Apple really surprised us by launching an update to the iPhone firmware last night.
We knew that version 2.1 of the firmware was supposed to be coming in September sometime because it will have the push notification system for 3rd party apps that everybody has been talking about, but we definitely didn’t know that Apple was working on 2.0.1. It’s now available and some of you have probably already updated. This update is purely bug fixes, and there are a lot of them.
In our iPhone review that we published last week, we mentioned one of the problems we came across with our iPhone restarting when starting 3rd party applications. We’re not sure if this is something that has been completely fixed because there’s no way to tell until we’ve had more time to use it. Unfortunately we don’t know for sure what types of things Apple fixed for sure because their explanation simply said “bug fixes.” Here’s what we have noticed though:
- Dragging icons from one page to another seems smoother
- Navigating between pages seems smoother as well
- Lag while typing, particularly while sending SMS messages seems to be fixed or at least better
- The contact list appears more instantly
- iTunes backup is definitely faster
Worth noting is that if you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch, the PwnageTool does not work yet. It also looks like the new firmware has updated the baseband which according to Engadget Mobile, could make the iPhone 3G unlockable.
This is a 242MB update, so it’s definitely a big one and will take some time to install. Total time it took including downloading the update was about 30 minutes for us. Once you have it installed, let us know if you notice any additional fixes.
Opening the settings still take a long time. And when you’re updating/installing apps straight onto your iPhone/iPod, trying to do anything will result in a hang. I had to force restart my iPod quite a bit. I’m running the 2.0.1 firmware and frankly, I don’t see any difference with the buggy 2.0.
A slighty obscure but easily reproducible bug that I noticed has been fixed on the iPod touch in 2.0.1 (can’t speak for the iPhone). Previously, when you flipped to the song list for the currently playing album, rated a song, flipped back to the album art, and skipped to the next song, the song list would not be updated for the new album. Instead, it would show the song list for the album of the song you rated. This may sound like a lot of steps, but it’s pretty much how someone would rate a song and skip to the next song.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to the settings and hadn’t paid any attention to the time it takes to load. Once you mentioned it I went and checked, and sure enough. It took about 3 seconds which isn’t terrible, but it certainly isn’t instant like it used to be with 1.0.
The contact list appears
Long download, smooth install. I’ll definitely test if the slow iTunes backups have sped up.
It definitely did for us.
It’s a lot faster than it used to be, but it’s still slow. Ah well, that’s what you get for installing 19 apps on your iPod touch.
Just 19? Pfff… I’m up to 41 already.