Just the other day, Boy Genius Report discovered that it had been visited by a few folks whose web browsers identified them as users of a yet-unreleased iPhone OS 2.0.1. Given the timing, it looks pretty clear that Apple will soon push out the update, which should mainly address bugs. Thank heavens — the OS needs it.
It appears that the iPhone software has some big issues to resolve. In addition to the boneheaded syncing scheme Lonnie highlighted a few minutes ago, every one I know who has installed the new OS onto their existing iPhone or iPod touch has noticed significant downgrades in performance and stability. I don’t have a 3G, and all my associates have the previous version or a touch, so I don’t know if these issues plague the new phone or not.
The worst of these problems is that the iPhone now fairly frequently won’t allow users to answer the phone when the screen is locked. When you get a call, the familiar “slide to answer” graphic pops up. But when you actually slide your finger to the right, the button gets stuck, and the phone locks up completely. At that point, the home button does nothing, the Hold button does nothing, and you basically need to perform a hard reset.
And that’s bad. Any time you have a phone that works well at everything but making phone calls? You need to take care of that problem NOW. Anyone else experiencing stability issues?
Via BGR.
Image courtesy Mushroom
Written by Pete Mortensen on July 17th, 2008 with no comments.
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The backup/synch process for iPhones takes a really long time and may turn out to be worthless for restoring a bricked device, according to emerging reports.
Blogger Erica Sadun wrote the other day about her frustrations with Apple’s synch and backup protocols in the iPhone 2.0 firmware and wondered why on earth she has to wait for entire applications to backup every time she synchs her phone with iTunes, instead of having iTunes backup only changed Document and Library data.
Writer Rob Griffiths also complains, “I can connect my phone, let it run a full backup and sync, disconnect it, let it sit on the desk for three minutes, then connect it again…and get hit with another hour-long backup cycle.”
And what’s worst is the local backup may be useless for restoring an iPhone to its as-configured state after crashing due to application instability or glitches in the 2.0 firmware. If this is a real problem, Apple’s millions of iPhone customers juggling their tens of millions of AppStore downloads will be letting us know quite soon, but as Griffiths writes, “the current implementation of backup in iPhone 2.0 seems very broken.”
Written by Lonnie Lazar on July 17th, 2008 with no comments.
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In case you missed Pete’s snippet from yesterday, the iPhone’s Mobile Safari web browser looks very capable of bringing the full web on to the iPhone, outranking some popular desktop browsers in critical standards support testing.
In tests devised by the Web Standards Project to help developers ensure their work can reach as wide an audience as possible, Mobile Safari blew IE7 out of the water on compliance with support for CSS and even scored higher than Firefox 3 in testing for components vital to “Web 2.0? functionality.
Looks like those faster 3G download speeds could be worth something after all.
Via Paul Beesley
Written by Lonnie Lazar on July 17th, 2008 with no comments.
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One of the AppStore’s hottest downloads has more than 500 reviews and a 1.5 star average rating, which has to be bad news for someone.
We got a press release yesterday from uLocate Communications touting the succes of its GPS navigation app for the iPhone, WHERE, free software downloaded more than 125,000 times in its first weekend. A quick check on the WHERE product page in iTunes tells a different side of the story.
“Doesn’t work,” Worthless” and “Just keeps crashing” are the kinds of reviews that get a developer working on an update right away, though other users seem to be having no problems and love the application, with one fan reporting, “I feel that I’ve missed too much in life already because Where wasn’t available before.”
As we reported Monday, some developers are pointing the finger at Apple, claiming the 2.0 firmware is unstable and causing their apps to crash. Apple, of course, has little to say on the matter thus far and seems content to let the waves of elation and frustration that have accompanied the AppStore’s big splash settle out on their own.
The good news for users of software such as WHERE, is that at a cost of “free” deciding it’s not worth the hassle costs no more than a little wasted time, something Apple’s early adopters seem to have in abundance.
Written by Lonnie Lazar on July 16th, 2008 with no comments.
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Although the iPhone 2.0 update was just released Friday, Apple and AT&T are rumored to already be testing the next version of the OS. According to the Boy Genius Report, they’ve received several visits to their site using a yet-unreleased version of the iPhone software. Two instances, iPhone version 2.0.1, build 5B101 (iPhone) and 5B103 (iPhone 3G), have been observed. No further information can be gained from these log entries, although we’re hoping that this build will bring some much needed stability to iPhone 2.0.
Written by Michael Johnston on July 15th, 2008 with no comments.
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