Why my iPhone becomes an iPod

I am really an Apple fan boy (I can imagine some nodding gestures – but this time Apple really annoyed me big time. What happened? Like written in one of my recent posts I am an early user of the new iOS4 on my iPhone 3G (without S). Historically my experience with software updates or upgrades were always at least neutral, but never negative – most of the times they fixed things or added features that I sometimes was waiting for.

But this time they did something that really contradicts with the “improvement experience” I had with their software and products. My complete iPhone product experience got worse. I literally mean my iPhone lost quality! Why is that? Well first to the observations:

• reaction of all applications, including core applications like calendar and email got slower! Really, even without the multitask functionality (which is included in the iOS fpr 3GS and 4G) Apple managed to make the applications react up very much slower then with the old firmware.
• telephony become a pain! When running any kind of other application or even on standby I have to try at least 3times before the call gets received
• others reported that there are “dismiss” push messages infront of telephony which hinders them to take the call
• the only added functionalities compared to the older firmware are the grouping of apps and the common inbox for all email accounts

But why is that? What might be the strategy for Apple to upgrade an OS and make the experience worse?

I think it is obvious that iOS is by purpose not meant to be for the iPhone 3G (and not for the 2G, but there is anyhow no version), it is only made for the 3GS and mainly for the 4G to leverage from its computing power. That is fine and makes sense to promote the advantages of the new device, but it is a bad manner to slower the 2 years old device to make the customer desire to have the new device!

I did earlier consider buying a new iPhone, but Apple destroyed that desire with two facts:

• there is only a better camera compared in functionality as added value from earlier iPhones – that is really not good enough! In terms of innovation Apple starts loosing market share big time – other OEMs are passing them here!
• punishing me to downgrade to old software and respectively making my old device look even more “slow” is not something I appreciate. I would have rather accepted to not get an upgrade if the Apple software department is not able to improve consistently

So what do I do? I make my iPhone 3G an iPod – because for listening to music it is still a good device. For the rest I am using my NexusOne which just received an awesome speed and functionality boost with Android 2.2 (Froyo) – obviously it is possible even by incremental upgrade of the OS to make devices faster and better in every sense. Also in terms of innovation Android seems to get No1, e.g. I much appreciate the new input system “Swype” which makes me write textes up to three times faster.

So, please Apple and all other OEMs – do never forget that we are in a mobile situation and we have only little time. If you make devices slower it is the absolut wrong direction!

Update: German IT-News golem.de are offering the manual to downgrade to iOS 3.x – it seems to be a very common issue …
http://www.golem.de/1007/76614.html