I’m updating my 3G iPhone Software as I type this. The installation screen above is promising the following improvements. I for one am looking forward to the “significantly improved battery life” – my only real issue with the iPhone 3G hardware.
iPhone 2.1 Software Update
iPhone version 2.1 contains many bug fixes and improvements, including the following:
- decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
- significantly improved 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 if you have lots of 3rd 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
I’ll update this after I’ve had a chance to test.
[Sept 17, 2009 Update: I’ve now had a few days to test and the battery life does seem to have improved. But not by as much as I first thought. My subjective guess would be that the battery is lasting about 10% to 15% longer than it has before the 2.1 firmware update.]
So far, so good for me. With the previous software, installing other-the-air apps (or updates) would essentially lock up my phone until the battery ran out. No amount of button holding would bring it back to life. Under the new software, installs and updates over WiFi have been fine and FAST. Were making progress….
So far so good for me too. And I am sensing longer battery life, but I didn’t actually measure it in any objective way. My nephew reports that he is getting delays while typing on the keyboard in SMS that he wasn’t getting before the upgrade. It also seems to me that the iPhone is more sluggish when transitioning between portrait and landscape modes. But that could be my imagination.