Today on the forums we have a few good topics we would encourage you to check out.
First up, is Apple giving us the run around regarding 3G signal strength in firmware 2.1?
Next up we have yet another thread that revolves around which future gadget or device can compete well with the iPhone 3G? We are seeing more and more devices emerge out of the woodwork every day. The latest one being the HTC Touch HD. That looks to be a impressive device to say the least. Competition is a good thing. Remember that.
Then we have a thread started by forum member cjvitek who wants to know how you surf the internet on your iPhone?
Lastly I would like to remind everyone about our Lightning Reviews, keep reviewing all the apps that are released on the App Store for your chance to win a coupon for the TiPb Store! Check them out and post your own!.
So join us in our growing community!
See you on the forums!
In the latest firmware, 2.1, Apple implemented a nice safety feature: the ability to have your iPhone erased if the wrong pass code is entered 10 times. It is a great feature if your phone is stolen or lost and you have vital information that should not be seen by anyone else.
I received the above picture from forum member cgov this morning. Seems as though he only gets 5 tries to unlock his phone before it gets erased compared to 10, which is supposed to be the standard.
Anyone else seeing that?
(Thanks for the tip cgov!)
iTunes 8 is here and 95% of y’all are definitely going to want to get your upgrade on. A few of you might not until the pwnage situation clears up. A few more might want to avoid that Blue Screen of Death thing on Vista, although the good news there is we now have a decent fix (check that link).
Ok, so now what are we getting with iTunes 8? Follow us after the break!
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iPhone 2.1 (build 5F136) is an incremental point update to the much larger and more encompassing iPhone 2.0 software release we reviewed back in early July. Light on new functionality, it focuses instead on bug fixes, which given the many problems that accompanied the massive 2.0 rollout, is a Very Good Thing.
Like 2.0, this update is also available for the iPod Touch, but unlike its predecessor, the 2.1 update is FREE (if you already have 2.0 — if you have 1.x, you’ll still have to pony up the $10 premium.)
So, 4 betas, dropped features, somethings new, somethings fixed — is iPhone 2.x Apple’s Vista? Or is it finally the next generation firmware we’ve all been waiting for? Find out, after the break!
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How is your battery life doing after upgrading to firmware 2.1? Hopefully better than mine!
I thought everything was going great after I updated Friday morning. Well I had a full charge late in the afternoon and left for work. A half hour later I noticed my iPhone was a bit warm without even using it. I Looked at my battery life and I was at 50% or so! Safe to say the phone was dead not long after.
So after a full night on the charger last night I thought everything should be good today. Well I was wrong. 2 hours of standby and a 5 minute phone call later, and my iPhone looked like the above picture. Actually that is exactly how it looked! What has really got me stumped is that I checked the usage meter and it said I used 1 hour and 56 minutes! A 5 minute phone call turned into that somehow? The time since last full charge was at 2 hours, which was correct.
I did a full restore without using a back up file after this, charged my phone and while the battery did seem to last longer, the battery meter is way off still. The “force quit” did not work, nor did any soft resets.
There is a thread over at Macrumors and Apple Discussions showing others are having this exact same issue, so that leads me to believe that my iPhone is not the issue but rather a issue with the 2.1 firmware in combination with something else? MobileMe possibly?
Turning off Push… my usage meter goes back to normal. Now I’m turning push on for mail only. We’ll see if it messes it up again.
If anyone has had issues like this please chime in.
