I've put a 'deposit' down for one at Phones4U, but given the lack of knowledge demonstrated by the salesperson I think I'll be getting my tenner back tomorrow morning.

Hmm, yes. The Tesco prices are cheaper at the tariff level I use as well.

Over 18 months that would be £80 cheaper than the option I went for, minus probably £20 to unlock it in the future ?

Just collected and swapped to a microSIM, all ready for tomorrow

Hmmm, after updating to iOS 4 today it looks like my problems with my 3G are back.

No heat this time, but I can only get a data connection over WiFi. Connections over mobile end up failing.

Bugger!

Any suggestions or is thing a write off now ???

Cheers

Cris

God Damm this is annoying me!

All of a sudden it's working again. iPhone 4 looks highly likely!

Cheers

Cris.

Mmmmm…. Planned obsolescence….

</homer>

So other than myself and Andy, is anyone else seriously looking at getting a new iPhone tomorrow?

I walked past Phones4U this afternoon who had a poster advertising that they were taking iPhone 4 pre-orders. I'm not holding out a huge amount of hope that my 'reservation' is actually worth the paper it's written on, although I do have it in writing that I get my money back if they don't have one waiting for me at 10AM. While I'd like one before my upcoming weekend away in London, it's no big deal if I don't get one right away, hopefully the N95 will last another month.

It was quite funny reading the posts on Macrumors debating which street entrance at the Arndale Centre in Manchester will allow you to get to the Apple shop the quickest, the common consensus from the nerds is the one near The Birdcage despite the escalator in the way. My money is on Next though.

I dunno. I want one, but I just tried upgrading my 3G to iOS4, and the phone is bricked now. So until I'm sure my current phone is working again, I dunno about getting a new one. It's in an infinite reboot loop... I'm not the only one who's had this problem, either. Trying a full restore and crossing my fingers.

Hm, I'm not the only one getting this error. Restoring a backup bricks the phone. It seems there is something in my backup from the iPhone using OS 3 that is crashing OS 4. I wonder if I can downgrade it to OS 3 again.

It was definitely possible to downgrade to 3.1.3 a few days ago, did it myself when my first attempt at 4.0GM didn't work out.

These were the steps I followed to do it:

http://www.blogsdna.com/9175/how-to-downgrade-iphone-3g-4-0-os-to-3-1-3-firmware-on-windows-mac.htm

Was 3.1.3 the latest firmware before the 4.0 release?

I called apple and they said you can't downgrade. Hmph.

Yes 3.1.3 was the last one before 4.0

It is possible that the steps I posted won't work anymore, once Apple's servers stop signing installs if a given version you can't install that version anymore. I don't think they stop signing the previous version for a while though.

The link you provided looks great. However, it sub-links to a location to download the 3.1.3 firmware file which fails when I try it. Understandable, those sorts of sites get foxed a lot.

Googling for the filename produces a result, which I'm downloading, but I don't know if I trust it. :-)

My other option is to stick with 4.0, and install my apps individually and setup and sync all my email/calendar/contacts/etc as if it were a new phone. Not sure which is more painful.

Arg.

Wait, hang on. If I'm getting the file from "appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net", is that coming from an apple content-delivery server, i.e., it's official, or is that coming from someone else's site?

I'm 99.9% sure iTunes checks it is a valid image, otherwise you could just jailbreak a phone by monkeying around with the firmware image...

...in fact, I expect that is part of the "signing" process I was going on about.

Excellent point. Okay, great, I've got both options open to me: Go back to 3.1.3 with this file, or go boldly forward with 4.0 and take the hit on losing all my data and having to start over.

Argh, this hurts.

Going back to 3.1.3 and restoring was quick and fairly painless when I did it. At least that way Apple might fix something in the future that lets you upgrade.

You can always choose to take the painful route later if you need to.

Oh and I fully take back all I have ever said about the backup/restore/upgrade bit of iTunes being rock solid. It very much appears to be far from rock solid at the moment, lots of people appear to be having similar problems with the 3.1.3-4.0 upgrade.

Interestingly, holding down "ALT" while clicking "Restore" does not prompt me for a different piece of firmware. I have to figure out how to do that here on my PC with iTunes 9.2.

Aha, the guide was wrong. It's hold down SHIFT, not Alt.

It is SHIFT on Windows iTunes I believe.

Okay, that site, when following its instructions, really messed me up bad. I'm in a real bad state.

It said I'd get a "1015" error or some such, and to recover from that, I'd need to run something called IRESTORE to ubrick the phone.

Well, I got an "irestore" package, linked from that very web site. And when I installed it (edit: Specifically when I installed the LIBUSB package it came with), it made all my USB ports stop working and made the computer BSOD at boot time, so now my computer is in an infinite reboot loop.

Doing a system restore now. Arg.

The system restore worked and got my system into a bootable state.

After the system restore, I had to reinstall iTunes because itunes no longer worked. (Since the prior system save point had happened mid-install of iTunes 9.2)

After the iTunes install, ALL MY APPS IN THE APP STORE ARE GONE. So now I have a bricked phone where I can't restore the phone's backup, and my only choice is to go forward with iOS4. But now all my apps are gone, including a couple of expensive ones.

Arg.

Ah, no, that was just because I got confused by the thing where it asked me to open a previous itunes library. If I open the right library (hold SHIFT while starting itunes) then the apps are there. Phew.

Your apps would never be gone anyway, you can always download them again.

Sorry you had pc problems, I followed that guide on a Mac and didn't have the problems you had on the Windows.

Find a friend with a Mac, use the guide to restore 3.1.3 and then restore the backup from your PC.

Naw, with no options left, I bit the bullet and just went forward with 4.0 and said goodbye to the backups.

Interestingly, I'm missing at least one app, which was working on the phone hours before this crash. The app was called "HeyWhat'sThat" and it would take your location, then plot a panoramic graphic of all the nearby mountain peaks on the horizon and name each mountain. It's gone from the app store and now gone from the phone. I *think* all my other apps are still there though. Maybe I'll find more missing ones later.

All my contacts, mail, and calendar stuff is externally synched, so once I set that all up again, it Just Worked and everything was OK in that department.

Aside from that, the only stuff I lost in the crash was part of my photo library, which I can restore if I feel like it. And a lot of settings and configurations, especially those within the apps themselves, such as my "favorites" in the TomTom navigation app, my game progress in a few of the games, and downloadable content for some of the games. All of that stuff is completely gone. I'm not sure what else I'm missing, I guess I'll discover it as time goes on.

So, with that all said, I'm extremely happy with the 4.0 iPhone software now. The new features made all this hassle worth it:
- Folders for your apps, instead of seven screens of apps.
- Threaded mail.
- Easier setup for Google Calendar synch, and more reliable calendar synch.
- An icon showing when the GPS chip is active.

So, in the end, it's all good.