How Long Does it Take to Upgrade to iOS4

I was excited to get off work today so that I could download the iOS 4 update for my 32GB iPod Touch. However, my excitement soon turned to annoyance and frustration as the upgrade has taken MUCH longer than I had expected.

I have a 32GB iPod Touch (Current Generation), with an actual capacity of 29.38GB. On it, I have just over 4GB of free space. I have 3,199 songs (15.28GB), 2889 photos (325.1MB), 5.38GB of video, and 105 apps (1.39GB). That being said, I may have more content on my iPod Touch than the average iPhone or iPod Touch owner does. Regardless, I began the iOS 4 update around 2:00. I was finally able to play around with my iPod Touch, synced and running iOS 4, at 5:00.

Here’s a rundown on what happened (times approximate as I wasn’t paying attention until I realized how long it was taking):

  1. Updated to iTunes 9.2  – 5 minutes
  2. Automatically synced my iPod Touch (had to back-up) – 5 minutes
  3. Downloaded the iOS 4 update – 15 minutes
  4. Backed-up again – 10 minutes
  5. Automatically restored to factory settings – 3 minutes
  6. Automatically restarted iPod Touch – 2 minutes
  7. Restored Apps from most current back-up – 50 minutes
  8. Restored Music and Videos – 30 minutes
  9. Update finally finished… 2 hours later

Even after the ridiculously long update, my iPod Touch was very sluggish to the point of me not being able to use it. I would flick to the next page and it would freeze, move a little, freeze again, and finally take me to my next page of apps after a full minute. I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to be able to use my iPod until Apple released a fix. iTunes wouldn’t even recognize my device, even after I quit out of iTunes, relaunched, unplugged my iPod and reconnected it. Slowly the iPod Touch loaded quicker and quicker until it finally acted as it should. I quit out of iTunes again, relaunched, unplugged, and reconnected. After that, iTunes recognized my iPod and proceeded to back-up again, optimize photos, and sync everything else, which took another hour. So after around three hours, a nearly overheated MacBook Pro, and many sighs of frustration, I am now running iOS 4 on my iPod Touch

To be fair, this was a pretty significant update, with all of iOS 4’s new features. However, if you have an iPhone, that’s over two hours without a phone because the device cannot be used while updating. This is something to think about when planning on updating your device. You may want to consider waiting until tonight, before you go to bed, to update.

To update your iPhone or iPod Touch, follow this guide.

I have skimmed other websites, but have yet to come across anyone complaining of similar issues. This means it is very possible that mine is an isolated incident. For any of you who have already updated their iPhone or iPod Touch, what was your experience? Please respond below.

Ed. Twitter users reported long download times and failed attempts as well as a few users with similarly long update times.

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