We've been using the new iPhone 2.0.1 software update for a little while, and the results have so far been good, but not perfect. We haven't had a single application crash . . . yet. We've tried all the usual suspects, including Where and Super Monkey Ball, both of which had a tendency to crash out in the past, but the programs seem stable. Opening and closing apps seems to take a bit more time, but if a little time is all the iPhone 3G needed for stability, so be it.
The situation isn't perfect. We previously had issues with long lists being unresponsive at first. Our contact list would appear, but wouldn't respond to our fingers for a second or two. Then, it would react quick as a flash. Now, the list took a second or two to appear in the first place, but was perfectly responsive once loaded. Strangely, when we opened the iPod app to our audiobooks list, instead the phone gave us our song list, but when we backed out and tried again, our list of audiobooks appeared. Buggy, but not nearly as annoying as it was before.
When we first loaded the software update in iTunes, the End User License Agreement detailed only a single change: "Bug Fixes." That's great, but it didn't solve most of our issues with the iPhone 3G. We'll be performing battery tests through the night to determine if battery life has been improved, but we haven't seen a bump in reception, so we don't expect a battery improvement. Safari, which used to crash almost as regularly as the third-party apps, has been stable and fast as ever, but our 3G reception has dipped close to zero bars in our office.
Even beyond the bug fixes and our original problems, some of the more petty annoyances still remain. As soon as our iPhone 2.0.1 software update was complete, we unplugged the phone, only to find that 4 apps needed to be updated. We double checked iTunes, and found that 10 apps had updates waiting, but when we opened the Applications window, we found a total of 25, though some of these were somehow duplicates of the same program. Because we had good Wi-Fi reception, we decided to leave the phone unplugged, then synchronize. Though the apps updated very quickly, the iPhone insists on rearranging all of the icons for the updated apps, which was annoying. Worse still, when we plugged the phone back in for a second sync, the dreaded backup began. That was about an hour ago, and the backup still hasn't finished.
So, while it's great that Apple has provided some "Bug Fixes," we hope they haven't given up on improving some of the difficulties we've had (and heard about from others) with the Apple iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software. Beyond the obvious missing features (MMS messaging, copy and paste functionality), we'd like to see the interface polished to its original shine. We'd hoped to find something better in the incremental iPhone 2.0.1 software update, but instead of making us happy, it just made us less mad.
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