Matthew Fitzsimmons

iPhone Problems (mostly) Fixed

UPDATE: As you can see, this article is really old. Most of these issues have been dealt with in some way or another, but there are probably new ones. Maybe I'll write another article someday after iOS 6 is out of beta.

Since I previously wrote an article about a number of issues I had with my iPhone, I figured I'd better go back through that list now that many of the issues have been fixed. Some of them still aren't fixed, but the most annoying ones are.

Since the 2.1 update (and iTunes 8), most of the annoying issues I had have been fixed. Lets look at them:

  • Reboots: I haven't had anymore issues with spontaneous reboots, or reboots that never finish prompting a restore.
  • iTunes Warnings: I had a problem before where iTunes deleted all my apps and app data off the phone before warning me that the computer was no longer authorized for the iTunes account. This time, I moved my iTunes library to a different computer and it warned me and gave me the option to authorize at the beginning of the sync, so I didn't lose anything. This was probably an iTunes update fix, not an iPhone fix.
  • App Updates: Finally, when I update an app directly on my phone, it puts it in the location that the old version was. No more constant rearranging of icons to get them back where they belong.
  • Backups: Backup speed has increased dramatically. It is no longer even a tiny bit of a problem.
  • More App Store Updates: The App Store no longer tells you there are no updates on one computer if you've already downloaded them on a different computer. This is very handy for a multi-iPhone, multi-computer family.

Of course there are still some issues that haven't been fixed, and there are also some new issues.

  • With the 2.1 update, SMS notifications will notify you multiple times if you don't respond the first time. I don't really like this feature all that much, but there is no way to turn it off without turning off notifications completely.
  • At some point in an iTunes update, the screen that shows available app updates was no longer included in the history for the App Store. This means that when looking at my list of available updates, I can't click on one to see what's changed and then click back. Once I click on an App, I have to go back through a couple of steps to get back to that screen.
  • The home screen still doesn't scale well for having 60+ apps.
  • SMS notification options are still severely limited.
  • There is still no multiple-delete for anything other than Mail.
  • There is still no way for game developers to offer an option for suppressing SMS notifications as far as I know.

Overall, the experience is drastically improved. The most annoying things have been fixed, but I wish they'd take care of some of the remaining quirks.

October 28, 2008