Dear Glynor: How Do I Get the New iOS 4 Hotness For My iPhone 3GS?

Like many of us who are computer geeks, we spend a lot of time doing tech support for our close friends and families. While this can sometimes be a pain, it also has the occasional side-benefit that you get to be the one to deliver good news about upgrades and fancy new features to your loved ones. Today is one of those days.

While my dad didn’t actually (yet) write me and ask about how to upgrade his iPhone 3GS to iOS 4, I’m just preempting the call and explaining it to him myself. I’ve been running iOS 4 for almost two weeks now (since they released the GM seed at WWDC) on my iPhone 3G. I also upgraded Jenn’s 3GS to iOS 4 about a week ago (when iTunes 9.2 was officially released). Both of us have only seen minimal issues with the new release, so I’m comfortable recommending the upgrade the new hotness (especially if you are on a 3GS).

I originally wrote all of this up in an email, but I decided that it would be good to post it here, just in case others might benefit from it. So, if you happen to want to know exactly how to upgrade you iPhone 3GS to iOS 4, and can’t figure it our yourself, then read on!

Basic Steps

While I make it look significantly more complex below, there are really only four basic steps to this process (one of which is optional but recommended). It isn’t hard at all, but I just wanted to be detailed about it so that you’d have a guide to follow.

The basic steps are:

1. Update iTunes using the built-in updater.
2. Update your Apps using iTunes (optional but recommended).
3. Sync your phone to make a current backup.
4. Install the iOS 4 update.

That’s it! I’ll describe each of these steps below, and then end with a description of some of the benefits that iOS 4 brings.

Updating iTunes

First, you need to update to the newest version of iTunes (9.2). Get out your computer and open up iTunes. Then, under the Help menu, click Check for Updates (unless the updater comes up automatically). You will want to choose the updates for iTunes (and Quicktime, if it is included). You can uncheck the box for Safari if it is listed. You don’t need Safari on your computer, but Apple will try to get you to install it constantly with all of the upgrades to iTunes. If you already have Safari installed, you might as well upgrade to the newest version, but there’s no need to install it if you don’t have it already. Either way, make sure that iTunes is selected in the update list, and then click the Install button in the bottom right-hand side of the updater window.

The download and installation of the new version of iTunes will take a while. In the meantime, you can visit this great iOS 4 Walkthrough at TiPB for details on all of the new hotness that you’ll be getting with iOS 4.

Updating Your Apps

When the update has finished, open iTunes back up (if it didn’t reopen it for you). Next, we’ll update all of your apps. I recommend this step so that they’re ready-to-go for you when you sync your phone after installing iOS 4. Apps don’t need to be updated to work with iOS 4 in most cases (they’ll still work like they did before), but to get access to the new features, they will often need to be updated.

In the “tree control” on the left hand side of the iTunes window, click the Apps link. Then, when it opens up the listing of all of your apps, click the link labeled Check for Updates or # of Updates Available down in the bottom right-hand side of the iTunes window (see the screenshow below). This will take a few seconds (or sometimes minutes). You might get a message box pop up of some kind to say “yes” to, but will eventually open up a new page where it lists all of the updates available for your apps. When this appears, click the large Download All Free Updates link in the upper-right side of the iTunes window. By the way, Apple, why can’t you put some of these links near each other, so that you don’t have to hunt around for them each time? If iTunes warns you that one or more of the updates contain “adult” content, just click OK. You’re not 12, so I think you can handle it.

Once iTunes starts actually downloading the updates, you should see a new Downloads item pop up under the Store section of the left-hand “tree control” in iTunes. This item will disappear after iTunes has finished downloading the new versions of the Apps for you, and you can click on it to check the progress of the downloads. If you happen to get any error messages that an app failed to download, just click on this Downloads link, and click the little “circle restart” icon next to the failed download listing.

Syncing Your Phone To Create a Current Backup

While your apps are finishing downloading, go ahead and connect your iPhone to the computer, and unlock it if it has been asleep for a long time. When iTunes detects the phone it will pops up in the left-hand tree control of iTunes. Click on it. When the iPhone controls come up, sync your phone. This will create a backup of all of the files and data on your phone right now. It is a very good idea to have a backup before you start this process, just in case something goes wrong. So click the Sync button in the bottom right-hand side of iTunes. If it happens to warn you that there is an upgrade for your phone available, don’t do it right now (click cancel). We’ll do that after the backup is done.

Updating To iOS 4

Let the phone finish syncing. It might take a while, especially if you haven’t synced the phone in a while, because it will be installing some of those updated apps and whatnot. Once it is done (it will say “okay to disconnect” up at the top of the iTunes window) click on the Check for Update button right in the middle of the screen. Follow the instructions to download iOS 4 and update your phone with the new version of the operating system. This will also take quite some time to complete. The phone will reboot several times, and you may see an odd progress bar with the Apple logo on the phone’s screen. Once it is done, your phone will reboot and reconnect to iTunes. If it doesn’t do it automatically, go ahead and sync the phone one more time using the Sync button.

