iPhone Reset

I have noticed an interesting problem with my 3G 16GB iPhone. I have had the phone since last July, but the current problem only showed up over the last week or so. I have 3Gb free, so it isn't because of lack of space. However, I do have 104 added applications along with eight saved links on my springboard. All applications are up-to-date.

With that background, the problem is two-fold. First, every so often when I first turn the phone on, it will boot up as a virgin phone. That is, it requests the user to plug the phone into a USB port and the only action you can take is to access the emergency dialing. When the phone is cold-started (holding both the on/off and home buttons at the same time), the screen notifies the user that the phone has been activated and the phone works normally--until the next time this occurs.

The second problem is that since the last OS upgrade the phone seems to respond more slowly. In some cases, the time from selecting an application to actually having that application active can run to 15 seconds!

While these are not major problems, they are annoying. Has anyone else seen these problems? If so, has anyone found a way to eliminate them? We would like to hear your feedback.