It’s been a week now since I installed the new iOS 4.1 beta to my iPhone 3G. Hesitated at first, but then I gave it a shot and am very pleased. It feels much faster on the UI and crashes less often than the “stable” iOS 4.0. Many apps still close intermittently or won’t even start but overall the 4.1 beta seems to be less demanding on resources like memory or background processes.
iPhone 3GS & 4 users probably don’t have any issues with the responsiveness of the touch UI. Believe me, the 3G isn’t ready for multi-processing. Unlocking is all you need to take the 3G to its limits. It’ll poll all your email accounts each time you unlock your iPhone and as I have several email accounts configured for hourly and manual fetch this takes some time. After it has done it’s initial fetch job it’s ok – at least until next time you open the mail app or the next scheduled fetch starts.
Switching between networks is another problem that seems to worsen the above issue. On start/unlock the WiFi connection is down and the fetch process starts on 3G. But my 3G reception is very bad at my location and drops regularly depending on which room I’m in. It then reconnects on EDGE and soon will find the local WiFi which is the preferred data connection when available. This whole network hopping or roaming clogs your iPhone 3G for some time, too.
Both scenarios happen at the same time after you unlock the iPhone and result in a barely usable iPhone 3G during the first minute or so. This may be the biggest downside of the 3G but also confirms Apple’s decision in not activating iOS 4 Multitasking for iPhone 3G. Can’t imagine what it’d be like if I had to manually close every app before switching to another app! I wish I could even deactivate background processing for the apple apps – except the Phone app of course.
The whole iOS 4 seems to consume all the resources of the iPhone 3G that many apps have a hard time to even start up. It may take several attempts until you get any app running. This isn’t an issue directly after a reboot but I don’t reboot my iPhone manually unless I have to. Actually I didn’t have to on iOS 4.0 because it did it by itself once or twice a day! Since iOS 4.1 beta I only had one self-reboot so far.
This review is based on my 1-week experience with the iOS 4.1 beta on my iPhone 3G (not 3GS). I would have loved to do a comparison to the iPhone 4 but my provider couldn’t provide so far. (Hey you guys, I’m still waiting for my order from almost a month ago!)
Maybe this isn’t too bad overall as there are rumors that the latest production of iPhone 4 incorporates some changes. But rumors also say these changes don’t address the antenna issue… Rumors.
So long.
