Right, I'm a complete iPhone newbie, but thankfully I'm a geek, so I just need some general direction from you guys... I'm picking up a 3G later as a mates giving it away after his iPhone 4 upgrade! He's running os4 and had another friend jailbreak it with redsnow? basically I've seen another friend who's running 3.1.3 and his jailbroken phone is waaaay faster than the one i'm getting.. i was wondering if it's the os software or the jailbreak that makes it like this?

It may be 2 things.

The jailbreak alone will not make any difference in the speed. That being said, reports show that iOS 4 on 3G is actually slower, while this is not confirmed, there are lots of reports. Another thing is the option he selected when using redsn0w, for example, enabling multitask and wallpaper on an iPhone 3G will make it run slower for sure.

I suggest you restore to 3G and jailbreak without selecting those options, test it, if you don't like, downgrade to 3.1.3, with the 3G that's easy.



Regards,
Rafael

Dude!
I tried constantly for like 6 hours to downgrade to 3.1.3.. I don't know whether I'm missing something I was gettnig different errors and I tried numerous programs to try and fix it, they just led to more problems :S I'm now just sitting on plain ios4 would love it to be faster though man it's a bit laggy!!!

Put the phone in DFU mode:
-Connect to computer
-Turn off (slide to power off)
-Hold both home and power button for exactly 10 seconds
-Release only power button but keep holding home button
-iTunes will ask to restore, select 3.1.3 IPSW and done

If iTunes gives you error, please note the number and post here.



Rafael

I did that many times last night and got error 1015 and 1064
I tryed to use irecovery but it didnt work at all in the end had to just upgrade through itunes to 4

IIRC, error 1015 is expected, you just have to use iRecovery and issue the following commands:
- 'setenv auto-boot true'
- 'saveend'
- 'reboot'

You say iRecovery didn't work, what happened?


Rafael