As an apple fan girl it pains me to say it, but my 3G iPhone is now almost completely unusable. I am incredibly disappointed with the lack of warning 3G users were given. It leaves me to wonder 2 things: did Apple simply drop the ball and not test enough on the 3G phones? Or was this killer iOS 4 software upgrade an intentional ploy to get 3G users, who are most likely near the end of their contracts, to upgrade to the new 4G phones? Either way it makes me instantly have painful flashbacks to my Microsoft days and the crippling money pit that was Windows ME. *shudder* Why Apple, why?!

I first thought that maybe it was just me. Perhaps I had a bad download and upgrade? Maybe I needed to reboot my phone more than a dozen times? Maybe I’m just expecting too much? A quick Google search confirmed my fears, 3G users all over are having issues and Apple has been silent.

Like most people, I anxiously plugged in my iPhone to do the upgrade that promised to rock. I knew I would be missing out on some features, but that was ok. At least I wasn’t being left in the dark like the 2G users were, right? I’d soon discover that perhaps they were the lucky ones. After upgrading my iTunes and struggling with the upgrade process freezing several times I finally decided to delete all backups and start over. I should have seen the signs and given up at this point. Over 2 hours later, or longer – after awhile I was too frustrated and just walked away to let it try to sort itself out, I finally had the coveted iOS 4 on my iPhone. Yay! Or so I thought.

It didn’t take long to figure out that my iPhone just wasn’t the same. As I was drooling over the new features I started to notice that my once fast companion was now very sluggish. My phone is not even half full so this shouldn’t be an issue. After several reboots the issue had not resolved. I took a deep breath and told myself I could deal with that. If that had been my only issue I could have lived with it, unfortunately it was just the beginning.

I’m not sure of the extent of other iPhone users’ issues because many are complaining about features that were not intended for our phones to begin with, but here is a list of the ones I have been having. For disclosure purposes I have a 8GB iPhone 3G. My husband has a 16GB 3Gs and while he has not experienced the vast list of bugs I have, he has noted quite a few himself. Each of us have iMacs that we use to sync our phones with.

Here are the wounds that are crippling my poor iPhone:
#1 Sluggishly slow. The phone lags so bad that texting or inputting any text on the phone can be almost painful.
#2 My phone freezes more than a slurpee brainfreeze in Antartica.
#3 Folder glitchiness. When switching between apps and folders they sometimes behave erratically, and then lead back to issue #2.
#4 Incoming calls randomly fail to display name or number.
#5 Incoming calls lagging when connecting, sometimes not able to even answer the call.
#6 Any notification received by the phone while in standby mode causes the phone to become non-responsive. This forces me to do a frustrated series of home button mashing while trying to restrain myself from chucking the phone across the room.
#7 When trying to simply wake the phone from sleep/standby mode the slider bar often is non-responsive. I found that I can bypass the slider button by performing the aforementioned home button mashing enough times. This causes my phone to suddenly come alive with a random app open. Hey, at least its past the dang slider bar screen!
#8 Random contact list and folder errors. I found that the phone function on the phone is very glitchy, especially the contacts. On several occasions now I’ve opened up my phone, selected my contact to call from my contact list, placed the call, finished the call, closed the phone and proceeded to open an app or do some other function on the phone before putting it back into sleep mode. When I decided to try to use the phone again I attempted to get to the home page and would find that the contact page would be open again and when I closed it a folder would be open as well. Its almost like my phone is trying to evolve into a multitasking phone on its own and failing miserably.
#9 Apps suddenly closing or crashing more frequently. Memory issues?

At times it seems my phone can’t decide what it wants to allow me to achieve. It feels like trying to convince a cranky overtired toddler that peas are the best food on Earth. In the end I am left with a barely functional iPhone and my family is avoiding me in fear that they may unintentionally get in the path of a flying phone if I lose my patience one.more.time. The 3G phone that I ran through the wash on extended rinse cycle is looking like it just might be more functional than my current phone is now. That is, as long as I don’t upgrade the OS on it.

Apple, where is the update? Why are you so silent on this?