Looks like someone in San Diego believes the poor 4.0 performance on a 3G iPhone is lawsuit worthy. While I don't agree with her reasoning that it was done to force consumers into a new phone, I do think it's worth seeing how it turns out. From seeing Tony F.'s phone, along with a few others, it was a very bad update for those devices. With no supported method to downgrade, users were force to go outside Apple's warranty to return the devices to a usable state.

Considering the iPhone 3G was still on sale even when the 4.0 update came out, it should be interesting to see if anything comes of this. Maybe this will cause Apple to add in an official downgrade option for iPhones.

Out of curiosity, do any other smartphone OSes allow downgrades in a vendor supported way?

Apple intentionally made the iPhone 3G slow with the upgrade? What are these people smoking when they come up with these lawsuits?

I don't see them adding in any official downgrade to any version option. If anything it'd be you can downgrade to the last major and that'd have to be kept up to date regarding security fixes as well.

If it was an accidental slowdown then they should provide a fix or a way for people to go back to 3.x. There's definitely a case to be made for screwing up someone's device.

I haven't done much reading on the subject so I don't know how bad the issue is, but at least they're not bricked.

Ok, the lawsuit seems to be horseshit. 4.1 supposedly fixed the issues - yes it was a few months after 4.0, but it demonstrates that we're talking about software bugs, not Apple trying to permanently cripple the device.

Engadget:

IMO it doesn't even make sense. So Apple deliberately slugged the devices to "encourage" people to buy -- another Apple product? If they genuinely believed that Apple had done such a thing to them, surely they'd resolve never to buy an Apple product again? Or I assuming too much rationality on the part of consumers?

Peter

They should have added Google to the suit and alleged that Apple colluded with them to cripple the 3G to push people into buying Android devices. Yeah, that's it. At least that would have made an order of magnitude more sense than the BS claims in this suit. Any self-respecting judge should simply throw this out.

The suit is full of factual errors, grammatical errors, outright lies and proof the suing party didn't follow through with what he's alleging Apple had planned - he didn't buy an iPhone 4. In other words, he didn't suffer any damages at all other than having to use some buggy software for a couple of months.

For that he's seeking $5000 for each 3G owner, plus $150 to cover ATT billing for three months, plus a number of other things, including a free 3GS or iPhone 4.

If that allegation is correct, it certainly worked on me. When I saw how much faster and smoother the iPhone 4's performed than my 3G, that's when I bought the 4.

I knew that my 3G used to perform as well as the 4 did, and that it was the software bloat making my phone increasingly sluggish. That irked me, but not enough to swear off Apple products.

The slowdowns were gradual enough over time (each release on the 3G got slower and slower) that I certainly suspected Apple of deliberately slowing down the OS to drive iPhone4 sales. But I only thought so in a joking consipiracy-theory kind of way. I never seriously believed they'd really do that.

Because it can't be that apps and the OS are simply more demanding and the new products have more resources available. Na, that can't be it.

So Tony, how about some app suggestions in my other thread?

More likely, all of the Apple devs got the new phone (because you want them to use the new features, and it's good for morale), and they forgot that the old phone was slower. If Apple had forced them to use the older phones, they'd have spent more time optimising for them.

Always give your QA guys the lowest-spec model you want to support. They'll soon notice performance problems.

QA: It doesn't work!
Dev: It works fine on mine...

QA never gets the fun toys

You do raise a valid method Roger.

Valid, but iOS4 includes features that aren't even available on older phones due to architectural differences (128MB ram vs 256MB on the 3GS vs 512MB on the 4, MBX graphics vs SGX graphics, 960x640 resolution on the 4's screen, etc etc).

So what you're saying is that I'm going to have to get the iPhone 5 next summer...

I'm hoping there's still an exclusivity with ATT myself. Keeps the going price for unlocked phones selling into the US nice and high.