What you need to know to upgrade your iPhone to iOS 4
Apple today is releasing its latest operating system for the iPhone, named iOS 4. While it’s meant to run on all iPhones that are available, not all iPhones will have all the features of iOS 4. To see a breakdown of the features each iPhone type will have, click here. Before you upgrade, here are some things you need to do.
Before you begin: note that iOS 4 will not run on a first generation iPhone.
Upgrade iTunes to 9.2. Without upgrading to iTunes 9.2, you won’t be able to upgrade to iOS 4. If you connect your phone and haven’t upgraded iTunes, you’ll get the following dialog:
NOTE: As I wrote this, the Mac I was using with iTunes 9.1.1 died and I can’t get the screenshot off the hard drive until later.
Essentially, it says “Starman’s iPhone can’t be used with this Mac. Please upgrade to iTunes 9.2″
Backup your iPhone. This can be crucial in case of a failure while upgrading. When you connect your iPhone to iTunes 9.2, it will mount as a device. Right click on the iPhone’s icon and select “Backup”. It will take a while, but when it’s done, everything will be backed up. If something goes wrong, you can restore your phone using this backup and you won’t lose anything.
Sync your important information. I use an app called PhoneView to back up my notes. iTunes will back up your contacts, music, movies, and pictures. Still, I like to run the apps and make sure the information’s there before doing something like wiping my phone for an OS upgrade. This step may seem redundant if you already backed up your phone, but I’m not one to take chances. You can skip this step if you wish, but I’d suggest doing it.
Once you’re confident that all your information is backed up, connect your phone, and click on “Check for Update” which you’ll find when you highlight your phone’s icon in the devices list. iTunes will warn you that you’re about to lose all the information on your iPhone. Since you backed it all up, you should be good to go. Tell iTunes to upgrade your OS and let it run. My upgrade took about 15-20 minutes since it had to do the iOS 4 install, reboot, restore my backup, and another reboot before I was able to use it again.
Category: How-Tos, Technology
Many thanks for this article man – I totally would’ve just installed the new OS over my old one without backing up. Never really thought about backing up my phone. :/ What was I thinking?
Happy to help! I wanted to be sure everyone knew about how to back up, just in case something went wrong. If you have a backup, the WORST that happens is you do a full restore.