So after trying iOS 5 myself, I’m feeling good to upgrade my wife’s iPhone 4.

Strange thing occurred that once I asked iTunes 10.5 to upgrade the iPhone 4, after the first dialog box that says something about backup, the next thing I get is error 23. Which actually means the phone has a hardware problem. Is there an underlying problem? I have no idea, phone seems fine.

So, what I did that made it work… or at least now it’s gone past that stage. Put the phone into recovery mode, and now iTunes 10.5 is downloading iOS5. Will know soon enough if it will work all the way.

*update* the workaround was successful!!

*update 2* to get the iPhone into recovery mode, do the following

1. have your computer running iTunes 10.5, and the iPhone sync cable plugged into the computer
2. don’t connect the sync it to your phone yet, and shutdown the phone
3. after the phone is off, press and hold the home button (don’t let go of the button)
4. keep holding the home button, and plug the sync cable into the phone (still, hold on to the home button, don’t let go yet)
5. when you get to the recovery screen, you’ll see the iTunes logo and the sync cable show up on the phone, you can now let go of the home button
6. iTunes will detect and report that the phone is in recovery
7. Follow the wizard to proceed with the upgrade