iPhone backups a bit slow? Dump those images

As a photographer, one of the main reasons I wanted (as well why I want an iPad) was the ability to show pictures on it. So yes- I have a huge amount of pictures. I tend to go to a website and save low rez copies first, though. Granted, I am sure they are resized again for the phone itself. My back up times are reasonable, at least reasonable enough to not dump the pictures I use rather frequently.

I thought i'd just throw my hat into the ring regarding these slow backups - my iPhone was taking about 20 minutes to sync, and that was on a good day. Sometimes it took about an hour.

Anyway, what worked for me I found out by accident when i gave my phone to someone else to use. Basically, i just logged out of the Facebook app (run the app, go into the menu and logout is in the top right), which took far longer than i expected (but only a couple of minutes, tops), gave my phone to my friend to use Facebook, then logged back in as me when they'd finished.

After that the syncing went back to the 'normal' time of about 1-2 minutes.
I did some Googleing and it seems as though the Facebook app stores all the photos you look at somewhere and syncs them when you connect it up, really slowing the whole thing down.
Dunno if it's true or not, or if it was just a co-incidence or something, but it seemed to work and i've done it a couple of times since when it slowed down, and it seems to have made it better.

Anyway, it worked for me and i thought i'd share my little tip - hope it works for you too!
Cheers
Rob

p.s. using Vista.

We have created a free little Windows app that turns on and off the backup feature in iTunes.

http://microseconds.com/?page_id=395

If your backups are slow you can temporarily turn them off with this utility.

If you want to talk about slow backups...for whatever reason, mine tend to take in excess of 12-13 hours.

I've got maybe 300 images in my roll, but i also consistently download apps from the local app store in the phone (which I've heard can cause delays). That said, i only have four pages of apps, much less than most folks. There are a couple heavy games in the (BIA and Real Soccer), but only a couple.

I do also have nearly 5GB in comics witting in ComicZeal's reader, but that's a recent development...backups took this long before I added those. And apple ha been no help to date.

If anyone has any other thoughts, would love to hear them...I've just been dealing with it by backing up overnight on the weekends when I can do without the phone during a few daytime hours, a well.

Thanks for any notes?

Apple really needs to assign a decent software developer to this issue. There is no reason to be backing up things that have already been backed up, and any decent programmer could develop a fast fool-proof method to prevent this. I've often been shocked by long backup times when hardly anything has changed on my iPhone. You will often see slow checks of each category of information (Calendar, Photos, Music ,...) when a single bit on the phone should identify if any changes have been made.

This problem is 100% Apple's fault. Frankly, it is ridiculous for Apple to be telling users that they have to delete photos from their camera roll because otherwise they'll be transferred numerous times. Apple and Steve, what has taken you so long to fix this?

I had that same issue with slow syncs taking minutes and even hours, and tried that Apple recommendation without any luck.

Then I checked the devices that I had plugged into my USB 2.0 hub, and found out that one of the them was an old USB 1.0 device.

That slowed down everything!

When I unplugged that old USB 1.0 device, my syncs now only take seconds.

Check just in case.

I see one problem with this, at least for me.

Copying the Camera Roll photos into iPhoto/Aperture/etc. and resyncing through a Smart Album or the like will result in the terrible image compression that iTunes applies, I mean "optimizing." I have pictures of my 7-month old son that I would like to see without the appearance of a zoomed-in thumbnail.

In fact, I have gone the opposite route, downloading wallpapers from, say, Glennz Tees, and emailing them to myself so I can save them to the Camera Roll and avoid the awful compr-- sorry -- "optimization" so they are actually legible.

Haven't fault a plist flag that turns photo optimization off so I know I am adding to the backup size with every sync.

I agree with the previous writer. 3rd Party Apps are notorious for causing delays in the iPhone backup process. Madden, Sandstorm, AirShare and a few others that procure MB's of data either primarily or indirectly by storing data in their folders seems to be the culprit.

One additional solution that I have found helpful has been to disconnect the computer from the internet during the synch and to place the phone itself in Airplane mode. Those two things appear to cut down 10 minutes of a 15-20 minute backup time.

I have 700 pictures, a few movies and a host of PDF files through AirShare.
Most are journal articles. I will however heed some of the information about the pictures. It seems logical that this would be a good idea.

The most substantial influence on backup times is installations of third-party apps that write to the hard drive.

Vanilla 3.1.3 iPhone (nothing installed) 3GS required 23 seconds. 200 photos stored not camera roll moved that to 36 seconds.

However, installation of MobileRSS and the subsequent caching of 200 feeds, has increased backup time to 4 minutes 22 seconds!

Byline and Reeder resolved this by only backing up preferences and account settings.

No wonder my wife's always takes forever. I think she has somewhere near 500 pics on her camera roll.