My solution to a fast iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1 WITH multiasking AND homescreen wallpaper

Yatey · 06-23-2011, 03:04 AM

I have been looking through the Sinful iPhone forum community alot since I joined a couple of weeks ago, and I am surprised to see the amount of people claiming that (in their experience), 3.1.3 is the best iOS version for their iPhone 3G's.
I inherited my uncle's old iPhone 3g (which was running 4.1 at the time) nearly two months ago. I decided to update to ios 4.2.1 because I knew of the improvements that 4.2.1 gave compared to 4.1 (at least thats what the offical change log told me).

I have been running ios 4.2.1 ever since, and I have been pretty happy with its performance. Ever since I received my 3G, I have read about how it performs badly on ios4, so I decided to troll the internet to find out ways that I could make my 3G fast without having to downgrade to ios 3.1.3, loosing the compatibility to run almost any App from the App store.

I decided to make my 3G able to run multitasking and homescreen wallpapers. As people who are in the know with the iPhone 3g and ios 4.2.1, Apple changed the openGLS compatibility with the device, which made the use of multitasking difficult since if you were in an app, and then used multitasking o move to another app, you would respring your device, and then have to exit Safe mode). I will talk about the solution for this during this post.

So to start off with, I performed a CLEAN install of ios 4.2.1 (not restoring from back up).
Straight after the restore (without syncing anything to my 3G) I Jail-broke with redsn0w 0.9.6b5. If you want multitasking and homescreen wallpapers, it is important to select both these options with the redsn0w application (I will talk about this later).
When your iPhone has rebooted and shows the Cydia icon on your homescreen, go into Cydia, set up the filesystem, and then after the reboot go into cydia to start the magic

First off, we want to stop unnecessary Daemons from slowing our device. To do this, I have simply used a Cydia Tweak called Daemon Tools. It is found on the repo repo.insanelyi.com. I have never found a problem with my iPhone after I have let this package take away some unnecessary Daemons, so hopefully you wont have a problem either.

Once Daemon tools is installed, I then installed Springtomize from the sinfuliphone repo. This app is great at removing features that will speed up your iphone a lot.

Once Springtomize is installed, go into it (Settings > Springtomize) and apply these tweaks

General - Disable Spotlight ON
Icons - Hide Shadow ON
Icons - Disable Jittering ON (Optional, but makes moving apps easier)
Dock - Hide Icons Reflection ON
Lockscreen - Slider - Custom Sting ON (leave the custom string empty) - In my experience this makes the lockscreen less laggy upon waking up from sleep
Folders - Remove Animation ON
App Switcher - Start Editing ON (Allows the multitasking Apps to automatically appear with an 'X' icon to remove from the multitasking tray)
Animations - Custom Duration ON (Have the slider bar almost all the way to the left) This option determines the speed of the animations that iOS makes, for example when moving through settings options.

Even though you are able to 'enable' homescreen wallpapers and multitasking in Springtomize, I ran into some difficulty enabling homescreen wallpapers via springtomize. After i enabled it in the springtomize settings area, I would not be able to choose what my homescreen wallpaper was (It stayed on the default waterdrop one). So if you want homescreen wallpapers and multitasking, it is important to select these features when jailbreaking via redsn0w.

After you have done this, respring.
Make sure that to make your device even faster, you remove all of the Spotlight indexing options in Settings (Settings > Spotlight Search), and to turn MMS off.

IMPORTANT FOR MULTITASKING: If you want multitasking to properly work, you will need to edit the plist file via SSH or iFile. Help on how to do this is available here (FIX: How to make Multitasking work in ios4.2.1 without crashing - SiNfuL iPhone)

After I had done this, I then went on to install SBSettings (because I like the 'free processes' feature it has), and also bitesms (because of the ability to reply to text messages while having another application open behind it.)

After I applied all of the above tweaks, I am left with about 60mb of free memory after I remove all my multitasking apps and I use the free memory option in SBsettings (Just under half of the total amount of ram the iPhone 3G has!).

Some important tips that I have found out while using my 3G has been to limit the amount of apps/tweaks that you download from both the app store and cydia, limit the amount of music, video etc you have on the device, and also perform monthly hard resets (holding the lock and home button down until the screen goes black, then rebooting with the lock button). Doing a hard reset twice or three times at the same time helps compared to just one reset.

My battery life is still decent with this set up. After a full charge, I will get around 2 days of use (normally this will consist of calling for 2.5 hours, 30min data use, 3 hour wifi, 1 hour music each day).

If you try this set up, please reply to this topic and let me know your experience. I highly recommend this set up, as the benefits of being able to run ios4 apps is huge, and the ability to run multitasking and have a homescreen wallpaper is great as well.

predator · 06-23-2011, 06:35 AM

sweet guide nice work thanks

have not tried it yet but the post deserve's a thanks

MrRaid3r · 06-24-2011, 05:21 PM

Anyone confirm that this all helps?

Thinking about going to 4.2.1 from 3.1.3 as there are alot of apps that i want to use.

Charl · 06-24-2011, 08:30 PM

Well I've just taking the plunge and had a go on my 3G and first impressions are great! everything still looks pretty much the same and i have 58M of free memory at any one time.

Ill let you know how it goes after a few days of use.

Thanks again!

Just loaded fruit ninja, which normally lags heaps when it starts up, and went straight into the game now no worries!

JodizzleTKR · 06-25-2011, 04:09 AM

i tried this on my 3G running 4.1 and i must say i see a major improvement in speed

~~Dannyev~~ · 06-25-2011, 06:54 AM

This does help but it is still alot slower than using 3.1.3

AppleHacker · 06-25-2011, 07:31 AM

Damn you forced me to upgrade to 4.2.1 from 4.1 !

Yatey · 06-25-2011, 01:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleHacker

Damn you forced me to upgrade to 4.2.1 from 4.1 !

Forced?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dannyev

This does help but it is still alot slower than using 3.1.3

I have never tried 3.1.3 personally, but the reason I posted this up was because I wanted to help people who wanted the compatability of iOS4 (Apps), to have the speed of 3.1.3. I suppose if you turn multitasking and homescreen wallpaper off, maybe even if you dont install sbsettings, it could help with speed even more.
Thanks for trying this out and posting your opinion.

AppleHacker · 06-25-2011, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yatey

Forced?

Srry i mean after reading you experience about 4.2.1 i thought i will also update to 4.2.1!
Thanks

Yatey · 06-25-2011, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleHacker

Srry i mean after reading you experience about 4.2.1 i thought i will also update to 4.2.1!
Thanks

Haha! Did you try the rest of the solution?

anya_78 · 06-25-2011, 04:09 PM

Unfortunately I wasn't able to use redsn0w and had to go with snOwbreeze. Redsn0w just kept on freezing during the process "uploading ramdisk". No different speed wise for me either way. Guess I'm just going to have to wait to get an upgrade =(

orihunter · 06-26-2011, 01:30 AM

srsly.. 60mb? without installing any VM.. supercharged or wut ever?

AppleHacker · 06-26-2011, 01:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orihunter

srsly.. 60mb? without installing any VM.. supercharged or wut ever?

Yes i can confirm that i have installed many tweak still it shows 60 mb free ram!

Yatey · 06-26-2011, 02:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orihunter

srsly.. 60mb? without installing any VM.. supercharged or wut ever?

I would never use the VM mods on any iOS device

AppleHacker · 06-26-2011, 02:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yatey

I would never use the VM mods on any iOS device

It fucks up the iphone i installed once and then deleted after 1 hour !

Belzebut · 06-26-2011, 02:24 AM

i have 54-56 free ram
this is without fresh install,removed daemons,language scripts,moved wallpapers,ringtones to difrent partitions(thanks to whited00r scripts)
in cydia i have 26-20 mb free
i had a few minor problems after i installed springtomize(some springboard crashes)but solved with some hard reset
the tweak with animations is nice

good tutorial

AppleHacker · 06-26-2011, 02:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Belzebut

i have 54-56 free ram
this is without fresh install,removed daemons,language scripts,moved wallpapers,ringtones to difrent partitions(thanks to whited00r scripts)
in cydia i have 26-20 mb free
i had a few minor problems after i installed springtomize(some springboard crashes)but solved with some hard reset
the tweak with animations is nice

good tutorial

springboard crashes and that too becoz sprongtomize!!

My iPhone's springboard never crashed once also on 4.2.1 or 4.1 strange

Yatey · 06-26-2011, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Belzebut

i have 54-56 free ram
this is without fresh install,removed daemons,language scripts,moved wallpapers,ringtones to difrent partitions(thanks to whited00r scripts)
in cydia i have 26-20 mb free
i had a few minor problems after i installed springtomize(some springboard crashes)but solved with some hard reset
the tweak with animations is nice

good tutorial

Cheers Dude I'm glad you tried it.

---------- EDIT ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleHacker

springboard crashes and that too becoz sprongtomize!!

My iPhone's springboard never crashed once also on 4.2.1 or 4.1 strange

Thats odd. I have never had my springboard crash since I restored my iPhone, even with springtomize etc installed.

Belzebut · 06-26-2011, 02:54 AM

i think is because didn't make a fresh install,i'm on 4.2.1 with no multitasking/walpapers enabled from redsnow,i have backgrounder and multiflow for multitasking,walpapers enabled manualy with N88AP edit
in additions i have try'd the whited00r custom scripts
i have no error now with my phone,no springboard crash(curently i'm on tether and using my phone for an internet connection-no cable internet due to yesterday storm-
i'm satisfied with my phone since i've try'd whitedoor scripts,i'm still trying different methods to improve/stabilize my phone as i can't replace him yet

Yatey · 06-26-2011, 03:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Belzebut

i think is because didn't make a fresh install,i'm on 4.2.1 with no multitasking/walpapers enabled from redsnow,i have backgrounder and multiflow for multitasking,walpapers enabled manualy with N88AP edit
in additions i have try'd the whited00r custom scripts
i have no error now with my phone,no springboard crash(curently i'm on tether and using my phone for an internet connection-no cable internet due to yesterday storm-
i'm satisfied with my phone since i've try'd whitedoor scripts,i'm still trying different methods to improve/stabilize my phone as i can't replace him yet

If I were you, I would probably uninstall multifl0w. I'm sure it would be a memory hog on your device.