iPhone 3G and firmware 2.0: one week later

We know it's been a whirlwind week of either: a) patiently sitting outside your local Apple store, b) losing touch with family, friends, and significant others while buried knee-deep in your new phone / firmware, or c) desperately trying to ignore the iPhone. But it's time to come up for air and take stock. We're all aware that things didn't go quite as planned with Apple's trifecta (iPhone 3G, firmware 2.0, MobileMe) launch last week, and we're just starting to see the fallout from last Friday's debacle.

The most prevalent complaint we've been hearing from users concerns ongoing issues with the phone's new firmware, which has delivered on a lot of its promises, yet is also exhibiting frustrating bugs that make us think this one needed a little more time in the oven. In particular, we've experienced -- and have been assailed with reports about -- painful lag times when typing, as well as choppy, clunky behavior while scrolling through or searching contacts, calls which can't be answered, and even outright crashes while receiving a call. Some owners have encountered repeated forced quits while trying to use the App Store, while a group of our editors vented about an SMS issue which not only grinds the phone's performance to a halt, but makes the keyboard inaccessible altogether.

When you toss in problems other users are having with email, MobileMe syncing, and assorted minor kinks (trouble rotating Safari anyone?), it seems obvious that there's cruft beneath this firmware creating hiccups in usability. Coupled with 3G reception concerns, the company's continuing struggle to get MobileMe working as advertised, and rumors that 2.0.1 is already in the works, you get the impression that everyone is looking for a little relief here... Apple and its customers alike.

So, how's your first week been?

[bjrcboy @ Jul 18th 2008 12:15AM]

I've been waiting to update until reports just as this came out and they fix them.

[AJC @ Jul 18th 2008 12:35AM]

I'd say the only problem I've had so far is a little lag here and there. Nothing serious. Not even anything worth posting about. Glad I am one of the lucky ones though. I believe consumers (like myself) are so inpatient that companys try their best to deliver before maybe something is ready to ship. In my experience of buying so many damned electronics over the past years, the one thing I can say for sure, is that Apple will make it right. This thing is their baby, and they won't let us down. I can deal with VERY occasional slowdown of my phone because I'm certain its just temporary. My PC running Vista at work on the other hand... LOL I kid, sorta.


AJC

[Cash @ Jul 18th 2008 2:28AM]

Anyone else catch the story from one of the App dev's, basically talking smack about Apple's deep need for secrecy preventing them from doing simple stuff like actually beta testing their product before it's release date. Apparently users alike are pissed at most app's buggy and half baked performance, and at least one dev has stood up and said "hey, don't blame us. Apple makes it next to impossible to do any sort of quality control on new launches like this."

As if like clockwork, a few minutes after reading the story I noticed there was an update out for two of my apps, one being Facebook, which now run much better and have features that should have been in the initial release. I think I'm starting to see how frustrating it must be for third parties to work with Apple on new products like this.

[JHosche @ Jul 18th 2008 2:36AM]

@AJC
Is it that consumers are so impatient, or is it that companies hype it up so much that consumers then become impatient? That's what marketing is all about...creating a frenzy so people "have to have" your product. They set the release deadlines themselves...perhaps thinking they'll have a product ready, but in the end, they choose to release their product as is ...or they have the option of delaying the release but then they'd be called Asus or MSI :)

[Mauricio @ Jul 18th 2008 3:47AM]

What I love about the bad times that Apples is going through is that people can now realize that every company is vulnerable. Sometimes, big success comes with pain.

Recently happened to Firefox with their download record and has happened forever to Microsoft, because it is a successful company.

I am not a fanboy, I do not hate neither love these companies. I have an iPhone 3G, I use Windows Vista on a daily basis (and like it). I have Ubuntu on my office's PC and all of them can live side by side.

I hope Apple fixes their problems soon, and that people stop complaining about too much iPhone posts on Engadget. Just don't read them!

[mymaclife @ Jul 18th 2008 7:58AM]

I've upgraded and my phone doesn't make coffee, read my mind or pay my bills - Apple are so slack! C'mon guys can we get back to the real world...'omg' my SMS has been delayed by a couple of seconds call the papers!

[Fozzy Bear @ Jul 18th 2008 8:17AM]

@ OP...

keep waiting.... i don't have problems... and i use nearly every single feature. and i also don't buy with the expectation of perfection either.

this thing is far easier to use than my blackberry... i wanted to break it everytime i had to do anything on it.

i hated it so much i reassigned it to an assistant... and she equally hates it... but that's how employee hazing goes.

[Vegas @ Jul 18th 2008 9:29AM]

Finally caved the other day and upgraded my iPod Touch to 2.0...mainly for the "Remote" app. and the "Pandora Radio" app...the $10 was well worth having my Pandora Radio on my iPod...quite possibly the greatest application I've come across thus far and I highly recommend upgrading for all those thinking about it...

