Seems hard to believe that the iPhone 3G, the belle of the ball only two short years ago, is getting a half-hearted iOS 4 update this time around. Among the missing features are multitasking (and the screen lock that goes with the menu for same) and Bluetooth keyboard support, along with one that’s baffled many: Wallpaper for your home screen.

9to5Mac is reporting that none other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs has taken to his keyboard again in an effort to explain the absence of such a seemingly trivial feature like wallpapers, which has already been available to jailbroken iPhones for quite some time.

Gizmodo reader Erica sent the following missive to Jobs himself: “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."

And in customary fashion, Jobs fired back with the short and sweet reply: "The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough."

In hindsight, we probably should have realized that the iPhone 3G was left out of the wallpaper parade after the Apple iOS 4 Software Update page was updated, as noted by our own editor Roberto Baldwin on Twitter recently. Still seems like a fishy explanation, but we guess if you really want wallpaper on your iPhone 3G, the hackers will be more than happy to oblige you.

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