After upgrading iPhone to firmware 2.0, beside all the great features that it comes with, one notable thing is the slow backup process between iTunes and iPhone. Day back to firmware 1.1.4, it just take a minute or two to synchronize the data back to iTunes (supposed you do not have large amount of photos/music to sync). Now, with iPhone 2.0, it can take more than 15 minutes to synchronize the data especially you have installed a lot of applications from AppStore. Say, for me, with 20 AppStore applications, it took around 30 minutes to complete the iTunes sync process.

Why does the Sync Process so slow?

Prior to 2.0 era, iTunes only sync back the iPhone data (such as contacts, SMS, notes, etc). Now, for iPhone 2.0, iTunes helps you backup all applications installed onto your computer. So, the sync process will become slower and slower, as you install more applications from AppStore.

So, how can we speed up the sync process?

Option #1 – Disable backup process
One of the options is to disable the application backup process in iTunes. The backup process is the root cause of the slow sync process. Okay, let’s disable it.

For Mac OS user, you need to follow these steps to disable backup process:

1. Quit iTunes, if you have opened it.
2. Open terminal.app (Finder -> Applications -> Utilities) in Finder
   

3. Type the below command in terminal window (in single line) and press ENTER:

   defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true

4. Launch iTunes again and this time, backup process should be disabled and you’ll experience a faster sync process.

To re-enable the backup process, you can just type the below command in terminal window and restart iTunes again.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

Option #2
Upgrade to firmware 2.0.2. Although Apple does not detail the change in firmware 2.0.1/2.0.2, some of these firmware users reported that the sync process is much faster.

What's Next?

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Tagged as: firmware-2.0, iPhone, itunes