iPhone 3G iOS 4.1 Speed Fix Confirmed

Many iPhone 3G owners have complained of poor performance and other issues after installing iOS 4 on their devices. The new operating system limits features such as multitasking on the older hardware to keep an acceptable level of performance. Unfortunately something went wrong and Apple has been investigating why iOS 4 brought so many iPhone 3G units to a crawl.

Fortunately, the company is poised to release iOS 4.1, a major update that's already in beta 3 with developers. Joel Evans over at ZDNet has confirmed a vast improvement in iPhone 3G performance with the iOS 4.1 firmware update. In fact, he reports that some functions on the iPhone 3G are faster with iOS 4.1 that they were using 3.1.3. This is welcome news for iPhone 3G owners, whose problems were overshadowed by reception issues on the iPhone 4 antenna.

Some expect Apple to release the firmware update as early as this week, when a press event is scheduled at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. In the meantime, iPhone 3G users who are experiencing sluggish or unusable performance on their devices running iOS 4 can take a few steps to help.

Hard resetting the iPhone 3G once or twice has been reported to help. To hard reset, hold down the home and sleep buttons until the iPhone shuts off. Press the sleep button to reboot, then repeat the process immediately when the lock screen appears. Another option that reportedly helps in some cases is to switch off Spotlight search. Navigate to Settings -> General -> Home Button and turn off Spotlight for everything.

Hopefully it will only be a few more days of suffering for iPhone 3G owners. Apple has addressed the problems and will deliver a fix with iOS 4.1 coming soon.