Thursday, July 24, 2008

The iPhone 2.0 Paper Cut Edition

With a little more than a week's experience on both the iPhone OS X 2.0 upgrade and the iPhone 3G hardware, it's time to list the paper cuts that are driving me up a wall. Herewith the list:
  1. Battery life sucks: From everything I see, the battery problem is more related to the 2.0 software than it is to 3G. This is based on the fact that numerous people have mentioned to me that their battery life has significantly decreased on their generation 1 phones. This is definitely true on the iPhone 3G. Could it be memory leaks, background applications, or simply poor power management? Apple help!
  2. Crashes, crashes, and more crashes: As with the initial software version 1.0, the 2.0 upgrade is buggy to say the least. I find that Safari once again crashes regularly (at least a couple of times per day). I have had the calendar function crash. Needless to say, most every downloaded application has crashed at one time or another. Obviously, there are significant instability issues that need addressing. This brings us to a related problem...
  3. Applications rendered unusable: It seems there is a corruption problem within the 2.0 software. For example, when I turned on the iPhone this morning, neither the Shazam nor the Remote application would launch. Instead, I received a message that the "Application Cannot Execute." Redownloading Shazam solved that application problem. Turning on and off the iPhone several times seems to have solved the Remote application problem. Generally, application stability and reliability are not where they should be.
  4. Slow-motion application execution: Whether the iPhone generation 1 or the iPhone 3G, there are annoying lag problems when launching applications. For example, it sometimes takes the calendar application up to 7 seconds to launch and paint the screen. It's not consistent. Usually, doing a hard-reboot (holding the on/off and home keys down for several seconds and then turning on the iPhone again) will improve performance, again leading me to think there is some sort of memory leak where programs eat up memory that should be cleared when they are exited or put in the background.
  5. Network switching lag: Apple has attempted to save battery life by switching off radios as appropriate. However, it would seem that this needs to be fine-tuned. For example, at home I am on a Wi-Fi network. With the phone on, if I turn it on with the home button and go to Safari, the phone will sometimes switch from Wi-Fi (the state it was in when last used) to 3G and then back to Wi-Fi. During this time, it seems Safari is doing handshake on Wi-Fi, then on 3G, and finally on Wi-Fi, causing annoying delays in accessing Internet information. It is also noticeable with the Mail application. In addition, the same situation will occur out in the field with the phone switching from 3G to EDGE, and then back to 3G, causing the same type of delay.
  6. GPS locking delay: I suspect this problem is related to the network switching delay previously noted. It appears that locating the current position--even out in the open can take minutes sometimes. My guess is that the software accesses the cell tower proximity database before turning on the GPS to get an exact location. Since the proximity database comes over the Internet, the network switching delay mentioned earlier contributes to the extended location delay.
That's it for now. I assume that the in progress update to 2.0 will fix some of these, but I am worried that some of the issues point to more fundamental OS operating constraints. Only time will tell. Did I miss any problems that others have noticed? If so, feel free to post them.

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