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iPhone 2.1: After Two Weeks, It's Still A Work In Progress

The iPhone firmware Version 2.1 got a lot of applause when it first came out, from users who said it fixed major bugs. I've been living with the software for two weeks now. In my experience, the update fixes quite a lot, but there's still a lot of work to be done. And I encountered one big bug that could result in a spectacular loss of data.

The 2.1 software came out Sept. 12, and fixed problems with responsiveness and stability. It was designed to reduce the number of dropped calls, increase the accuracy of the 3G signal strength display, fix crashes caused by programs downloaded from the App Store, reduce time for backups, load contacts and searches faster, and speed up responsiveness of the virtual QWERTY keyboard.

That's what Apple says. What's really going on?

Let's start with the good:

I gave the iPhone battery a good workout last week, because I was attending conferences. When I'm traveling on business, I make heavy use of the iPhone and don't have much opportunity to charge it. My gut feeling is that the battery got an extra hour or so of life: The pre-2.1 iPhone gave me a low-battery warning about 5-6 p.m., and with iPhone 2.1 I was getting the warning at 6-7 p.m.

Also, last week, I got in the habit of carrying the charging cable with me everywhere I carried my laptop. Even when I'm out of the office, my work requires me to sit at my laptop and write an hour or two throughout the day, and during that time, I plugged the iPhone in and gave it a top-up charge.

The iPhone seems to charge much faster with the 2.1 software. Previously, it took two hours to charge to a full tank from under 20%; now it takes less than an hour. The speedy charges make a huge difference, even more than the improved battery life.

The keyboard is, indeed, much more responsive in Version 2.1. Version 2.0 introduced a bug to the iPhone where users got a second or two of keyboard freeze-up a couple of times a day. You'd tap a letter on keyboard, but it would take a second or two to respond. Annoying, but no big deal. Now, however, the freeze-up is nearly gone -- it only happens a couple of times a week, and lasts less than a second. If you weren't looking for it, you might not even notice it.

Likewise, the Contacts application, and search in contacts, are much faster. Previously, they took a couple of seconds to come up, now they come up right away.

Backup times are improved enormously. It used to require up to 45 minutes to make a backup if I'd made a lot of changes to data and applications -- some people reported backups requiring hours. Now, backups take less than two minutes -- except one day, when I hadn't backed up for five days, and the iPhone hung overnight while backing up. The problem seemed to be mail synchronization. Because I don't need to synch mail from the iPhone to the desktop, I just disabled Mail syncing, synced up the iPhone and desktop, and then re-enabled Mail syncing and synced again. Worked like a champ since.

Apple made several nice changes to the iPod UI: The song list now shows the artist and other metadata. I'd like it if that information also would display on the screen saver that shows up when the iPhone display is locked. The display already shows the name of the track when the iPhone is locked, it would be great if it showed the artist and other metadata as well.

Apple made a couple of neat changes to the display for podcasts and audiobooks. Previously, it showed a blue dot on unplayed podcasts. Now, in addition, it shows a blue half-circle for partly listened to podcasts. And it shows the time left on partly listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I find that very handy; I'm currently listening to a nine-part audiobook (Dune, by Frank Herbert -- Amazon, iTunes -- expensive, but enjoyable), and this feature serves as a bookmark to let me know where I left off.

On the other hand, the blue dot on podcasts is unreliable; it often marks podcasts as new when I've already listened to them.

The iPhone 2.1 software and iTunes 8 includes a new feature: Genius playlists. Select a song from your music library, and the software will create a playlist comprised of that song, plus 24 similar songs from your music library. I played with it, and it worked pretty well. After I was done playing, I set my whole music library to "Shuffle," as I like to do, and skipped tunes until the iPhone played a song I was in the mood to hear ("Fly Me To The Moon," by Frank Sinatra, from The Very Good Years). I then ordered the iPhone to create a Genius playlist based on that song. Then I sat back and started doing something else while listening to the Genius playlist in the background. Nice!

And, finally: Dropped phone calls and 3G signal strength reliability was never a problem for me. Apple says it only affected a small percentage of iPhone users.

Now on to the two big negatives: Apple says that the iPhone 2.1 software "fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications." However, my iPhone is still pretty unstable; applications crash many times a day during heavy use. Other 2.1 users are having the same problem. I'm still investigating causes and possible fixes. I've reduced the number of applications on my iPhone, cycled the power, and will consider wiping the iPhone and doing a clean re-install of the iPhone software if the problem persists.

The instability isn't a huge problem, it only takes a few seconds for the iPhone software to come back up after a crash, and usually the apps save my place and whatever work I was doing. Still, the frequent crashes can be annoying -- at one point, I was using OmniFocus on the plane to organize my to-do list, and the iPhone literally crashed every one to two minutes. Even that wasn't too annoying -- I mean, I was on a plane, I had nothing else to do but contemplate the misery of 21st century air travel -- but, still, it would have been better if OmniFocus didn't crash. To be sure, I don't know if the problem here was the iPhone software, OmniFocus, or both.

And now the big bug: Two days after I updated to the 2.1, I found that all the phone numbers were erased from my Contacts application. Every one of them. This may, in fact, have happened when the software updated, and I didn't notice the problem until later. I still had the names in the phone book, company affiliations, street and e-mail addresses -- just no phone numbers.

You can see that might be really bad.

Fortunately, I didn't panic -- instead, I Googled, and found that other people have had this problem -- and there's a quick fix, too: "I was able to resolve the problem by turning off Contacts sync on the iPhone (Settings -> Mail,Contacts,Calendars -> abc@me.com -> Contacts), going to the home screen and then re-enabling it. All my lost contacts re-appeared." That worked, and only took a minute, and the problem hasn't recurred in the 10 days since. Whew!

I don't know if the problem was in the iPhone software version 2.1, an older bug that wasn't fixed in 2.1, or whether MobileMe is entirely to blame. Either way, it needs to be corrected, pronto.

Although I recovered the data quickly and easily, the missing phone numbers did result in a faux pas: I was having dinner with some colleagues at the InformationWeek 500 conference, and got two phone calls from the 408 area code.

"Who am I expecting to call me from the 408 area code," I wondered aloud, but I didn't take the calls because that would have been rude.

When I finally checked voicemail later that night, I discovered the calls were from analyst Rob Enderle. We were supposed to get together for drinks after dinner, but I'd forgotten. I called him back to apologize for flaking, and blamed myself. A few hours later, I discovered the Contacts bug -- and the fix -- and was able to place the blame correctly. If not for that bug, I would have seen Rob's name on Caller ID, remembered our engagement, and taken the call. So I blame Apple. No, I blame Steve Jobs personally.

Overall, iPhone 2.1 is a significant improvement over previous versions. It makes a very good phone even better. But it still has some bugs that need working out.

And it also has some missing features. We've written about these before: You can't sync notes to the desktop. You can't run apps in the background. The Maps app doesn't support turn-by-turn spoken driving directions. It needs double the battery life it has now. With the introduction of the Android G1 phone on Tuesday, smartphone competition is getting even hotter, and Apple is going to need to step up to remain relevant.

How's the iPhone 2.1 software working out for you? Let us know.

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