I’ve been running iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G since the update was made available. Unlike previous updates, I can’t say I am a very happy bunny about the results.
The update
It was not smooth. And I know I am not alone: many people have reported the update (and especially back-up/restore process) taking hours. In my case, I managed to back-up my iPhone only after 3 unsuccessful attempts and after killing previous backups. Restore has also taken ages to complete. The update itself was not too bad, but I need to go through before and after—that was really irritating.
First launch
I ended up resetting the device five minutes after first use. It just did not work: I was unable to pick a call up, type SMS, etc. Restart helped. But was it not restarted before?
Daily use
I love folders. I managed to de-clutter mu multiple desktops big time. I love unified inbox in mails application. I do find Safari, overall, a faster browser. A few other things here and there are nice, but I don’t remember what they are. Oh, spell checker is good, helps me to stay on a safer side…
But I hate it when the phone grinds to almost a halt when I type names of my contacts (no index on databases?). I was terribly surprised to see Preferences.app crash on me a few times, as well as Messages.app—nothing like this has ever happened on the iOS 3.x series and my ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/iPhone-XXXXXXXX can attest to that:
> ls -t1 | head -n 30 Baseband/ MobileSlideShow-2010-06-30-095316.crash Preferences_2010-07-02-191412_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-02-195126_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-02-233941_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-02-234050_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-02-234205_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-093436_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-100736_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-100829_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-101038_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-101215_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-105740_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-132113_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-132229_iPhone.crash ResetCounter.crash Speed Test_2010-06-29-133130_iPhone.crash log-aggregated-2010-06-28-000000_iPhone.log log-aggregated-2010-06-29-000000_iPhone.log log-aggregated-2010-06-30-000000_iPhone.log log-aggregated-2010-07-01-000000_iPhone.log log-aggregated-2010-07-02-000000_iPhone.log AppStore-2010-06-29-105154.crash AppStore-2010-07-03-230446.crash Exited process-2010-07-02-234209.crash Exited process-2010-07-03-132237.crash LowMemory-2010-06-30-221655.crash MobileCal-2010-06-29-164521.crash MobileSMS-2010-07-03-143529.crash MobileSMS_2010-06-30-012426_iPhone.crash
And if I were to do quick’n dirty stats:
> ls -t1 | perl -pe ’s/.+(20[01][09]–[01][0-9]–[0-3][0-9]).+/$1/‘ | sort | uniq -c | sort -r | head 12 2010-07-03 8 2010-06-29 8 2009-12-12 7 2010-07-02 5 2010-06-30 5 2010-06-22 5 2009-10-17 5 2009-09-11 5 2009-05-05 4 2010-06-15
I can see that while I’ve had some lousy days in the past too (like on 12/12/2009), a closer look tells us that back then it were 3rd-party apps (some weren’t really meant for my 3G):
> ls | grep ‘2009-12-12’ IceAge3_2009-12-12-085520_iPhone.crash IceAge3_2009-12-12-085831_iPhone.crash LowMemory-2009-12-12-085532.crash LowMemory-2009-12-12-164544.crash Marillion_2009-12-12-173631_iPhone.crash Stackshot_2009-12-12-171823_iPhone.log aggregated-2009-12-12.crash reMovemFree_2009-12-12-150005_iPhone.crash
but ever since 24-Jun this year it is system apps, take 3-Jul:
> ls | grep ‘2010-07-03’ AppStore-2010-07-03-230446.crash Exited process-2010-07-03-132237.crash MobileSMS-2010-07-03-143529.crash MobileSMS_2010-07-03-143520_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-093436_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-100736_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-100829_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-101038_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-101215_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-105740_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-132113_iPhone.crash Preferences_2010-07-03-132229_iPhone.crash
I sure hope that each time I sync up my 3G Apple gets all these CrashReporter logs and maybe someone is looking at them?
There are times the phone feels sluggish. I’ve had a few too many times when it would not respond to a swipe when a phone needed to be answered. Maybe it is the device itself (it has suffered a terrible fall about a year ago, had its glass replaced), but it was not showing this many signs of aging until the upgrade.
Conclusion
If you’re carrying iPhone 3G, stay away from iOS 4.0. On a 3GS there seem to be many more improvements and it may very well worth it. On plain-old 3G: just wait an by iPhone 4.