and Zune. I think the Zune has the Touch beat as far as the purely media functions are concerned, its the apps and all that that make the Touch a stellar device (plus having a better browser than the Zune)

Does anyone have experience with 4.1? I'm not bothering to upgrade my 3G until I hear the terrible performance is fixed.

Stark wrote:Does anyone have experience with 4.1? I'm not bothering to upgrade my 3G until I hear the terrible performance is fixed.

Is that a 3G phone or Touch?

Cecelia5578 wrote:Well, it really depends on whether or not the Third Gen Touches being sold now that come with iOS4 pre installed suck. I don't want something that will overheat, cause my Pod to be as slow as molasses, and have other little bugs. I think if you upgrade right iOS4 should be fine on a 3G Touch, but I have yet to hear from someone who has bought a Touch since iOS4 came out that already has it on it.

I think the Zune is really nice, other than the severe lack of apps (though TBH playing stupid games on the train doesn't really appeal to me) and that I'm not sure MS really has a future for it. Though I guess that might depend on how MS integrates Windows Mobile and Zune. I think the Zune has the Touch beat as far as the purely media functions are concerned, its the apps and all that that make the Touch a stellar device (plus having a better browser than the Zune)

I don't know about any heat issues, but if the device you're looking at has the same kind of RAM as the 3GS (256 vs. 128), you should be okay. This is a RAM problem. And the iPhone 3G, at least, doesn't have enough of it.

Stark wrote:Does anyone have experience with 4.1? I'm not bothering to upgrade my 3G until I hear the terrible performance is fixed.

Unless I am mistaken, the current release for general consumers is 4.0.1, not yet 4.1.X. As I showed earlier in the thread, it monkeys around with the depiction of the bars and has some security updates.

In any case, performance on my 3G is just as wonky as it's been since I applied the initial 4.0 update.

I don't know if 4.0.1 is any worse than 4.0, but other than the security fixes, there seems little reason to update.

All I wanted out of the update was the damn folders. The unified mail inboxes is fine, but I don't even care so much about that.

If I knew performance would have been so adversely affected with 4.0, I never would have bothered to upgrade my 3G to it, even for the folders. Before the upgrade, my phone was reliably fast, it never hung (right now it can hang in the middle of writing a simple text message!) and was a pleasure to use. Now, I'm rebooting several times a day, for what good it does.

To me, this is at least as problematic as the iPhone 4's antenna issue, if not more so. And the antenna nonsense can at least be mitigated by using a case! This sluggish performance on the 3G post iOS4 seems to have been largely ignored. Outside of message boards, I see little discussion of it. It is almost crippling the phone and as far as I am concerned and is far more odious than the antenna issue.