iPhone 3G running faster after the upgrade to iOS 4

24 Jun 2010 - Dave

The upgrade went slow but without errors.  With FIOS the download happened fast enough.  Counting the iPhone restarts it took just under two hours.  I did the upgrade from the MacBook Pro but I doubt that made much difference.

After the upgrade all the apps appeared to work except email, contacts, calendar.  I use ActiveSync with Google Apps for domains for email, contacts and calendar.  None of that was syncing.  I kept the IMAP connection to the netsnbytes.com domain after starting ActiveSync.  IMAP was just disabled.  The iPhone processed email normally with IMAP enabled.  The ActiveSync interface is the problem.

Google iPhone forum had reports of many issues.  A Google rep mentioned system maintenance.  The number of iPhone owners upgrading to iOS 4 overloaded Google’s ActiveSync.  It seems to work in some areas but slow.

The calendar and contacts began syncing around 10:00 pm.  No email yet.

I am using IMAP to get email for now.

Update 6/27: By Wednesday email flowed normally with the ActiveSync interface.  I disabled IMAP again.

Many of the iOS 4 updates do not work on the iPhone 3G.  Not enough memory.  CPU too slow.  Those features cannot be enabled.

The iBooks app is too slow on the iPhone 3G.  Stanza works fine even after the upgrade to iOS 4.  I like how Stanza works for my ebooks from Pragmatic anyway.  The Kindle app works better than iBooks on my 3G phone too.

Over all my iPhone 3G feels more responsive since the upgrade to iOS 4.  I read a lot of posts complaining about the opposite – slowing the 3G to a crawl.

Update: I spoke too soon.  My 3g is definitely slower.  Disabling Spotlight searches and some unused features helped some.