9 Comments For This Post

1. Wayne Schulz Says:
   August 18th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

   I’m up at the Ridin Hy Dude Ranch for the week so I have not been able to do this update. I probably won’t apply it until Saturday when I get home.

   Early reports don’t seem to indicate much change. Probably only time will tell if this update fixes things or just continues to hack away at the annoying app crashes and contact lags.

2. Christopher Spera Says:
   August 18th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

   I am beginning to really hate this phone. This I the 3rd time I’ve ties to reply from my phone. Signal issues ate my other responses. Grr!

   This was a surprise. I don’t think amyl e expected this update from Apple. I wi install this when I get home tonite and report back to everyone.

3. Christopher Spera Says:
   August 18th, 2008 at 8:50 pm

   The update is 248.70MB in size! Holy Smokes! I am downloading it now; and will report back after the phone is updated. Hold please…

4. Christopher Spera Says:
   August 18th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

   Update is done. Took about 20 minutes, including download, resync, backups, etc. Now comes the interesting part… what did it fix.

   I know its not Apple’s policy to “bore” us with the details…their consumer based take on everything (I don’t care how it works, or what it does as long as it works and does what I want it to do) prevents that stance; but given all of the problems and grief that literally 60,000 users are going through (2% of 3M iPhone 3G’s sold), I really think they should break tradition and give us the details on all of the goodies…but that’s just me…

5. Michael Anderson Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 7:24 am

   I agree, Chris - three updates (2.0, 2.01, 2.02) have meant >700MB of downloads. We know what the first one did, and I see evidence of improvements in the second one … and when I download the newest one tonight (iPod Touch) we’ll see what that does. But I tend to be a ‘read the patch release notes’ kind of person, so this is annoying.

   And all you have to do is go to the Support Downloads page and you’ll see some information for every patch … but the iPhone / iPod Touch updates don’t show up there …

6. Christopher Spera Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 7:45 am

   I am not certain what this update actually did. I expected radio improvements, but I am NOT seeing any kind of radio performance improvement. I had 1-2 bars 3G before the update and I had 1-2 bars 3G after the update on my iPhone. My Tilt…3 bars HSDPA all day at the house.

   I have been on the phone with Chris Gavula for about 30-40 minutes, and I’ve had calls drop twice, and both of us have had an average of 4 bars the entire time. I’m not certain what is going on here. I’ve not had any dropped calls to speak of, but have had 2 so far today, and both drops were not in areas of low signal for either of us.

   I don’t get it…

7. Christopher Gavula Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 10:09 am

   As Chris S mentioned, he and I spoke this morning and we dropped a couple of times. He was on a train riding into Chicago and I was on fairly rural stretches of I-10 and US 90 so it could of been either of us for a variety of reasons including the on-again, off-again bad weather we’ve been having in the region.

   Overall, some of the glitches I was still seeing after 2.0.1 seem to have gone away. For example, I had a problem where the Mail app didn’t seem to switch between WiFi and EDGE very well. The end result was that mail would stopp automatically pulling or even being able to receive at all. The answer was to press and hold down the HOME buttone to “force” Mail to quit. After that Mail would work correctly again. Since 2.0.2 Mail has worked correctly (so far).

   Also - I’m now seeing more bars at my home. I don’t know that this actually translates to better reception, but it is a change.

   I’m also seeing better typing performance and Safari performance, but I need to spend a little more time before I’m certain that’s real vs. perceived.

   Despite some early reports that people had of apps not working, I’ve seen NO evidence of this. I have 25-26 apps installed (yes, really!) and all of them seem to run without issue.

   So far the device seems improved, but I, like the other folk here, would like to see Apple be a little more forthcoming with what has been fixed. Historically, though, Apple has never been one to talk in detail about it’s fixes unless it felt it was necessary, so I’m not expecting much detail from Apple.

8. Christopher Spera Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

   …and isn’t that just lovely?? Just an FYI…I was on a CTA bus when the calls dropped. I was off the train by that time, and in a solid 3G coverage area.

   I think the radio was tweaked slightly, but not overly much. I think that the bulk of ALL the fixes Apple has planned will be in the 2.1 update, at least initially.

   However, the fact that Apple has come out with an initial release and 3 updates (yes, three! the one hidden, 047 update quietly released on 7/12 or 7/13, 2.0.1 and 2.0.2) since 11-Jul-08 tells me that the device was NOT ready for release, and still needs a lot of work and testing.

   I don’t have a problem working with a company on a device as a tester; but Apple didn’t tap me for that activity and certainly isn’t compensating me for all of this. I think I’m going to call AT&T and ask for a service credit…

9. Wayne Schulz Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

   I don’t know how much of the dropped calls are capacity issues. I suspect quite a bit. In my office I have full signal coverage and I’ve gone lengthy periods of time with no dropped calls — then suddenly I’ll have one or two in a day. If there was an inherent firmware issue then I’d expect to see more drops in a somewhat consistent way.

   I believe Apple is sending out these updates without any notice of what they fix because they don’t want to invite more criticism of “not fixing what they said it would”.

   My guy says most of the iPhone issues are memory related and that may be due to the OS and how it handles the third party app space. It’s possibly an overall design flaw or you’d think Apple would have resolved the problem with the first or second update.

   My experience with the iPhone is not perfect. Clearly the 3G is a much bumpier path than the first generation. Still compared to the competition Apple’s iPhone 3G is still the phone to beat and I think it will be for the next two years.

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