iPhone 4 Jailbreak Causing Battery, Slowness Problems; How to Undo

The recently released iPhone 4 jailbreak (which requires simply visiting a website and swiping to perform a relatively brief process that relies upon a security exploit). The easiest route to avoiding these problems is, obviously, to avoid jailbreaking, which can void your warranty and cause other long-lasting issues, altogether.

However, if you have taken the jailbreak plunge and are experiencing issues (such as poor battery life, slowness, you can undo it by simply performing a DFU restore:

Battery Drain: several users have reported dramatically decreased battery life after applying the jailbreak. This issue can be caused by applications that continue to run in the background, slurping power, or custom backgrounds and other add-ons. Try the tips listed in our recent article on boosting iOS 4.0.1 battery life. Also, try deleting some apps then reinstalling them one by one to check for any battery drain culprits.

Slow/laggy performance: for many of the same reasons (poorly written apps, excessive add-ons), some users experience laggy interface behavior or overall slowness after jailbreaking. If you’re having this problem, try these fixes:

Perform a “hard reset.” Hold down the sleep/wake and home buttons simultaneously for roughly 15-20 seconds, until the screen powers off then an Apple logo appears, which signifies a reboot. Some users have (oddly enough) reported that performing two hard resets resolves the slowness issue.

Restore, but not from backup. It appears that bad holdover data from iPhone backups can cause performance problems. Restoring as a new phone will delete contacts and other data, but may resolve this issue.

To do so, connect your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer, click “Restore” in iTunes, then choose “setup as new phone.”

Free up space. Make sure that your iPhone has at least 10% of its available memory free. OS X-based systems, such as iOS 4.0, may require some free space to operate properly.

Close open Safari windows. One iOS application that consumes memory in the background is Safari. Close all unused windows in the application by pressing the page switch button in the lower right portion of the screen then clicking the X at the top left of each page. See this pagefor screenshots.

Turn off Spotlight. Navigate to Settings -> General -> Home Button -> Spotlight Search and turn off all the options by tapping each one. Next, perform a hard reset by holding down the sleep/wake and home buttons simultaneously for roughly 15-20 seconds, until the screen powers off then an Apple logo appears, which signifies a reboot.

You can experiment with turning off only some options, but most users only report a meaningful speed boost if all options are turned off.

Turn off MMS. Navigate to Settings > Messages > MMS messaging and slide MMS Messaging to “Off,” then perform a hard reset as described above.

Network services gone. If you are missing EDGE or 3G service after the update, try resetting network settings. Open Settings, then navigate to “General” in the left-hand pane. Scroll down and tap Reset, then select “Reset Network Settings.”