Roll on July 2010 – Ditch that iPhone
A few weeks back, I updated the iPhone software to version 3.1, a minor release apparently, and since then I`ve had little but random trouble with the beast.
It all started with the update, which failed, resulting in a bricked phone, and 4 attempts at a restore until the device came back to life. I applied the restore, and hoped all would be back to pre-3.1, but alas no. I`d lost all my apps, some settings, and was faced with the boring task of setting it all back up. I had to dig through e-mails from Apple listing everything I`d downloaded, manually download one-by-one all the apps, and re-set calendar syncing. I`d re-installed the laptop at this point, so the downloads weren`t just there to drag across. In the app store, some apps I had paid money for no longer existed. I contacted Apple as it became apparent that this was a little bit odd, and got nowhere apart from “that app is no longer available”. Thankfully I found an old copy of the download on a backup drive, and I`m very glad the app cost a quid and not ten pounds. Bad show, Apple.
The issue I`m now having is that every once in a while, when the phone is in standby mode, it just won`t wake up. It requires a full reboot, and as I`ve said before, this takes a pretty long time. With no progress meter. The longer I have the phone, the more shoddy the software seems.
It seems a lot of people have had similar problems, with the freezing, particularly on the iPhone 3G: http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/16/iphone-31-bugs-random-freeze-shut/
so roll on 2010 when my contract with O2 is up. I`d rather have a featureless but sturdy as a brick old school Nokia than a flashy nice but flakey as dandruff device.