iPhone 3G users were super excited to update their 2-year old devices to the all new iOS 4, which brings all kind of great features. To the disappointment of most iPhone 3G owners, iOS 4 on their outdated devices lacked many desirable features such as multitasking and the ability to change the home screen background image.
iPhone 3G owner Erica set out to find out why her device couldn’t support backgrounds. She wrote an email directly to the Apple CEO himself — Steve Jobs. Surprisingly, he responded to her message with the answer to her query. Be sure to check out the email exchange between Erica and Steve Jobs in the full post.
Erica:
Hey Steve! I just upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS 4 and was really looking forward to setting a background on my home screen. Guess that’s not happening, but I’d like to know why.
See, I get why you don’t include multitasking. My iPhone gets pretty hot when certain apps run, couldn’t imagine how multitasking would fry my phone.
But the background thing, I don’t see how that would be memory intensive and/or battery draining. It doesn’t seem like that feature needs to be exclusive to the 3GS and 4G.
I hope this email finds you in good health.
Erica
Steve Jobs:
The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough.
There you have it, folks. The iPhone 3G does not support iOS 4 backgrounds because it can’t handle them “well enough”. However, you could always jailbreak your device, and you’ll be able to change the background.
[ via Gizmodo ]