The iPod touch seems to be running smoothing and I have not come across any glitches/bugs/problems...this is the only Apple product I have ever bought (being a computer programmer for Lockheed, or any programmer for that matter, has instilled a bias leaning away from Apple) and as much as it hurts to say...I am becoming quite the fan of it's usability in everyday life...

[anonymouspimp @ Jul 18th 2008 11:24AM]

Don't blame you for waiting.

All these Apple fanboys give RIM crap about pushing their release date to make sure the best possible product is released... and praise Apple for sticking to their release dates when they should have pushed their release date and shipped out a solid product...

Ironic.

Forgive me for finding a bit of joy in this debacle.

[h075h17 @ Jul 18th 2008 12:03PM]

- Dropped calls on 3G
- Sometimes i can't answer a call when the screen was off
- Very slow when pulling up contacts from SMS
- Very slow scrolling through contacts page
- SMS defaults to message field everytime you add someone to the SMS (so you have to keep re-selecting the To: field to add someone else
- Very slow typing (i can hit all the keys and then 10-15 seconds later the screen catches up and shows all the keys being hit)

And to all the haters commenting in this post... I'm glad Engadget wrote this post and I hope to God that Apple's reading it so that they can make a f*cking checklist and get all this sh*t resolved ASAP...

[Thomas Capasso @ Jul 22nd 2008 2:49PM]

The only issue I've had with the new iphone is reception. It's a bit iffy at times but for the most part I have no real complaints. I have seen the lag and quite honestly, sure, it shouldn't be there at all but whatever, its not a dealbreaker by any means. I can wait for an update to fix it. So far this is the most useful, intuitive, and fun to use cell phone that I have ever owned, and I have owned several on multiple networks.

[adam @ Jul 18th 2008 12:18AM]

my week´s been pretty good. just hanging out, watching the tube. nothing too cool. what bout you engadget?

[Saad Rabia @ Jul 18th 2008 12:43AM]

"Engadget is busy at the moment. Currently the staff is generating the next three hundred and fifty five coming topics about the iPhone 3G, the process shouldn't take longer than a year or so. Please leave a message after the silent tone, or visit our temporary website at www.apple.com"

Rank me down, or else...

[CharlieX @ Jul 18th 2008 12:47AM]

Oh you know, just sitting by the pool. Chasing the muff around.

[rBoLt @ Jul 18th 2008 1:11AM]

start your week with a iphone 3G story and end it with another iphone 3G sorry. i thought its engadget.apple.com not www.apple.com

[Zach @ Jul 18th 2008 1:31AM]

someone keep track of the amount of iphone posts they average per day.
:(

i can understand..a post a day.. but. this is overkill. for christ's sake. the damn thing is a phone. how about writing a story on.. UM. something important?

like..finding me a site that tells me if optimum online throttles torrents (dling a 29gb torrent of battlestar galactica, and it's taking days)
please?

just trying to divert attention from the fact that the sheer amount of articles posted on this fucking site about the iphone is more then sufficient.

[MRCUR @ Jul 18th 2008 8:33AM]

@Zach
I recommend you visit www.dslreports.com for your needs.

[Killian @ Jul 18th 2008 12:19AM]

slow typing ftl

[peekinde @ Jul 18th 2008 12:21AM]

also lags when you push teh home button!
2.0 slowww

[RyanTV @ Jul 18th 2008 12:53AM]

both me and my wife are experiencing the typing lag issue. It's terribly annoying. really hope a fix is released soon.

[digitallysick @ Jul 18th 2008 12:57AM]

same here, typing and contacts lag

[CraigJ @ Jul 18th 2008 1:25AM]

I had the typing issue on the v1 phone with the firmware I got on Friday morning. After doing a restore with the right firmware on Saturday the typing issue went away for me.

[Oskin @ Jul 18th 2008 2:30AM]

It's actually the first thing i read about any problem concerning the iPhone 3G. I've had 0 problems whatsoever with the new version. I live in Canada and I've been using the old (software unlocked) iPhone since December and last Friday I bought the iPhone 3G. The only problem I had with the phone is when I restored it with my backup from the old one using itunes. It worked flawlessly except that I was unable to access the 3g network after the restore. I restore it with the stock firmware and i just synced my contacts instead and it works great. No lag, safari seems to crash a lot less now, love the new search tool in the contacts (its fast as hell and I have like 200 contacts with 2 to 5 numbers each, address, email, pictures, etc) no lag there either. Interestingly, I have a mazda 3 with a dock connector and the new 3g iphone wont recharge when i plug it in, it says that the device doesnt support recharching but the music works great (my old phone used to recharche but it would get CRAZY hot so i guess its a good thing)! I used to have problems with the some keyboard lag in the sms app with my old phone (1.1.4) but again no lag at all with my new phone! What else... the weather app has a lot more canadian cities now so thats great too, the app store is great i've downloaded tons of app. I had a strange behavior with the installed app, i was at one of my friends and I was trying to show him an app and it wouldnt open, i then tried other app... same thing so I deleted one app, went to the app store and dowloaded it again. The strange thing here is I had to enter my login again which never happened for the past 2 days but I didnt realised at first. The app I just redownloaded worked and all the others too. Is it normal? Do we have to be connected to the app store so that our app works? Anyway havent got any problems with the app store since!

