I only recently upgraded from iOS5 to iOS6 and now my apps are crashing constantly and my email won't load

Question

I had put off upgrading my iPhone 4 to the iOS6 and only gave in to it about a week ago when I thought that the trouble I was having with a select few apps was because of my outdated operating system. Now, I'm regretting it terribly and would either like to know how to revert back to iOS5 or fix this irritating as all **** and unproductive system. I had backed up my phone right before upgrading thinking that that way, I could just restore to it if I didn't like iOS6, but now I'm seeing that restoring to that point does not in fact restore firmware.
Now I have a maps app that won't help me plan through public transit.
An email app that will not update my inbox or any box even though it falslely says it checked and there was simply nothing new.
Every other app I have crashes constantly.
When I turn on the iPod/music function, there's an extended delay before the music will actually start playing.
The shuffle function is messed up (if I'm playing a tracklist of 38 songs, it will only shuffle a few of them and just keep looping through those few tracks).
etc etc
My contract is almost up and I was hoping that all the negative stuff I had heard about iOS6 would have been resolved by now so that I could confidently by the next iPhone, but at this rate, I'll be ditching Apple's phone entirely.

Answer 1

Basic troubleshooting from the Users Guide is reset, restart, restore (first from backup then as new). Try each of these in order until the issue is resolved.