Side Note: I really don’t think this will happen, but it might at some point during the install ask you if you want to set the phone up as a new phone, or restore from a backup. If so, just select restore from a backup, and choose your phone’s name (probably “Bob’s iPhone” or something like that). Like I said, I don’t think this will happen for you, but just in case it does, you’ll know what to do.

Once it is all done, you’ll be presented with a fancy new home screen where you have a wallpaper behind your icons, and you’ll have all sorts of awesome new features.

Enjoying iOS 4

Be sure to check out that walkthrough I linked to above. It covers most of the new features one by one. By the way, if your current wallpaper doesn’t look good with the icons behind it, you can change it separately from the lock screen (where you used to have the wallpaper show up). Go to the Settings application, then choose Wallpaper. When you pick one, it will give you the choice to apply it to the home screen (behind the icons) the lock screen (where it was before) or both. That way, you can use a more simple background (like the water droplets one, for example) behind your icons, but still have a nice picture of someone on your lock screen.

Some of the other great new things? You can put your Apps into Folders now, which can make finding them and organizing them much nicer. To make a folder, just hold down one of the app’s icons for a few seconds until they “jiggle” and then drag one icon on top of another. It will make a new folder for you and put both of the apps in there (you can rename the folder by typing in the box). To close the folder and stop the icons “jiggling”, just click the Home Button. If you want to add another app to that folder, just make the icons jiggle and drag it on top of the existing folder and let go.

Of course, the best new feature is multitasking. Yes, your phone will now “sort of” be able to do more than one thing at a time (if the app supports it). So, for example, you can switch back and forth quickly between an email you’re writing and a web page in Safari that you’re referring to while composing the email. Or maybe you want to listen to Pandora Radio (a free streaming radio App) in the background while you read your email or surf the web. All of this is now possible. Anand does a good job of explaining it in his recent post about the update (though I still don’t know if I’m as taken with the WebOS Card UI motif as he is).

To quickly switch between apps, while you are in an application (like Mail or Safari, for example) simply “double click” on the home button of the phone. This will slide up a new Multitasking Bar where you can see your most recently used apps and quickly switch to them. Apps will remember where you left off, and in many cases, not even need to reload their pages, so switching back and forth will be much quicker than before. By the way, one of the other nice features is that you can slide the new multitasking bar left and right. If you slide it to the right, you will have other “recently used” apps (they rearrange as you go so the most recent ones are always further to the left side). If you slide the bar all the way to the left you’ll find a set of special controls. These let you pause, fast forward, and rewind the music player apps, and also lock the screen. The screen lock is just like the switch on the side of your iPad. It will lock the screen to keep it from switching around as you move and tilt the phone. This is nice for when you are laying down in bed, or just using something that you don’t want switching constantly.

Another huge update is in the Mail app, where you now finally have a unified inbox that shows all of your new mail regardless of which account it came in under. It also now handles threaded messages (grouping a message together with all of the replies).

Like I said, there are lots of changes. Many of them are just little things: When you do a Google search in Safari, you now get suggestions as you type down below (which is super-nice). There is also system-wide spellcheck. It will underline misspelled words in red, and then you can tap-and-hold on them to get a pop-up with replacement suggestions. Another example? You can zoom in your the Camera app now (just tap the screen and then use the slider that appears). You can also tap-to-focus when recording a movie with the Camera app, like you could before with still photos (just tap on the part of the screen where you want the camera to focus, and it will focus on it). All in all, it is really a fantastic upgrade, and it is free.

By the way, you wouldn’t have gotten most of this stuff if had originally gone with the $99 iPhone. While iOS 4 is available for the older iPhone 3G (the one I have and the old $99 version), most of the new features are not enabled because the hardware is too slow and doesn’t have enough memory. As I mentioned at the top, I do recommend this update if you have an iPhone 3GS. It has been quite stable on our 3GS, and I haven’t seen a lot of complaints about it over the past couple of days.

For anyone else reading this (not my Dad) who owns an iPhone 3G, the answer might be a little less easy. You don’t get many of the new features, and I have had some memory leaking issues on my 3G over the past two weeks. For a list of what you do, and do not, get with with iOS 4 update on your iPhone 3G, check out this post on Engadget. When you first boot the phone up, it will be super-slick and responsive. However, over time (4-5 days) you may find it becoming more and more sluggish, and notice apps crashing a lot (especially the Maps and Mail apps). Rebooting will generally fix the issues, but it is a pain to have to reboot every week or so again (like the bad-old iPhone OS 2.0 days). We have not had as many similar issues with our 3GS (which makes sense because it has double the RAM). I suspect these issues will be fixed in a future update, but it might be worth holding off to avoid the headache with an iPhone 3G. Of course, you do still get the improved Mail app and the spellcheck on the iPhone 3G, which might be worth the hassle if you deal with lots of mail!

Updated: I added in the opening quick steps to try to mitigate “the fear” and a few extra details.