Still have problems with the credit card validation process in mobileme. My brother has .mac account and has been upgraded to mobileme, works great, but i cant upgrade it to the family edition (i want the push email thing you see, works great on his phone). Anyway i can wait a couple of weeks or so!

Hope you guys get an update soon if you have problems with 2.0!

[Alan @ Jul 18th 2008 12:22AM]

My iPhone experience should hopefully start tomorrow if they have some in stock....

[Trent @ Jul 18th 2008 7:06AM]

Thank god my Verizon contract is not up until Dec. Hopefully Apple will have fixed the too many issues being reported in this thread. Especially the "my iPhone is at the 20% warning by afternoon" so many Applelets are complaining about. I do have much time to investigate other phones as well. Hell, my first Gen Q works better those most people's 3G iPhone. Also, I do not understand that when it comes to phone features, why is Apple still in the dark ages???

[Bryan Garcia @ Jul 18th 2008 12:22AM]

I have been experiencing painful lag times when using SMS, force quit on the internet, poor 3G reception... I'm pretty bummed having waited outside of the Seattle AT&T store just to be disappointed... Other than that, I love the phone!

[Oskin @ Jul 18th 2008 2:43AM]

A lot of people seems to have problems with the 3G reception! I live in Canada near Montreal and the 3G reception is always great (same for my brother and 2 of my friends) At least Rogers got something right ;) Although it can take a couple of seconds to kick in sometimes!

[(01) @ Jul 18th 2008 7:02PM]

Hey Bryan, I was there as well...Mine has actually been working great, some app crashes, but nothing like other problems people are having.

[Anthony @ Jul 18th 2008 12:23AM]

I noticed when an app is downloading or installing it cripples the rest of the phone. Its fine once its finished but it can be annoying to wait for each app when browsing the store and trying out free apps.

Other than that some apps seem to freeze up every so often and even holding down the button doesn't do much. Resetting does.

Text messages seemed to be less responsive too but I think I found the problem there was I had a few conversations with people not in my contacts list and I think the phone continuously checks to match the number with a name.

Anyway other than that everything has been good on my 8Gb Edge phone, I am really struggling to find a reason to upgrade to the 3G phone. I'll probably bite when/if a GPS turn by turn app comes out.

[heathsnow @ Jul 18th 2008 1:20PM]

Agreed. The software seems like a good enough upgrade for me. Turn by turn would certainly sway my though.

[loosely_coupled @ Jul 18th 2008 6:07PM]

Really? I haven't heard that one before. Mine is just fine when the new app is downloading/installing, and I can even have more than one installing at a time.

This isn't necessarily for you, but I just wanted to remind everyone:

*ATTENTION* IF YOU DOWNLOADED THE PRE-RELEASE/UNOFFICIAL 2.0 FIRMWARE, YOU NEED TO RESTORE YOUR iPHONE! The unofficial 2.0 firmware ( "1,2" in its name instead of "1,1") was never meant to be used on a production iPhone. It is a DEBUG BUILD and therefore makes your iPhone/iPod Touch incredibly slow and laggy as the debug/tracing code is running every time you do anything!.

[Anthony @ Jul 19th 2008 12:14PM]

FYI: I did use the official release.

[Bruce Poon @ Jul 18th 2008 12:24AM]

The applications that come with iPhone had been behaving relatively well. Downloaded application (by third party) had been crashing here and there. Not sure if it's OS related or poor written app. The OS had also been spontaneously rebooting once a day or so. O well. Being an seasoned early adopter, I'm perfectly okay with this. As long as they release the first patch in the next month or so.

[Oskin @ Jul 18th 2008 2:39AM]

Totally agree with you! When they just release a major update so small problems are acceptable if they take care of them in a month or so! Though I have no problem with 2.0 nor the 3g iPhone!

[SuperSexyErik @ Jul 18th 2008 12:24AM]

I only have an iPod touch for now, but 2.0 is amazing. I don't even use a computer anymore :)

The apps are great. Few bugs at first but they're all worked out. I really am impressed at apple's ability to great this great mobile platform.

