In my dilemma about whether or not to upgrade my cell phone I mentioned at the end I was going to try to squeeze one more year out of my iPhone 3G by reinstalling it – it may have worked.

This past weekend I decided to say goodbye to the apps I had installed and start fresh on my phone. I initially set out with the expectation of wiping the phone clean without syncing ANYTHING of the past. I wrote down my contacts and decided to clear the phone. Just as I was about to start the recovery I looked at my list and thought “what do I have to lose by trying to clear JUST the apps?” – I figured worst case scenario I would just wipe the phone 100% (what I was planning on doing anyway). I went into my iTunes settings and unchecked the sync apps button, of course I was prompted by the notification that by unchecking that all my apps would be deleted – good. I unchecked the box and let iTunes start deleting; however, after an unusually long time I got fed up and decided to unplug my phone mid sync as I had nothing to lose.

For whatever reason my iPhone booted up in recovery mode which I couldn’t get out of; however, that was ok as that’s what I sort of wanted anyway. I ended up going through the recovery mode, got the phone going and went through the restore process. After all was done and the phone was back to factory (which somehow seemed somewhat comforting) I decided to restore the iPhone backup I had (once again, nothing to lose). iTunes did its thing and this time since I had the syncing of apps disabled, my apps were not restored. I fired up my phone and to my surprise everything was running significantly faster than before I started the procedure. My contacts, texts and calendar were all restored without my apps and yet the phone was running noticeably faster – dare I say it – my phone was usable again. I downloaded my apps again and I have to say that should I decide not to upgrade to the iPhone 4S, I think I can get another 8-12 months out of it.

Before you try this procedure on your own, I should note there are still a few issues. The first thing to bring up is that you should do this AT YOUR OWN RISK. Anything can go wrong and you could lose your contacts, etc – so YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. The second thing to note is that although overall I have greater performance, I still find that folders and internet activity in general are still slow. Since I have just the basic apps on there now, I stopped using folders as they were still pretty slow to open. As well, some apps (Facebook for example) is still a lengthy boot up time. If you have an iPhone 3G – its your decision if you want to do this; however, if you are a chronic app-user (I mainly use the email, calendar, etc) – you might not get the performance you were expecting.