And I thought it was just me, turns out – it’s not. After installing many a beta for iOS 4.0 my 3G was under performing massively. I thought to myself that it’s just the beta software blah blah blah, and got over it. That was until Mr Steve Jobs announced at WWDC that Apple would be shortly making available an iOS 4.0 gold candidate.

What I can happily report is that it’s not just me, as this video from flickr clearly shows (to reiterate, this video is not mine). It’s a great demonstration of an iPhone 3G running iOS4 and iOS3 side by side – the performance hit on 4.0 is significant:

Video showing iPhone 3G running iOS 4 and iOS 3

I shuddered to think what that a gold candidate at WWDC would be like. Beta 4 was performing pretty bad on my 3G, and to have a gold candidate ready (I thought) was a big surprise.

Symptoms I’m experiencing with the current 4.0 are:

• Slow performance on pretty much all applications
• Phone slows to a crawl after +1 day use, applications fail to open and crash to the home screen.
• Battery life on 3G has dropped significantly
• Text input applications frequently lag due to (what I assume) is spell check.

These are all moot points though for me, as I will hopefully be a proud owner of a iPhone 4 in two days time. Thank the Apple gods, as I’m close to throwing my new brick of a 3G at the wall.

Update

Something else I’d like to add is that in order for me to cope better with the speed decreases in software performance, I turned off 3G. The response from the iPhone 3G was much improved after this.

Also, iBooks is a slow dog on the 3G. Takes 15 seconds to load the app with 1 book in it, then another 15 secs to attempt to open a book (if the app doesn’t crash).

Bad times all round for iPhone 3G users (IMO).