tech.gadgets.video.geekculture.gaming.kittens.
Fail of the Week: My New iPhone
This post will be brief — I haven’t had a lot of time to scan my RSS feeds in the past week, so I don’t know how much of a widespread issue this is. My (16GB, white) iPhone is a giant pain in my ass right now, and it’s just solidifying the idea in my mind that I should have waited to pick one up until the bugs were worked out.
The main problem I’m having is this weird keyboard lag. Whenever I go to type a new text message or email, the keyboard takes forever to register that I’m trying to use it. Usually around 30 seconds or more, which seems like an eternity when you’re trying to fire off a quick note to someone.
Then there’s the battery life. I knew it was going to be worse than my old iPhone, because the 3G sucks a lot of life out of it, but holy crap… I had to charge my phone three times a day when I was at E3. And if you’re using applications with any kind of frequency, good luck. The worst part was this morning: I didn’t plug it in before I went to bed, and it was probably at a 75% charge when I last checked it. This morning? About 20%. I have never seen a gadget leak battery that quickly when it wasn’t in use.
I’ve heard through the Twitter-vine that if you restored the new iPhone from a previously saved backup it ended up less stable, and showed some of the symptoms that I’ve mentioned. I’ve also heard that it’s just a problem with the 2.0 firmware being released a bit early. No kidding. I hope that the next update makes it so I can enjoy using my phone again.
This post wasn’t so brief after all. Share your experiences in the comments and let me know how it’s all been working out for you.
No related posts.
-
Sighhh… I thought the battery issues were blown out of proportion but after reading this I’m worried. I went into an AT&T store on Saturday and they were all sold out so I threw down money to get my iPhone when the next shipment comes in. Now I obviously can’t get a refund.
Let’s just hope 2.0.1 fixes this…
-
Here here. Exactly all the same issues. Makes me wish I could just revert to my iPnone 1.0 until it’s worked out. Will try a restore then just re-configure to see if that helps but I did experience a lot of the lag with 2.0 firmware on my old iPhone so I think it’s mainly buggy firmware. Again! Grrrr. And what’s up with the Camera asking me to use my location every single time I take a photo? Can you say preference? Or allow always? Something but it’s annoying in so many ways. Enuff ranting. Time for Batman!
-
Well being as this is my first iPhone, I’m probably much more excited about it. I have only experience the lagging keyboard problem once – but the battery leakage really is a bitch, and the 3G reception on this phone is so weak.
I do hope they tweak the firmware a little. But all in all I’m really enjoying the iPhone 3G. Loving the App Store, and sleak design of -everything- on the phone, and the touch-screen usage in so nice, coming from a Nokia N82.
-
I am very unhappy with the battery life. After 3 hours of being off the charger i’m down by 25% after moderate usage. My iPhone 1.0 would take 5 to 6 hours before experiencing the same loss of charge.
My phone crashes quite often too. It’s gone from being the most stable phone I’ve ever had to the most unstable. I really hope some of these issues can be worked out soon. However, I don’t see them improving battery life. I’m thinking of picking one of these up when it comes out for the 3g : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0010WRV6S
-b
-
#16 written by 6-3-2 3 years ago
I haven’t had any of those issues. In fact I haven’t had any issues at all; I was even given Smart Water by the Apple Store employees while I waited in line, which was an appreciated and clever touch. Maybe the metro Detroit area in an iPhone haven, it even stops hardware and software issues. Plus it has, from what I can tell, really fast 3G.
-
#17 written by fearcake 3 years ago
the keyboard thing is definately a 2.0 thing as my gen 1 iphone does it too occasionally. I have to hold down the home button until it resets the app I’m in and takes me back to the home screen then relaunch the app and it is fine. Only happened a few ttlimes so far but very frustrating. I have to say this has been the worst experience i’ve had with apple as of yet. I’m used to much better products from then. Hopefully the update will fix some oF the issues. Now the battery drain has to be the 3g or GPS cause my gen 1 hasn’t had that…except for when using apps. Have to say them not allowing background procceses was probably a good thing otherwise our batteries would last an hour if we were lucky.
-
#18 written by Christopher 3 years ago
According to Engadget, 2.0.1 may already be in the works. I’m experiencing the exact same thing as you, not sure if I mentioned that to you on Twitter or not. But yeah, keyboard lag, app lag, general shitty battery life. I’ve resorted to turning off wi-fi/3g/location services when not in use, and obviously I get great battery life then.
-
#20 written by Michael Narciso 3 years ago
I do not have the symptoms you have but everyone is complaining about the battery. The battery is actually much better than the last phone and any current 3G phone so we can’t really complain about it. I tend to just leave it on Edge and I feel like my phone lasts forever. I only use 3G for heavy browsing but for email and twitter edge works almost just as fast. My big complaint is they need a quick way to turn off 3G. Going through menus to get to it is annoying.
As far as your battery leak I believe what might have happened is you were using a program that constantly updates from the internet such as Twitterific.
I believe if you are in an app that uses the Internet and you just put it to sleep as in hitting the top button. The app is still running in the background. However, if you hit the home button (the big button at the bottom of the phone) it will completely quit the app.
Go ahead and try it, open up twitterific and put the phone to sleep by hitting the top button. You’ll notice when you come back to your phone the app is still running as soon as you unlock it.
While, I don’t have your symptoms of keyboard lag, I’ve had 4 restarts from trying to open apps so far.
-
I am not really having the keyboard problem you are, but I definitely agree about the battery. My wife (using a 16gb) is getting great battery life because her use is limited, but my 8gb is constantly running low. Between 3G, camera, and GPS … it is kinda the suck.
I also notice that after installing a few more apps in the past couple of days, my “Current Location” feature wasn’t work as intended … would just search and search and search. This morning I cleared off a couple of apps I wasn’t using and updated all of those Apps that had updates and my GPS is now working again.
Apple putting out a 2.1 update will hopefully resolve some of these issues.
-
#22 written by alan 3 years ago
Most of the issues are across the board with the 2.0 firmware, they need to release 2.1 and soon. You can turn 3G off in the prefs and drop down to EDGE if you want to save on battery life. though my new 16gb white hasn’t leaked power like that. The other day I wasn’t on it much and when I went to charge it for the night I could hardly see where the charge had gone down.
I had chalked up needing to charge it more to increased use with more useful apps and ones that required the screen be on all the time for use (games and aim, vs thing like the iPod or SMS)
-
#23 written by Brian Partridge 3 years ago
I totally agree. It doesn’t take quite 30 seconds for my keyboard to respond, but probably 4 or 5 seconds.
And I had issues with applications restarting my phone (we’re talking black screen, white Apple logo restart). Genius Bar suggested installing apps from iTunes instead of over the air. However, it was restarting when opening the App Store itself! Not exactly a 3rd-party app… I ended up restoring to a clean 2.0 and starting everything over.
Now I haven’t had restarting issues, but it does freeze for a couple of seconds (10+) here and there.
Totally agree about the battery. Biggest letdown, even with the issues I listed above. I carry two external Black & Decker batteries around, which provide a full charge to the iPhone. Normally I’m at around 50% by the time I get to work. Some of this I attribute to using the phone so much because it’s new and I want to use all of the new features / apps.
-
Same issue with the keyboard lag here – it’s usually only apparent when launching 3rd party apps. It’s like a 10-15 second delay before the app becomes responsive to any kind of interaction (typing, tapping, or otherwise)
Not sure if this is ‘loading’ or this is an actual hang in the OS, but I think I’ve seen it in Apple’s native phone apps too (SMS, contacts, maps).
I’m going to try a restore tonight and will try from fresh since I did restore a backup from my first iPhone to this one. We’ll see if that does the trick.
-
I’ve seen the keyboard lag problem twice in the last 7 days and both times it has been when doing SMS. Going back to the Home screen and then back to SMS cleared it right up for me. I haven’t seen this problem on any other app. The only other problem I’ve had is once it seemed to hang trying to send a tweet with a pic via AirMe but that could have been due to poor cell signal.
-
I had an original iPhone that I upgraded to 2.0 and I did see the keyboard lag issue once, but it went away after rebooting the phone. Battery life feels like it’s less on 2.0, but maybe it’s just the apps making me use it more?
During the upgrade to 2.0 the backup mysteriously disappeared, so I had no choice but to do a clean sync of all my music and contacts the first time. Maybe that ended up helping in the long run?
I also heard someone that the build of the 2.0 firmware that shipped on the new 3G was not as new as the build that went out to the old iPhones through iTunes. I don’t know how true this is. All I know is that (under Settings > General > About) I have 2.0 build 5A347 and I’ve only seen a small fraction of the problems most 3G owners have been having. Perhaps you could use iTunes to manually restore a 3G phone to 2.0 version 347 by way of the firmware update that everyone downloaded early?
-
I haven’t had the problems you are talking about. The battery life is not great, but I can get by on for a day of two, depending on how I use it. If I use it like a phone it last for about two days, but with amy app use I drain it in about a day and have to remember to recharge at night. Never had the keyboard issue though. Btw: typing this ok the iPhone, still enjoing it.
-
#35 written by Nicole Gustas 3 years ago
I thought about getting the new iPhone the day it launched, but decided to hold off (since I was moving three days later and want my new phone to be in my new area code). I wondered at the beginning of the week if I’d regret the decision, but between what you have to say and what others have said, I’m starting to think I’ll hold off until September, or maybe even Christmas.
-
As Michael pointed out – If you’re suffering from severe battery drain, try going to the home screen before switching off – Internet apps, such as twitterriffic will continue to run in the background and burn battery.
The BIGGEST drain, by far, is the maps application if you’ve switched on GPS. I left my iPhone on the maps app with GPS active and my battery lasted (from a full charge) about 4-5 hours.
Also, and I know that this may be slightly controversial – Switch off 3G unless you’re doing some heavy lifting. Your battery will thank you.
HTH
-
I have the original 4 gig from the first day of sale. The battery life has always been an issue. I haven’t noticed any difference with 2.0 or the use of Push for Exchange. However, I learned to set the fetch for Gmail to manual and it makes a big difference. Also turning off WIFI is a big help (wish there was a switch on the side for that).
Got the Mopie case/charger and love it. Hope it fits the 3G.
http://www.mophie.com/This one works well too but not as elegant
http://richardsolo.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=264Having none of the keyboard problems??
Good luck.
foundbypat.com -
-
#44 written by JasonV 3 years ago
Experiencing the same issues as everyone else. Keyboard lag and battery life. Turning off 3G and only using it when I want that extra kick does help.
Today I am going to test using the phone and not starting any app, keeping location off and 3G off. I am assuming my battery life will be much better. With only txt msgs and phone use, I should get a good full day. Obviously this is not a solution, but I figured it would be a good test.
-
-
so far, i haven’t really had any keyboard issues.. other than apps crashing or hanging up, everything has been running fairly smoothly. battery-wise – if i charge mine overnight, by around 3pm it needs to be hooked back up.
when it’s hooked up, itunes likes to do a complete backup of the phone every time.. kind of annoying.
-
#47 written by Mike Myers 3 years ago
The battery woes are on more than just the new 3G iphone. I have the original phone with 2.0 installed and since I installed the battery life is horrible. I have to charge it in the middle of the day now. I used to be able to use it all day and still more than half of batter when I went to bed.
It is freezing up alot more now. Not just on keyboard for me. It pauses alot. Seems a reboot fixes the problem for a little while.
-
#48 written by Huggy.B 3 years ago
My co-worker bought a Treo 3G before the iPhone 3G came out and he said the same thing about battery drainage. He couldn’t believe how fast it drained and was really disappointed. I was just setting up another coworkers iPhone 3G (16gb) yesterday for exchange support and didn’t notice any keyboard lags, but did notice lag getting into the settings control panel, which was weird.
-
Disabling push, fetch, and WiFi (in that order) will save you loads of battery life. Also, turning down the brightness to as low as you can manage to live with helps noticeably.
Also, if you don’t *really* need your location for a given app, don’t give it. Polling the GPS is going to take battery, too. And switching from 3G to EDGE will give you a pretty big bump.
Restoring from backups was causing me problems. Sometimes I couldn’t answer calls because, even though the slider looked like it was working, the phone wouldn’t unlock! After doing a clean restore and starting fresh all my crashes and other problems have gone away.
-
- Comment Feed for this Post
If it’s sucha pain in the rear for you. Why not take it out of your back pocket and put it in your front picket? Or your Purse? Side Bag? Fanny Pack? Plastic Bag? Duffel Bag? Swinging it around with it tied to some kind of String like apparatus? Have a dog act as a carrying pack mule like… Pet.