UPDATE: I am happy to report that ever since I shut off push for contacts and calendars my iPhone is now working like it should. Just woke up and checked the phone, I almost have a full charge and it says I have used 1 hour and 16 minutes and time since last full charge is 10 hours. Which is correct. So it is a issue with mobileme push for sure. Whether it is getting stuck or whatever, if you are having battery issues and use mobileme or exchange try turning off push completely. Then, if it is the issue, slowly turn back on the email push feature and test it out. Then contacts and calendars…
One of the new features in the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.1 firmware is the ability to create Genius Playlists on the fly, and right on the device. iTunes 8 introduced the concept of Genius Playlists, which like Pandora and Last.fm, use algorithms based on audio profiling, metadata matching, and (anonymously acquired) end user tastes, crunched in the Apple cloud. Basically, they take a song you like, what you typically like with it (what playlists you include it on), what others who like it also like (what playlists they include it on), and what music mathematically (tempo, tone, etc.) fits in with it. Then they try to predict other songs you might also like — in this case already on your iPhone — and whip you up a near-instant playlist on-demand.
How good is it? That depends entirely on how much music you have on your iPhone (the pool from which it can draw), how closely the metadata matches what’s in iTunes (or it won’t recognize your music — try tweaking the fields if you have trouble), and how many other users have contributed their data to the cloud (because the engine will supposedly get better and better the more information it’s fed).
Okay, so enough about what Genius Playlists are, how do we get them working on our iPhone? Full instructions after the jump!
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With the Apple’s release today of the iPhone 2.1 firmware update, that’s the exact question many people will be asking. Hey, we at TiPb asked it ourselves — for all of about 0.1 seconds before diving headlong into iTunes, for the good of our readers, of course.
So what’s new in iPhone 2.1, is it compelling enough for you to update, and who should avoid it at all costs?
Answers after the jump!
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Today is a special day for all of us, so why not have a special edition of Today on the Forums?! It’s pretty much a no brainer… firmware 2.1! It’s finally here and the forums are buzzing!
Have the changes that Apple made improved your iPhone? Let us know how the 2.1 firmware is working for you so far!
Be sure to check out another great thread, strictly for undocumented features of the 2.1 firmware!
So get on the forums and start mixing it up with our growing community! As always, registration is free and simple. Heck, we like the back and forth so much we’re going to turn off comments on this post so you can head over and get your chat on properly.
See you in the forums!
Update: Chad let’s us know that Apple already has an iPhone 2.1 info page up on their website!
Boom! iPhone firmware 2.1 (5F136) weighing in at 237.8MB is now live and available via iTunes. We’re downloading now. Will it fix 3G? App crash? Security holes? And will any tasty new features (or even hints of new features?) be hidden inside? Apple says:
iPhone version 2.1 contains many bug fixes and improvements, including the following:
- decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
- significantly improved 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 if you have lots of 3rd 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
If you’re downloading as well, please let us know what, if any, issues you encounter, and what delights you find therein!
(Thanks to Tim, justapps, Garret, and everyone else for sending this in!)
Confession: My iPhone 3G/2.x experience has been relatively painless so far. No dropped calls, almost no 3G issues, very few App crashes, no eternal syncs, etc. While Steve Jobs reportedly said I’m in the norm, along with 98% of other iPhone users, you really wouldn’t know that from the intertubes. They’re on fire with dissatisfied users, and reader Anon, commenting on a post, points us to a thread on Apple’s discussion boards that indicates the dissatisfaction may not be ending any time soon.
The latest problem is with the 2.1 firmware — technically the 2.1.1 firmware already shipping, apparently, on the new second generation iPod Touch — and WiFi. Specifically, non-Apple Airport WiFi access points and the WPA security protocol (which should be what everyone is using now, right?)
While some might think this is no big deal, considering the older WEP protocol remains an option, TiPb would remind you that system can be broken in less than a minute these days, rendering it little better than no security at all.
For the record, however, I helped upgrade a 1st gen iPod Touch to 2.1 on Wednesday, and it connected to with no problems whatsoever to a Linksys WiFi router, so this might be one of the increasingly common, more complicated and multi-factor errors Apple’s been encountering (like Vista BSODs with iTunes 8…)
On the iPhone side, does this mean we’ll be getting 2.1.1 tomorrow as well? And will face similar problems? Or is Apple even now rushing an emergency rebuild of 2.1.1 or even 2.1.2 to finally — finally — give the 2%ers some stability?
