When Apple announced iOS 4 a while ago, it did give us all a heads up that all its features may not work too well on iPhone 3G (and older Apple devices in general). Apparently, a good number of iPhone 3G owners have experienced performance issues with their device since upgrading to iOS 4. Apple specific forums are filled with people complaining about the issues they have had with iOS 4.

A user registered as LebCan had this to say on Apple Forums:

downloaded OS4 yesterday and tried to install it on my 3G, but I encountered the same problem as many of you on this forum had. The back up process would freeze at about 10% of the way and would not progress. I aborted it many times, rebooted my iphone and Macbook and then tried again, same problem. I erased the 13 gigs of music thinking that it would help, tried again, same problem.

Another user seemed to have had enough of iOS 4:

My phone has been rendered almost useless. I have a 8GB 3G (which I unknowingly bought for $299 2 months prior to the release of the 3GS). I cannot listen to music and do anything else or the music skips constantly. In addition to the music skipping, my browser will freeze – its so laggy that moving it around takes forever to adjust, and even typing emails/texts, I’ll type a sentence and then the phone catches up 10-15 seconds later

From going through these comments, it is apparent that iOS 4 has some issues when installed on older Apple phones. Considering that iOS 4 is installed on almost 50% of iPhones out there, this is a very serious issue for Apple.

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I have rarely seen a gadget launch to go 100% without any major glitch. The iPhone is no exception. iPhone activation issues are not new and customers have experience them in the past. But perhaps iPhone 3G S buyers did not expect to experience so much delay with their phone’s activation process. CNET reports that Apple may be ready to compensate disgruntled customers with a $30 credit for future purchases:

Thank you for your recent Apple Store order. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delay in your iPhone activation.

We are still resolving the issue that was encountered while activating your iPhone with AT&T. Unfortunately, due to system issues and continued high activation volumes, this could take us up to an additional 48 hours to complete.

On Monday, you’ll receive an email from Apple with an iTunes Store credit in the amount of $30. We hope you will enjoy this gift and accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this delay has caused.

We all remember what happened when a whole lot of people tried to activate their iPhones last July, forcing Apple to allow out-of-store activations. You would think Apple and AT&T could get it right this time around. Nevertheless, the $30 credit is more than what other companies would offer in the same situation (anyone remembers Amazon Kindle shipping delays?). The bad news is that if you are having trouble activating your phone, you may have to wait a while. The good news is your iPhone 3G S is not going anywhere. So what’s 48 hours.

Talk about an expected surprise. We did expect Apple to introduce an economy iPhone for folks who don’t afford to pay out $200 for a phone. Well, Apple seems to have made its mind, Znet reports. But Apple doesn’t seem to want to disappoint folks who only want to enjoy the best in life. There will be a premium iPhone edition that will have better resolution and will probably be more expensive too!

It’s not surprising to see Apple go in this direction. Dropping the price by $100 lowers the bar and allows a lot of folks to get their hands on an iPhone. Now, I am not really sure about the data plans for this phone. But the data plans for the iPhone are not that cheap, so if you can’t afford to pay $199 for the regular iPhone 3G, I am not sure how you are going to afford the $99 edition with the same data plan.

The times will get tough for tech companies in the upcoming month and unless we see a dramatic turnaround in economy, folks will continue to buy less gadgets on average. So I guess dropping the prices a little bit (and stripping out some features) does work. I am just not sure the average Joes are ready to all jump on the iPhone bandwagon.

Would you buy the $99 iPhone?

What do you know? Apple has released the latest firmware update for the iPhone and iPhone 3G (2.2.1). The new firmware addresses one of the main issues that iPhone users have been complaining about for a while. Safari is a great browser but it can become unstable too. Apple has fixed a few Safari bugs with this new firmware.

This is not a major update by any means. Safari being more stable is great, but I have never been a fan of Safari in the first place. Let’s hope that Apple addresses some major bugs with the next release.

Here is the question that I love to ask about new products. Considering that iPhone 3G is a near perfect gadget, if you were Steve Jobs and had the choice to only add one feature to the iPhone 3G to make it stand out among the competition next year, what would it be and why? Very interested to hear your thoughts.