iOS4 iPhone 3G slowness fix: turn off Spotlight search

There’s no politically correct way to say this: the new iOS4 operating system runs like crap on the discontinued iPhone 3G model, even though it runs just spiffy on newer iPhone models. Most iPhone 3G users have spent the past month cursing Apple for serving up iOS 4 as a recommended update through iTunes, without warning them that the new OS would turn their iPhone 3G into a pumpkin, with everything from incredibly slow execution times for certain taps on the screen (longer than it’s taken for you to read this far into this article), to physically uncomfortable overheating, to a newly super-short battery life. But a few clever iPhone 3G users have been hard at work attempting to find a workaround, as uninstalling iOS4 from an iPhone 3G is anything but easy. One such solution, says TFTS, is to turn of Spotlight indexing on your iPhone 3G.

The downside is obvious: if your phone stops indexing itself, search results are no longer going to be valid. But for those who rarely search for anything on their iPhone anyway, or those who are so desperate to get their newly ailing iPhone 3G back in working order that they’re willing to sacrifice functionality, it’s at least an option. The controls for doing so are buried within the Settings app, under the “General” subheading and then “Home Button” and then “Spotlight Search” and you’ll see about a dozen different types of iPhone content (apps, mail, music, etc) that are being indexed. Turn them all off if you don’t care about search at all, or perhaps try leaving on only the ones you absolutely can’t live without.

Apple has recently acknowledged the problem, so hopefully the iOS 4.0.2 update will bring some official relief (iOS 4.0.1 was only a quasi-fix). But in the mean time, turning off Spotlight indexing might get you halfway home.

It’s important to point out that this problem only relates to the iPhone 3G model (introduced mid 2008, back-shelved mid 2009, discontinued entirely mid 2010), and does not apply to the newer iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4; by nearly all accounts, iOS 4 runs just fine on iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.