Two months on from it’s launch, the iPhone today got it’s biggest software update so far. My thoughts on the upgrade are below:
– Backup does work a lot quicker than before. It now doesn’t get in the way of syncing
– Application installs on the phone via Appstore are so much quicker – 10 times quicker, or so it feels. Makes installs so easy and quick to do
– Syncs are overall more speedier
– Contact list scroll lag has gone
– Text and keyboard lag seems to be fixed
– Updating app’s will remember their screen position
– New 3g and edge icons
– Signal strength meter at home is now 4 bars instead of the 1 that I’ve had since i got the phone. Speedtests are much the same so it looks like the bars are just a fix to more accurately display connection rather than being a better connection
– Mail – failing to get some mail content tonight which was allegedly one of the issues fixed…an issue I didn’t previously have
– Genius playlist is nice but due to size of iPhone and amount of music it’s not as useful as it is in iTunes
– Battery life – who knows. Too early to tell but I have zero expectations of any sizable improvement to battery life
The biggie for me are the third party application crashes as I’ve suffered this problem for the last 4-6 weeks. Is it fixed? No idea! First install of firmware and no app’s worked. I then tried syncing again and some worked. Decided to start fresh and do full restore without using an old backup. All app’s installed but none would work. I then wiped all the app’s, sync’d, re-downloaded the app’s and sync’d. Still no joy. Then I installed an app from the Appstore on the iPhone – yay they all work. Or so I thought. Some didn’t. Tried them all and around half were still failing. I then downloaded another app from the Appstore and now all the applications are working.
While this sounds like problem solved that is the same behaviour I’ve seen up to now so it will take a few days/weeks before I’m convinced that particular issue has gone. It also seems there’s a couple of things missing. No background notification feature which was supposed to launch this month. I’m also disappointed that after boasting of 3000 app’s and 100 million application downloads that there is still no easy way to see only new additions to the Appstore. iTunes 8 and the new firmware should have had this feature added at the very least.
Those negatives aside it’s good to see the iPhone has lost it’s beta feel. Basic functionality now works well and with all the app’s back up and running it feels far more useful again. Lets hope it stays this way over the coming weeks.
I was really nervous about even bothering with 2.0.x and AppStore with all the problems you’ve been having, but I’ve been on 2.0.2 for a few weeks now and have had no issues with any AppStore Apps or Cydia Apps. Perhaps the iPodTouch isn’t as twitchty as the new 3G hardware. I’m in Jersey this weekend, so don’t want to do a 2.1 update as I’d lose all my music and videos that I need to get through the long working weekend.
One thing I did note was that once, just once, an app failed to install. And when I synced, all my apps vanished. Fortunately I’m on a JB’d touch, so I could ssh in and take a look in the installed apps folder, and I could see this tmp app that hadn’t quite installed, in fact two of them. So I was able to remove them, and respring to find my apps back. You’d think MobileInstaller could check and see if there were any broken apps that might get cause problems, and remove them.
Bizarrely, now that I’ve got my iPhone working well (really well at the moment) I now want to jailbreak it. The trials of being a geek…and never knowing when to stop.
I’m using an iPhone in Canada and never had a problem with apps or mail notifications. I use gmail (not the industry standard of mobileme) and it works a treat.
If I ever come back to Scotland then I hope my phone can come with me. Weird thing is that I had to have a US iTunes to get content although it’s a Canadian phone?
Are there any useful apps out there? I have remote desktop and a few others but the berr drinking etc ones are just not useful….
Useful app’s – for me Evernote, 1password, Air Sharing, Twinkle/Twitteriffic, Locly and Bloomberg are all very good and I use them often. There’s so many to choose from though and I wish you could run trials for 2 days before they expired so at least you can try before you buy.
If you like games, give Wurdle a try. Very addictive.