Apple released the iPhone 4 this week to much fanfare. The company also made the operating system running on the iPhone 4 available to iPhone and iPod touch users with earlier models. But unless you’re using an iPhone 3GS or 3rd generation iPod touch, you may find that you don’t have all of the new features in iOS 4 such as multitasking, custom home screen wallpapers, or screen orientation locking. What’s more, a lot of users are noting that their older iDevices actually seem a lot slower after upgrading.

Fortunately, if you’re not happy with the upgrade, there’s a way to switch back. Sure, you’ll be giving up on icon folders for your home screen and support for iBooks. But that’s really about it.

Lifehacker has posted a step by step tutorial for restoring iPhone 3.1.3 on a device that’s been updated to iOS 4. It’s a bit complicated, and requires a restore image. Fortunately, there’s a good chance that there’s already one in your iTunes directory. If you updated recently, there’s also a good chance that iTunes has a backup of your installed apps and data from before the upgrade, so synchronizing your data should be a fairly smooth process.

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...

One reply on “How to downgrade from iOS 4 to iPhone OS 3.1”

Comments are closed.