September 12th, 2008
iPhone 2.1 Software Update Arrives; Is 3G Fixed?
By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
The iPhone 2.1 software update, which has been long awaited (long, because despite only being announced at Tuesday’s “Let’s Rock” event, long-suffering 3G users have been waiting for an improvement in 3G support since the iPhone 3G’s launch), has arrived.
Interestingly, once again it installed “Apple Mobile Device USB Drivers,” which had also been installed by iTunes 8.0 when I installed that yesterday (yes, on Vista). The download is 237.8 MB, and for once Apple is fairly open about the changes.
Not only does the software show release notes when downloading (above), they’ve even gone so far as to put up a web page with details.
Here are the details (emphasis mine):
The iPhone 2.1 software update contains many bug fixes and improvements. To get it, connect your iPhone to your computer using iTunes 8 and click Check for Update.
Update includes:
- Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
- Significantly better battery life for most users
- Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
- Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
- Faster installation of 3rd party applications
- Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
- Improved performance in text messaging
- Faster loading and searching of contacts
- Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
- Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
- Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
- Genius playlist creation
The question is, does “improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength” display mean it’ll just show different bar results, but still perform poorly when compared to other 3G phones in the same area (within inches, in my informal testing)?
Still updating, will update this post when I’m done testing.
Update: The update took around 20 minutes.
And, well, the phone came back up, and I immediately switched it to 3G mode (I had been permanently in EDGE). Shocked to see a “No service” message. After a short time, I received 1 bar. Powered the phone off and back on, and now I see 3 bars, which is in line with what I would expect. Now: does it perform well? Does the strength indicator fluctuate simply by being moved an inch?
Bluetooth was on, but disconnected from my headset. A couple of taps on the headset to initiate a call and it reconnected just fine.
Wi-fi seems OK.
Update 2: Inside info: I know someone in QA at Apple. This release fixes several 3G issues. No details, just that info.
Update 3: Obviously still very early, but besides myself, two others I know have a) downloaded, b) made several calls on the phone (in the SF BayArea). So far, no dropped or missed calls. We are impressed so far. Or perhaps, since this should have been done right in the first place, happier, so far.
Update 4: So far, so good. I assume people will now admit that the issue was at least partly with the phone. If not, they could not have fixed it via software. As I previously said, the fact that other 3G phones in the same area were performing well while the iPhone 3G … well, sucked … as well as worldwide issues, showed it could not be AT&T’s network alone. It’s still early, though.
Chuck says:
http://www.macworld.com/article/134673/2008/07/3g_notsofast.html
Take a look at this site. I only get at most 700 Kbps.
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/05/14/att-promises-wi-fi-speeds-on-its-3g-network-by-2009/
and this.
Are we really getting a 3G improvement? More Bars NOT = More speed
Do a speed test and compare
September 12th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Steve Springall says:
I was in USA recently (I’m from Australia) and 3G problems were noticeably worse than what I experience at home in Australia. I was in LA, Vegas and Denver… Not impressed by AT&T at all.
September 13th, 2008 at 12:28 am
mike says:
2.1 does NOT fix the 3g Woes.
Apple MUST be stopped from selling this defective product ASAP!
There needs to be a recall or money back/ cancel contract without penalty.
Seriously, they are not providing what they are selling.
September 14th, 2008 at 11:33 am
You got what you paid for from Apple says:
Hey, you bought an iBrick, what did you expect? Something that actually works?
Not from Apple…
September 15th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Jeff says:
To start with, I do IT stuff for a living. One main thing I do is constantly test different handheld devices to find out which is the best for my users (Nokia’s, BB’s, Q’s, Treo, etc). The iPhone is amazing and surpasses any other device out there. I’ve always been a symbian OS fan on the nokia’s and still am, but it still doesn’t compare. I updated to 2.1 yesterday and found it to be a huge success. FYI, I’ve installed 52 3rd party apps from the App Store. I’ll list my findings below.
1. My backups were well over an hour. Now it just took me 5 minutes flat!
2. 3G signal strength in office was around 2 bars. Now is a constant 5 bars.
3. I haven’t had a dropped call yet.
4. It could take up to 10 minutes to load a very small simple app before and now it’s almost instant.
5. I had many crashes installing apps, especially when syncing multiple apps that I got via iTunes. I’ve had to do a hard reset twice because of it and was actually getting a bit fed up. Now, I just installed 7 updates and 3 new apps all at once and they installed very quick and smooth as silk. I didn’t even have to restart the phone to make them work which I’ve had to do before.
5. Don’t know about battery life yet as it’s to soon to tell.
6. My 3G browsing hasn’t slowed down. It seems the same.
7. I used to have problems occasionaly with emails syncing via Exchange and Yahoo mail (usually after I installed an app). So far it is pushing quicker than ever. Even after doing the above said app installs.
Over all I can not be happier with 2.1. It has fixed all of my major problems and concerns. What a fabulous service pack!!!
September 16th, 2008 at 9:42 am
iBricks Forever! NOT!!!! says:
Jeff obviously works for Apple!
September 16th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Siva C Kumar says:
However Jeff works for Apple, his words are true for me too… I love iPhone 3G.
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm