Mo’ Apps, Mo’ Problems. Whose iPhone 2.0 migration has gone smoothly?
Not mine, I’ll tell you that much.
While I love the iPhone, and the Apps, I do not love the “rickety” feeling my gen 1 iPhone has now, as if I must handle it with kid gloves or risk crashing it. Not that it matters, kid gloves or not, it crashes. And don’t get me started on those hour-long syncs…
Mo’ Apps, Mo’ Problems
At first the migration seemed to go well. I upgraded my firmware Friday morning, downloaded/bought a few apps, played some games – everything was going swell. Then sporadically, once in a while using an app, or surfing the web, the iPhone would either quit that application, kicking me back to the home screen, or reboot entirely. This only happened maybe twice on Friday, 3 or 4 times on Saturday, but by Sunday I had about 6 such scenarios, leading up to a real scare Sunday night. That was when I had my first “unrecoverable” crash.
Actually, I was able to recover, but it wasn’t easy. What happened was around 11:30 PM (these things always seem to happen when you should be sleeping) I was rearranging my application icons (something I find more fun than using the apps themselves, at times) when the screen froze. Then the iPhone rebooted, and I was presented with the familiar “Apple logo” boot screen. Only this time, it did not boot past that. After a minute or two, I did a reset – same thing, stuck at the Apple screen. After about 12 of those, I tried hooking up to iTunes. The Apple Logo screen stayed up, and iTunes did not recognize it. When I unplugged it from the computer, my iPhone briefly showed up in iTunes for about half a second, as if it had been there all along. So I did a restore (connected to iTunes, and held down the Power and Home buttons for a long time until the “Connect to iTunes” graphic appeared).
Now, the one thing that I doubt anyone will argue with is that sync times have DRAMATICALLY increased with version 2.0 of the software. My iPhone goes through a lengthy “Backing up” process each sync, which usually takes anywhere from 15 minutes to as long as an hour. USB 2 is slow, but it ain’t THAT slow, especially since it is only moving about 600 MB, so I’m not sure what the problem is. Apple’s discussion boards have dozens of threads with hundreds of posts describing similar issues, and no one has discovered a universal cause or solution. Some say every time you buy an app it does this, some say every time you rearrange an icon it does this, some say just having a certain game that keeps track of scores (even if you have not played it between syncs) will cause it. While some have suggested that resetting the sync cache using iSync has cut down their backup time, others (including myself) have not found this to be the case. To date, the most common piece of advice you’ll read is that if you are in a hurry you CAN click the “x” next to the “Backing Up” message in iTunes, and your iPhone will sync as normal, so that’s what I did during this latest restore. (And that was a mistake, but we’ll get to that later.)
Big Crash 2
Big Crash 1 wasn’t so bad, because I was home, and my home machine has all my mail, media, and apps, so the restore (while extremely slow) wasn’t a big deal. However, Big Crash 2 happened today at work, around 11:30 AM. I experienced the exact same symptoms, and no matter what I tried, I could not get the iPhone to come back from the Apple Logo screen. I didn’t want to restore my iPhone on the work machine since that meant losing everything on it, but I also didn’t want to be without a Phone the whole day.
I eventually just gave up and left the Phone plugged into my work Mac Pro, and went about my day. Every 20 minutes or so the iPhone would vibrate, although the screen would not change. Then suddenly, after about an hour and a half just sitting there connected to iTunes, I heard the familiar “Chirp”, then the standard “Charging” screen came up, and finally iPhone showed up in iTunes. Sweet!
Big Crash 3
Well, it was certainly sweet for the 2 hours it kept working, but around 4:30 or so Big Crash 3 happened, and this time leaving it plugged in did not do the trick, so I drove home without a working phone and did a restore from here.
Of course, if that restore worked smoothly, it would have been too easy, so the restore went horribly wrong. Remember how during the first Big Crash I decided to quit out of that 40-minute Backing Up procedure? Well, here’s something you should be aware of if you think you have outsmarted iTunes by bypassing the backups. When I went to restore, I was told it could not complete my request because there was a corrupt backup image. Basically, what I believe that means is, iTunes does not save your old backup while creating a new one, so if you cancel out of a backup, iTunes has already deleted your current good one. So beware.
So anyway, I did a REAL restore, from scratch, and now I have my home screens arranged how I like them, yet I am afraid to do anything other than use the iPod feature at the moment. I certainly don’t want to risk another crash at work where it will mean 8 hours of downtime.
So how soon can we expect to see v2.0.1?
So, tell me, how is the 2.0 software working for you guys? While you may not have had quite the number of severe crashes as I have, how would you rate the overall stability of it compared to v1.1.4? Let me know in the comments if it’s just me.
I’ve had lots hard resets, and apps crashing alot. Weird problems. I am thinking of switching to the Nokia N95
I have a old and a new iPhone. I must say that my old iPhone seems to be more sluggish at times that my newer 3G iphone. I too have had the applications quit on my me on both phones constantly; sending me back to my home screen. The 3G actually reset itself twice so far.
God I hope Apple figures this out quickly, Its a shame. I have a sour taste in my mouth. I expect more out of Apple at this point when it comes to the iPhone and DotMac/MobileMe. They have the money and the R&D to prevent this from happening.
Other than not being able to use Exchange with my work email OWA. i.e. webmail.mycompany.com using the same setting that work great in Entourage.
I have yet to have any issues. Although, I do agree with you on the load times with syncing..good gravy that takes forever now.
i did not encounter that severe crashes like you did, but three times I had my iPhone 3G in a state where every started app failed at coming over the starting screen. in my case, just the apps crashed, not the whole phone, but only rebooting the whole phone solved that problem. I just updated to the ‘new’ firmware 2.0 (that one with a seven at the end instead of the one with a five) and hope now that this problem will no longer occur. but who knows. I will see.
I just got the 3g on Saturday and the phone has probably crashed about 8-10 times since then. They’re not major crashes, it just turns off then turns back on, VERY annoying since it takes at least a minute to come back. It seems to happen mostly when I try to open free apps. It has happened several times while attempting to log into AIM.
The stupid syncing is definitely ridiculous too. Why does it need to back up EVERY time you plug it in? There should be a setting for once a week or something like that.
Also I have a problem with my contacts. If I add a contact through my phone it gets deleted when I sync it with itunes and as far as I can tell I don’t have any box checked telling it to do so. Anyone have any idea how to fix this?
i haven’t had the same Big Crash problems, but have had many minor crashes among other problems. Apps won’t open, apps will try to open and then crash, keyboard will freeze while trying to type a text message, but most annoying of all, phone will freeze requiring a reboot. I’m considering going back to 1.1.4. Anybody else?
I too am noticing a very strange feeling with my 2.0 experience. I upgraded my 8gb touch friday morning then after a while apps started freezing, safari froze requiring a reboot, and the whole OS has a bit of a laggy feel about it. Double clicking home seems like it takes longer to appear and then react as well as loading the album artwork in the background when doing so. And of course I miss my Installer.app!!. Open petition for 2.0.1!!!
Strange behaviour during activation, looking like a Big Crash in progress, but everything fine at the end. Total update and activation time : about 15 minutes, because I did it the day after the launch 😉
15 apps loaded, as I’m writing this. 3 apps deleted yesterday, because of crashes (all of them are return-to-home crashes).
No Big Crash since the activation of the 2.0 firmware; a few return-to-home (1 from the Bloomberg app and a 1 from Safari loading a heavy page).
Cheers from Paris, France
I am having so many little problems at this point between, Mob Me, Iweb, I Phone it’s hard just which to say is worse. While I did not have near the extent of Iphone issues as the above story, I have seen remnants of it. I have had one un explained reboot, and screen sticking when sweeping a set of app icons from one screen into the next. Of course all of these issues started around Thursday evening, when I went to sync my Iphone.
Since the 2.0 software update, things simply have not been the same. I love the new apps, and I like my Original Iphone, I have no need to upgrade yet. But the problems on Friday from the morning till afternoon were ridiculous. My phone was useless until 2:30 in the afternoon, which for me, was most of the work day.
And it appears that these problems are still going on, and Apple calls customer aggravation nationwide/worldwide, a success??
Does’nt this fly in the face of what they are about?
The only real problem I’ve had with my first gen 8GB has been with Scrabble. It was crashing on starting the app. I just deleted the app from the iPhone, then re-sync’d to reinstall it, and then no probs. That being said, I’ve probably just jinxed myself and will start having problems.
I guess Im not really surprised that there are software errors on a new product, but It would be nice if there were a patch by the time I get my Iphone sometime late next month.
Does anyone know if the stability issues are better or worse with an hacked Iphone ? (im guessing they are worse) maybe a hacked version will let you disable/enable features to better find what is causing the crashes?
My 2 cents. Greetings from Denmark
I’ve had a BIG CRASH every time I’ve tried to rearrange my icons. Maybe 12 times already. It takes about two hours to finally get the phone back to the way I want t. I have 25 apps installed but that’s why I bought the 16gb phone. At this point I gave up trying to rearrange my icons and right click on the phone to manually backup everyday to make sure the changes I do make will stick in a backup so I don’t have to configure the phone every time out. It seems that moving the icons around corrupts some files. Apps that worked great minutes before no either won’t load or brick the phone. It seems 2.0 does not have a graceful way of handling corrupt files it encounters.
I LOVE the new software and the Apps but I too have had random re-boots, flakey reactions and unresponsive apps……
2.0.1 where are you???
my 1st gen crashed during inital 2.0 setup, couldn’t get to sever and therefore couldn’t finish the install for a few hours, though the phone still worked. i repeatedly hit restore until it finally went through.
since then, no probs with 2.0 at all, other than netnewswire which crashes every time, i guess for too many feeds. have a bunch of apps, but no mobileme or anything.
it was giving me an error every time i synced, saying there was a problem when the phone was updated and did i want to erase the backup, restore, or cancel, but last nite i erased the backup and now it appears to be smooth sailing.
also iPint is the best.
My experience has not been as bad as yours, but I have had some problems. I’ve had a few crashes, once while I was on the phone. I had to call back from a landline while the phone rebooted. Now that’s embarrassing. The backup issue can be a major pain. Note that you can cancel a backup by hitting the little “x” in the iTunes display. The short backup is a backup of settings. The (very very) long backup is a backup of the entire contents of the iPhone. When a non-synced app saves data my iPhone usually does the long backup. It sometimes performs the long backup after a crash. Apple needs to make backups a user-selectable option.
On a positive note, I must be one of the lucky ones. My wife and I downloaded the 2.0 upgrade and installed it on both of our original iPhones on Thursday. Neither one of us has experienced any problems.She found the link on Cnet. Haven’t had any crashes or slow downs or problems with apps. Although I have had to charge my battery more often but that is probably due to the fact that I can’t quit messing with it now.
I had problems syncing MobileMe with iCal and Address Book, but that was easily solved by making some changes in the system pref. from this site http://appleslut.com/software/how-to-sync-mobileme-address-book-ical
Make sure you separate iPhone behavior from 3rd party app behavior. A misbehaving app can crash itself, and can probably crash the OS, too. If you’re having trouble, remove all of the 3rd party apps and see if your iPhone works as it should. Then start adding apps back on, one at a time. When you encounter an app that crashes (itself or the OS), take that app off and move on.
I have a 1st gen iPhone and have had not a single problem with the migration over to 2.0. I was having crashing issues before I installed 2,0 (about the week before), but after installing likes for me have been very stable.
The only issue was getting itunes to see the update, which took a little while with tall the server traffic.
My question is this, did you install the leaked version prior to the official release via iTunes?
It went very smoothly for me. Activation in the AT&T store went smoothly. The only app i have had crash is AIM.
I have a 1st gen iTouch that I jailbroke. When I updated to firmware 2.0 the only problem i had was my e-mail. It would not launch and I could not delete the accounts I had in there. After resetting to default and treating it like a new Ipod everything works great. The only thing I lost was my Notes (that i e-mailed) and my e-mail settings.
Going on 14 hours and no crashes.
I woke up Friday morning with the goal of updating my 16 GB first gen iPhone to 2.0. The update was not there yet and I spent the whole day of the launch seeing how everybody was made miserable by rampant activation problems. Was pretty psyched that I missed out on all the problems. I went home for the day and finally got around to updating the iPhone around 8 PM. The update went smoothly on my Mac Mini… and I just let it do its thing… with no interruptions.
Have not had a single problem with my phone after the update. No rebooting, no hanging, nothing. I have a bunch of apps installed (including Ms. Pac Man… Hey, Remember the 80’s?) The only thing I noticed is that I had a bunch of visual voice mails that I never got notified of… flooding down to the phone. (Something similar happed to my friend who has a 16 GB Touch… About 150 e-mail messages he never got came flooding down after he updated to 2.0. Am happy that this flakey issue is resolved with 2.0)
Hope I have not jinxed myself by saying all is well. LOL.
I’ve had no crashes with my V1 phone on 2.0. It does seem a bit slower, especially the starting the camera app. Battery life is shorter for sure. I haven’t been using it more than usual and the battery charge is very low at the end of the day vs a good two days before. I think it’s the push email. I’ll try switching it off for a couple of days to see if that makes a difference. Yes, longer sync times too. But not an hour.
The worst part about the new update is how slow the phone, and sms can be sometimes to respond. I can type a whole sentence sometimes in sms before the keyboard catches up to me. I hope 2.01 comes out soon and fixes these minor issues that can be so annoying.
I have found that the newest 2.0 update makes my old phone just a little slower to use. My biggest upset is that the photo app, which used to by almost long, is now forever to get ready. I turned off the gps geocash b.s. to make taking a photo faster and it still takes a while ( 10 seconds !!) lame lame lame. I loved using my phone for pics now it is a joke. Not to mention syncing to take way way too long. Plus make the phone able to delete all the photos at once!!! with out having to restore or corrupt the cameraroll file. Good thing i was so happy before…
I have found that the newest 2.0 update makes my old phone just a little slower to use. My biggest upset is that the photo app, which used to by almost long, is now forever to get ready. I turned off the gps geocash b.s. to make taking a photo faster and it still takes a while ( 10 seconds !!) lame lame lame. I loved using my phone for pics now it is a joke. Not to mention syncing to take way way too long. Plus make the phone able to delete all the photos at once!!! with out having to restore or corrupt the cameraroll file. Good thing i was so happy before…/ that i can play Aurora feint
i’ve had to do 2 restore’s so far…one because I installed the wrong leaked software on Thursday and the other because the Apple Texas Holdem Program crashed me back to the never-ending apple logo…current install is doing decent on hard resets…still getting a lot of home screen resets though…and for some reason my ‘camera’ and my ‘photos’ apps won’t open…battery gets HOT playing Enigmo…but we have to remember the iphone was not meant to be a gaming device…i’m clicking ‘x’ everytime i sync so I don’t have to wait for the hour long backups…2.0 seems to me to be very unstable…i hope 2.0.1 is the answer!
My only complain is pages reload more aggressively. It used to be that if a page appeared complete as I switched windows, it would just open. Now they always seem to reload (which is a pain over EDGE).
My experience is even worse than your with my iPod Touch. I’ve been restoring it DAILY for the last 4 days, with TWO restores today!
Yesterday night it go stuck on the Apple logo screen and I left it connected to iTunes the WHOLE night… nothing happened… restored again…
I love Apple… but I am bored of these restores…
I have had the same exact problems as you bro, today alone did I have restore my first gen iPhone 2.0 TWICE!!
What I’m wondering is when the hell 2.0.1 will come out so I wont have to restore my iPhone for 4 hours daily…this sucks major balls.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how stable 2.0 has been. I expected much worse.
Sure, third-party apps crash on occasion, but no more than Safari crashed on me before 2.0. The AP news app tends to corrupt itself to the point that I have to delete it and reinstall it. Considering the limitations they had to work within, I think the third-party apps are pretty solid for first releases.
The OS has actually been a little more stable, which is amazing considering that third-party apps have been added into the equation.
While the slow downs are more frequent than before 2.0, they’re much shorter and the system recovers from them better.
Sync times…I don’t know. I’m usually not even in the room during a sync.
But maybe I’ve just been lucky. I haven’t had a “big crash” yet.
How soon can we expect 2.0.1? Well, just remember that if you want to see things get more stable, you want them to take their time.