iPhone Software 2.1 available now

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 6:48am — Jonny Evans

Keeping its promise, Apple released iPhone Software 2.1 this morning, promising a range of bug fixes and much improved battery life.

The update is a 238MB download. To get it, connect your iPhone to your computer using iTunes 8 and follow the on-screen instructions

Let's find out what's inside - any improvements? Any new features?

We're updating as soon as we can, share what you learn in comments below...

Update: All appears to be as good as advertised - we have an official review and some of our user impressions:

the SMS alert repeat is not there. :s...fast as lightning though...

texting is fast, settings load faster, games run better, they finally made a update that did something!!!!

Wow, this made such a big difference for me. I get 4 bars now where I used to get 1/2 in 3G. It's not just displaying better strength because my connectivity speed is way yup.
My SMS IS FIXED!
Apps seem faster and none have yet crashed.
Apple may have finally fixed the iPhone.
I do agree, everything seems to work like warm butter but my guess is how do I activate Genius playlists creation? I have everything already set up on iTunes 8 and expected it to work as shown on the special event for the iPod touch.
I get the impression push messaging didn't just have bugs, it didn't work - thats why it was pushed.

(see what I did there, 'pushed?' god I'm hilarious)

The update includes:

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;
Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts;
Genius playlist creation;

We don't know just yet if the patch addresses a bug which impacted some users who saw their applications fail and their iPod library content become unavailable.

( Filed Under:

iPhone - iPod

)

Comments

SMS alerts

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 6:57am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

the SMS alert repeat is not there. :s

fast as lightning though...

yay

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 7:04am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

texting is fast, settings load faster, games run better, they finally made a update that did something!!!!

Wow

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 7:35am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

Wow, this made such a big difference for me. I get 4 bars now where I used to get 1/2 in 3G. It's not just displaying better strength because my connectivity speed is way yup.

My SMS IS FIXED!

Apps seem faster and non have yet crashed.

Apple may have finally fixed the iPhone.

I do agree, everything seems

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 7:38am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

I do agree, everything seems to work like warm butter but my guess is how do I activate Genius playlists creation? I have everything already set up on iTunes 8 and expected it to work as shown on the special event for the iPod touch.

I get the impression push

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 7:52am — Ben (not verified)

I get the impression push messaging didn't just have bugs, it didn't work - thats why it was pushed.

(see what I did there, 'pushed?' god I'm hilarious)

GREAT UPDATE! It finally

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 8:13am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

GREAT UPDATE! It finally works the way it's supposed to. Happy day in the land of iPhone.

Seems to be fast on my O2 Pay

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 8:15am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

Seems to be fast on my O2 Pay & Go iPhone. 3rd party Apps haven't crashed, Safari has withstood a lot of abuse and not crashed yet - something that was rare in 1.1.x, but worse in 2.0.x .

I did get an error 1602 when I first tried to update though - fortunately I was able to restore back to factory settings and re-sync it. , but I'm not fussed by that.

To activate Genius 9to5 Noob, play a song, then tap once to bring up the shuffle and repeat options - Genius is in the middle of these.

Genius doesn't work on mine -

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 9:59am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

Genius doesn't work on mine - no icon. Possibly because my tunes are all mp3 not aac from itunes.

update

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 8:47am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

updated 2G phone, better cell reception, better performance, so far so good.

Note: So you need to perform

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 8:49am — thethirdshoe (not verified)

Note: So you need to perform the update to 2.1 and then do another sync after that to get everything in place...

That is, to have the Genius symbol show up.
This is what some people have reported.

New color in iTunes Capacity

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 8:49am — w (not verified)

New color in iTunes Capacity bar: Green for Apps.

Contacts load way faster!

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 8:54am — w2 (not verified)

Contacts load way faster!

SMS Alert?

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 9:10am — Nick (not verified)

Does anyone know where to find the additional SMS alerts?

I also noticed that in the "Parental Control" section, you can disable the camera as well as everything that 2.0 let you disable.

SMS Alert

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 9:26am — RobP (not verified)

SMS second alert works!! After 5 minutes of receiving a text (iphone on silent) my iphone vibrated, 5 minutes after (still not read the message) my iphone vibrate. Dont know if this works on loud only seen it work on silent!

THANK GOD SOMEONE AT APPLE

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 9:33am — Ben (not verified)

THANK GOD SOMEONE AT APPLE HAS ALLOWED THE UK TO HAVE 12 HOUR ON THERE CLOCK, FINALLY. THANK-YOU.

(obviously I meant their* - I

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 9:37am — Ben (not verified)

(obviously I meant their* - I got far too excited getting that out there, sorry).

Genius works, when you hold

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 10:53am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

Genius works, when you hold the ipod in portrait mode, tap towards the top of the screen to show the audio scrubber, the Genius icon is right beneath

Drag and drop of podcasts is

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 11:04am — Perlt (not verified)

Drag and drop of podcasts is broken in 2.1

If I disable automatic sync of podcasts, the podcast folder just disappears, and although I can drag podcasts to the iPhone, they just don't transfer...

Pwnage?

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 11:07am — sunsurf (not verified)

For pwned first-gen iPhones... is there a solution yet?

Auto correction

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 2:26pm — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

Have not installed yet...

Pleeeaassee anyone tell me that you can switch of auto-correction....

Pleeaaseeeee !!!

1st Gen iPhone

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 4:01pm — Wigermo (not verified)

Updating (not restoring!!) from av pwned first-gen iPhone running 2.02 worked seamlessly for me, and most other people as far as I've heard. Unlock and activation remained; although no jailbreak (3:rd party apps).

Sooo much better.. omg.

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 6:10pm — Timmay (not verified)

Sooo much better.. omg.

No change in signal strength

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 6:11pm — AlphaBob (not verified)

No change in signal strength -99 dBm, but the number of bars shown on the screen went from 2 to 5 for that signal -- that's lame.

Applications no longer crash (or at least haven't so far). I have yet to have to shut the iPhone down to get something to work. So that is fantastic.

Contacts open in about half the time (2-3 seconds for 500 contacts).

I don't see any change to mail operation.

Faster typing

Fri, 09/12/2008 - 6:25pm — Ant (not verified)

One of the most annoying things I was suffering from was slow typing - not just when texting, but anywhere the keyboard could be used. Looks like 2.1 fixed it and pretty much all of everyone else's major complaints. Hopefully that'll put an end to all the hit pieces in the media just going after Apple because of their current popularity.