My wife and I both have the iPhone 3G and both get constantly frustrated by the performance issues. We've tried to seek help from multiple parties, and none, particularly Apple, were of any help.

We're trying to make the switch to Android: www.forsakenbyapple.com

I just wanted to say thank you to the Inquirer for doing this story, since the release of the iOS4 and its negative effect on my 3G iPhone I have been posting at different news/mag sites, and anywhere I could to get the news out. I am very great full to see the information is finally getting out whether or not I had anything to do with it, I'm just glad its out and Apple is feeling the pressure.

As a consumer I am fed-up with Corporate America getting fat $$$$ and leaving the consumers who drove the Corporate stock up left holding the bag or a phone, etc that no longer works.

Consumers of American need to band together and fight back and make our voices known.

I'm not saying

Thank you again Inquirer!!

I did the upgrade on my 3G phone. My sim card was instantly wiped and I had to get a new one. Since then, my phone has crawled and many calls don't even come through - I just get a missed call message.
Absolutely terrible - I think this is planned, to force users to upgrade their phones.

The way to make iOS4.x usable on a 3G is
to Switch off Spotlight

Settings — general — home button — spotlight search

Uncheck everything.
Reboot the phone.

all those nasty delays are gone ....

Worked great for me -- I liked spotlight but I like a responsive phone more.

Just call it a crime. What was working is made to work bad and u're stuck with a 600$ piece of equipment not functioning..

Quality is what differentiated you in the first ... soon it will be the one bringing you down.

The reports are true, I have a friend who upgraded his old 3G to iOS4 and it crippled his phone.

I thought he did it wrong so I helped him re-install iOS4 (which took a long time) but for no avail.

I've come to the conclusion that Apple, with every new iPhone release, bloat their iOS to a level that older iPhones will no longer run smoothly if upgraded.

My 3GS isn't as snappy as it once was after upgrading to iOS4.

Reminded me when iOS 3.0 was released, and how it rendered my 3G sluggish. I upgraded to 3GS at the time and everything went back to being snappy again.

But it's absurd to assume your phone's lifespan is 1 year. And you have to choose between staying with an older firmware and giving up newer apps, or upgrading and giving up performance.

Apples reliance on customer loyalty seems to bet getting further abused, early up takers of there technology are once again receiving the brunt of the issues and just like Apples over censorship (now also in the bookstore) reported in the last few days this will create another setback that I’m sure the company could have done with not coming to light at the moment in time.

However for them to neglect the full testing of iOS4 on the 3g , means inturn there neglecting the need of current customers it seems there so focused on “this changes everything” that they forget what everything is or was and that should be providing full support to current consumers of there products.

It is another setback once again for Apple it will be interesting to see what’s next in the news regarding iPhone/iPad issues (antenna, manufacturing and service charges) and their steps to refund cases won’t make up for the iPhone 4′s lack of function over form.

But Apple have created such a loyal following that people may just put up with what issues there are for the sake of owning the latest Apple product.
Personally, I’d be happier with an older iPhone – at least then the issues are all ironed out.

However, it’s also interesting to see how much excitement new technologies can bring. New technology and innovation is important for new business, illustrated by entrepreneurship grants and new business competitions like http://www.ukesnc.com.

Guess it’s not all bad!

And as a quick follow-up to my previous message, it's not necessary to jailbreak the phone to get 3.1.3 working on it again. It's a simple case of turning the phone on in restore mode (hold the Home and Power buttons for 10 seconds then release the Power button) then using iTunes to re-install the 3.1.3 OS by shift-clicking on "Restore" and selecting a 3.1.3 OS image file (these can be downloaded off the net).

After this, iTunes throws an error. Ignore it, close iTunes, download version 1.1 of RecBoot and use it to kick the iPhone back out of recovery mode. Then reboot the iPhone, fire up iTunes, leave it a few seconds, and you should be back to the standard iOS 3.1.3 desktop.

Finally, re-sync your music, apps, etc. back to the device as the downgrade does wipe everything.

Installed iOS 4 onto my iPhone 3G shortly after it came out and it slowed my device to a crawl. You'd click on "new text message" and have to wait 5-10 seconds for it to respond. Typing was sluggish and jerky with frequent pauses followed by half a dozen characters appearing at once. Safari and the iPod player also ran incredibly slowly with new tabs taking 10+ seconds to open and MP3s occasionally skipping and repeating.

In the end, I backed up what I could and threw iOS 3.1.3 back onto my phone. And suddenly it runs nice and briskly again and everything works fine.

I wouldn't have minded as much except that most the main features of iOS 4 (such as multi-tasking) weren't even available on the 3G anyway.

If I were being cynical, I'd suggest that it was a deliberate ploy by Apple to try and push iPhone 3G users into upgrading to an iPhone 4. Or to an HTC Desire as it would have been in my case (probably not what Apple had hoped).

I am so glad to read your article today. I have been calling Apple for days now since I upgraded to iOS4 on my 3G phone and their response has left me flabbergasted.

Basically they said to try restoring the phone to factory settings and then reinstall from the back up. If that does not work, you will have to purchase a new phone. I asked the Apple representative to repeat that sentence because I thought I was hearing things.

I said...you promote this new OS all over the place,do not post a performance warning anywhere, then your new OS ruins a completely good phone and you want me to purchase another one of your products? Are you nuts? If I told my customers that, I would be out of business before I knew what hit me.

The real shocking thing is that Apple does not have a back door that will allow the old previously working OS to be put back on the device. Dumb.

I can confirm iOS4 cripples the iPhone 3G. I upgraded and soon found the phone absolutely crawls - text entry often lagged by seconds per character, web page loading would frequently stall for 10 to 20 seconds at a time, frequent app crashes. After several weeks, I was forced to downgrade to 3.1.2 and jailbreak/hacktivate to get the phone running and usable again. Now I worry about the recent talk of Apple or AT&T sending out a signal to permanently brick jailbroken phones...

Why should users be put through this nonsense? I don't have these issues on my PC - I can run any version of any OS I want without any hassle.

Never again will I buy another Apple product. Never.

Users will be stunned to find that they swapped perfectly working phones to watch some nice iAds.
Of course one of these may even tell them that it is a perception problem.