Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds Now that 2.1's out, your iPhone 3G is finally perfect -- right? Well, that all depends on your definition of "perfect," but odds are you still have a niggle or two poking out from behind that heaping pile of bugs and security flaws that were smoothed over with Cupertino's putty knife in last week's update. Here's a quick look at what we're hearing so far:

Excluding those of you who don't know where you are, our poll on claimed reception improvements in 2.1 suggests that the majority of iPhone 3G owners (by a slim margin) are seeing no improvement or -- gasp! -- a degradation in signal strength since 2.0.2.
Given that 2.1 patches up some bugs with third-party apps, it comes as no surprise that a few of 'em are apparently breaking with the new firmware (a disappointment, yes, but not a surprise). It sucks that Apple whacked the ball into developers' courts on this one, and we're hoping for the sake of users and devs alike that it's not going to take many sleepless nights of re-coding and debugging to get the affected apps back on the straight and narrow.
We're now hearing some reports of email buffoonery ranging from an inability to add new accounts to 2.1-equipped phones, to failures of existing accounts that had previously worked, to total Exchange breakage. Are you folks seeing anything there? Any corporate types freaking out that they've lost access to their beloved ActiveSync setups?

We actually found another bug in 2.1 ourselves: we can't find copy / paste anywhere. It's anyone's guess how that one slipped by the testers.[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Software Update, iPhoneAs announced on Tuesday, the iPhone 2.1 firmware is out now, downloadable via iTunes.According to Apple's website, updates include:

Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
Significantly better 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 for users with lots of third 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 (in case you missed the beep the 1st time)
Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
Genius playlist creation

To get the update, connect your iPhone to your computer, load up iTunes 8 and click "Check for Update."Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video You made it. Three full battery charges and three full days of buggy 2.0.2 firmware later and the 2.1 software is now available for download. Remember, this "big update" comes with Steve's personal promise of "fewer call drops... significantly improved battery life for most customers... fixed a lot of bugs where if you have a lot of apps on the phone you're not going to get some of the crashes we've seen... backing up to iTunes is dramatically faster." We'll see.P.S. Not that we're expecting any, but if you spot copy and paste or any other unannounced features be sure to let us know.Update: We're updating right now and we'll let you know if we see anything amazing. Keep us posted in the comments too -- how is it going for you?Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments