iOS4 on iPhone 3G: My Review
As mentioned previously, I installed iOS4 on my iPhone 3G a few days back. I have been using my iPhone sparingly since then and here comes the long overdue review.
First of all, as mentioned in the post earlier, the iOS4 felt slow and sluggish compared to 3.1.2 on iPhone 3G. It didn’t take me much time to figure out the reason. As I mentioned before, I’ve used redsn0w 0.9.5b5 to jailbreak my iPhone 3G. Now, redsn0w has a couple of checkboxes named “Enable Multitasking” and “Enabled Homescreen Wallpaper” which comes checked by default.
It is pretty much self-explanatory what they do. All you have to do is disable them to avoid sluggish user interface and applications. While disabling “Enable Multitasking” is strongly recommended, you can keep “Enabled Homescreen Wallpaper” turned on by sacrificing a little memory for the sake of better looks.
Now, getting to the actual review, the two major enhancements I can access are Folders and iBooks (iAd is not really a feature, is it Steve?). I didn’t like the concept of folders on iPhone to be fair. I seriously don’t know how people can (or more importantly, want to) install more than 180 apps on their phone. If you have to for some reason, why scroll through screens when you have excellent app searching enabled in spotlight? The other “major” addition iBooks is slightly better than Classics. I wouldn’t like to read books on a 3.5 incher device anyway.
Looking at the minor enhancements, I like the 3D dock and wallpaper support on home screen. Birthday Calendar is an excellent addition and makes $4.99 app Birthdays useless. Search suggestions in Safari are vaguely helpful (mostly to make sure my crappy EDGE connection is not lost 
). Finally, a search bar in messages which is very helpful (After using android, I always look for search button in my iPhone if I need to search for something anywhere, just to be disappointed).
As expected, not a major upgrade for me owning an iPhone 3G. Just a fairly polished enhancement release, I suppose. Nonetheless, it makes the upgrade worth it. It’s a good thing Apple stopped charging iPod upgrades.