Upgrading my iPhone 3G to iOS4

iPhone OS4 - iBooksAs you are no doubt aware, a major update for the iPhone/iPod Touch operating system was released by Apple last week. The first day it was released, I downloaded the large update file (almost 300 megabytes) and attempted to install it overnight on my iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, when I woke up in the morning, I was confronted with an iTunes error indicating that the backup was not completed successfully.

Later that evening, I tried again. I started trying to update around 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening, and finally cancelled the process around 11 p.m., having made very little progress in the backup process.

I tried a few more times over the next few days, and kept experiencing a similar problem. At one point, Windows decided to restart itself in the middle of the backup process because Windows updates had been installed.

Finally, overnight last night, I modified my Windows power settings, making sure that my computer would not go to sleep for at least four hours (just in case that was the issue) and attempted the update one more time. This time, the backup process completed successfully, and the software update was successful, but the process of restoring my applications and files failed. This morning, when I woke up, I told it to try restoring my files again. It took a little over two hours (causing me to be an hour late to work this morning), but that process finally completed, too.

Oddly, though, when I plugged in my iPhone this evening to sync it again, iTunes immediately popped up a dialog telling me that the restore process was interrupted and asking me if I wanted to restore my iPhone again. Naturally, I told it not to try again, since I had already verified that all of my files, applications and settings were in place. The first time the warning dialog appeared, I told iTunes not to attempt the restore again. However, in the middle of syncing my iPhone, for some reason the device was disconnected from Windows so I had to unplug it and plug it back in again. This time, the same warning dialog popped up again, so I told it to delete the backup that it was trying to restore.

At this point, I have had a little bit of a chance to play with the updated operating system. As an iPhone 3G owner, I don’t get to take advantage of the wallpaper updates that were part of iOS4, nor do I get to use multitasking. However, I do get the benefit of threaded e-mail conversations (along with a unified e-mail inbox, should I choose to use it), folders and a few other minor features.

To be quite honest, with the limited new features implemented on the iPhone 3G, I’m not really sure it was even worth the hassle of updating the operating system. What are your thoughts? Are you running iOS4 on a 3G? If so, did you experience as many problems as I did? What do you think of the new features?