[Decoy @ Jul 18th 2008 12:24AM]

I can't wait for next weeks topics:

The iPhone - 3 Weeks Later
How Would you Change The iPhone 3G?
Still not got iPhone 3G
iPhone 3G v iPhone 3G: fight
The iPhone - 4 weeks later
Rumours of iPhone 3 surface

[Decoy @ Jul 18th 2008 12:26AM]

I'm set up for disaster, uhoh.

[Joshua.JWilliams @ Jul 18th 2008 12:36AM]

haha, soooo true. How many iPhone 3G articles are really necessary here? This device isn't all that much different from the original, just faster speeds. 'Tis all.

I can totally see "iPhone 3G V. iPhone 3G .... fight!" --- *yawn*

[art @ Jul 18th 2008 12:39AM]

Or what about

iPhone 3G vs. Nokia N95 8GB North American....

Last year, I picked up the Nokia N95 (Original non US 3G version) because I couldn't wait for the iPhone. I then eventually got the iPhone.

I then bought a new Nokia N95 8GB with North American 3G and (call me stupid) the iPhone 3G 8GB (about a month in between).

While I really like both phones, I like that out of the box I can plug in my Nokia N95 8GB 3G to my Windows PC and tether with my 900kbps download speed.

I like both machines, but the N95 just ends up in my pocket more frequently (also probably because it has the phone number that everyone knows vs NEW iPhone with NEW phone number).

Anyway - I've only had the choppiness of the typing. But I haven't added any 3rd Party apps and I get consistent 3G coverage. Hope it all works out soon.

[Rand @ Jul 18th 2008 12:40AM]

You forgot.....

Even though we are the same people who complained when Apple didn't allow 3rd party apps on the 1st iPhone, we're not hypocrites when we complain when Apple's fears of instability come to pass.

[Dante @ Jul 18th 2008 2:10AM]

@Joshua.JWilliams

"I can totally see "iPhone 3G V. iPhone 3G .... fight!" --- *yawn*"

(at Engadget HQ): "Hey, wait a second...

Ah, what the hell, let's try it anyways."

[Rich @ Jul 18th 2008 2:48AM]

I think you're right, Decoy. Engadget do seem to be flogging a dead horse now.

[theCardinal @ Jul 18th 2008 7:31AM]

As long as people keep clicking and commenting on them, they'll keep writing them.

[Mladen @ Jul 18th 2008 12:26AM]

SMS keyboard is laggy at times and requires me to turn off the phone to solve the problem. Also Mobileme syncing on the PC has troubles at times and apparently the mobileme service is "under maintenance" alot which is F'ing up the syncing.

[Dante @ Jul 18th 2008 12:25AM]

Compared to all the stuff I've been reading about issues, I've had a comparatively easy time with it. (Granted, I've only dealt with the 2.0 update on my first-gen iPhone and I'm not a MobileMe member.)

Probably the only major issue I've had with 2.0 is the keyboard lag, but it only occurs occasionally. For me, the "official" 2.0 upgrade fixed the serious contact-scrolling lag I was seeing in the "leaked" version.

I'm seriously considering upgrading to iPhone 3G soon, provided my local Apple Store has them in stock, so I guess I'll just have to see if I have more hardware than software problems.

[Mars @ Jul 18th 2008 12:26AM]

Tons and tons of application crashes, the pity that I needed the copy and paste function TWICE but is not supported, the extremely painful lag when typing in Japanese font with the dictionary, and less than stellar battery life are really bothersome, but I still enjoy using the iPhone. It works very well as a phone for me... I just really want a stability update.

[Luis @ Jul 18th 2008 12:27AM]

I had a problem with MobileMe syncing. I wrote to them but by the time the answered back I had already figured it out. Who knew that just by my having the first two letters of my email account it would cause MM not to sync to my phone. I thought it was weird considering that when my account was set up it contained the first two letters in cap. Aside from MM my phone is sluggish and oddly the OS on my old iPhone is faster. Less sluggish.

[Tyler Ransom @ Jul 18th 2008 12:28AM]

I experience almost ALL of these symptoms. Never really bothered me enough to regret buying the iPhone.... Simply because they will all be fixed, besides ATT's reception. Which will always be terrible.

[sleeper42 @ Jul 18th 2008 12:29AM]

I found out today that my iPhone 3G shipped with firmware 2.0 (build 5A345). I was having all kinds of quirky problems.. apparently build 5A347 is the latest. I updated it tonight, and so far it's behaving much better.

I noticed after my restore that Twitteriffic was not reinstalled... I wonder if that was causing my troubles..

[gbukgb @ Jul 18th 2008 5:02PM]

I did the restore too. I'm running the 5A347 build but I still get the lags when typing and it very annoying.