iOS4 is Released
2010 June 23
On Monday, Apple released the new iOS4 operating system for the iPhone. I updated my phone and I love the new OS. I use a 3GS model, which is the best version to upgrade. Older 3G users don’t get all of the new features with the update. In addition, from what I’ve read, 3G users have reported very long installation times. My backup and installation only took about 15 minutes after the download finished.
There is an awesome YouTube video of a user demonstrating the new features of iOS4.
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I installed 4.0 on my 3G a few days ago using the developer seed, and installation time was about what I am used to. A full backup of my device takes a good long time anyway.
After the install, I jailbreaked the device to enable the missing features like multitasking and wallpaper. I can tell you that the overall performance decrease from having multitasking and wallpapers enabled on the 3G was seriously not worth it. IMHO, Apple was correct not to support these features on the older hardware.
Apps that have been updated to use multitasking in iOS 4 tend to load in about 3-4 seconds on the 3G with multitasking enabled, which is not much better than the normal load behavior with multitasking turned off. For apps that aren’t updated yet, the extra memory requirements of multitasking resulted boot times of 10-15 seconds or more, and noticeable delays in the keyboard response, springboard scrolling, taking a photo, etc. It was painful, so when I installed the final 4.0 release yesterday, I did not apply the jailbreak and things feel much snappier.
That said, I will definitely on the lookout for a discarded, cheap 3GS later this week. I have tasted multitasking and I liked it.
Chris, I don’t think that iOS4 is worth installing on an older 3G iPhone, based on results that I have read since its release.