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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.
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i concur – battery seems to drain just by looking at it. but i keep in mind there [u]five[/u], count ‘em, [u][i]five[/i][/u] chipsets with antennaes that keep this thing humming all day long — 3G, Edge (dual mode when it can’t find 3G), GPS, 802.11g Wifi, and Bluetooth. i’m surprised i’m not seeing eggs fry on the smooth-backed body surface.
i’ve seen the keyboard lag a bit, but mostly i’m noticing if you fill the thing up with the new 3rd party apps (and i’m just guessing this is the cause), and leave not much space on it, it becomes ag-go-niz-ing-ly sloooooow in doing anything. plus, prone to a full system crash and getting to see the black screen with the silver apple again and again. is anyone qa’ing these apps, or is software qa of any sort a thing of the past with most companies now?
worse was the cluster-*F!* that was friday’s 2.0 update that bricked my old iPhone for half a day while apple’s iTunes servers went down for the count. sheez. they’re releasing a new iPhone, they have a 4 – 6 million iPhone user base for the first gen. iPhones already, ya think apple & akamai (who servers up all of apple’s downloads) might have done some IT work and gotten beefier servers, more fibre connections and done some load balancing before july 11th?? ya think?!?!
and don’t get me started on mobileme. wotta nightmare. first, their servers are up and down and none of the real new “push” services are to be seen for 3 or 4 days from release. as of monday, my iPhone, even when connected and syncing with my macbook iTunes, [u]still[/u] wasn’t getting any of the contacts put in its address book. do you get that? i had an iPhone with [i][u]no[/u][/i] contacts in it, rendering it useless for anything but receiving calls. finally, somehow, the contacts got pushed to it. but since then, if i create calendar items on the iPhone, they don’t get pushed/sync’d up to “the cloud” on the mobileme web site or back down to my iCal on my macbook. wotta crock.
between bricking my iPhone for half a day friday and having no contacts all of monday, i believe apple or at&t or [i][u]somebody[/u][/i] owes me one full day of standard cell phone charges. word.
it has been a release marred by a lack of thinking ahead of time. but that seems to be the american way these days. i gladly would have waited 2 more weeks for both the software update and the 3G iPhone if a bit more QA had been done on the 2.0 firmware, the apps, and the apple mobileme site to make the damn things mostly work from the get-go. they are already into their 3rd quarter on this release, so waiting 2 more weeks would not have mattered for their numbers this quarter that much. and i’d much rather have a far more stable release than this horse-puckey i’ve been put through.
plus, it mars the fact that there are a lot of things to love about the new 2.0 firmware and yes, the 3G iPhone. i [u]love[/u] the AP News app., including it geo-locating me to give me local news stories. there is last.fm for it, but also pandora squeaks ahead with connectivity as it will load and stream play songs on 3G, not just Wifi (last.fm doesn’t do well on 3G, it seems). there are so many apps to play with, i almost lose site of the fact that the device also has a bevy of extra storage podcasts, vids & music for me to listen to. oh, and it’s my phone too! i keep forgetting that the more i play with the apps and browser.
just wish these basic functionalities would get resolved … soon!
my grumbly 2 cents review on a friday morn. i’m waiting for mobileme support chat to start working so i can give those fine fellows a piece of my mind … grumble rumble grumble …
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#54 written by Doc 3 years ago
Check your push settings and or just restore your phone there is already a minor firmware upgrade. There is (2.0)5a347 ann (2.0)5a345 make sure you have the right stuff.
Its early people don’t give up on the apple machine.
My phone is great and yes I never fully migrate data from an old machine to a new one, it’s lazy and like all things lazy will give you trouble later. Since the Mail, Cals, and Contacts all come by automatically there is no need to bring the backup over. Start with a clean phone sync the music, books and videos and push the first few times then turn it off if you don’t need push.
The same reasons you don’t migrate PPC data to an Intel Mac just reinstall. Laziness will get you sooner or later.
Aloha
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#55 written by tammylee 3 years ago
She is so right about the battery plan on contantanly charging it. I would also recomend buying it from Apple I bought mine at AT&T having a horrible time at getting it replaced. It is defective speaker is bad. At&t stores are not helping at all had to call AT&T thy are calling the store and having them replace it without any fees… Still waiting for my new phone.
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The battery life is the main issue for me. I can further confirm that the battery drains quickly even without regular use.
I use mine as an alarm from time to time and will go to sleep with a nearly charged battery, only to wake up with a nearly drained battery.
The only use my phone is getting during my sleep time is receiving a few text messages and checking email (a few accounts once per hour) which is a lot on the email checking but seriously, that should not drain it that much.
I did the same with my old iPhone and never had batter drain like that, and I had that iPhone checking email every 15 minutes even through the night.
Sad, I bought a new iPhone for the 3G and GPS, but in order to get any worthwhile amount of time from my battery, I have to keep those services turned off.
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#58 written by MardeeT 3 years ago
I have the old Iphone upgraded to 2.0, it was never jailbroken, and I purchased it only 3 months ago. Since the upgrade yes, I am having the same issues with the lag on emails, and sometimes just selections in general. I find myself tapping numerous times, and then it catches up, and its open, and closed again. ARG! Some of the new apps, and even old (maps) just die and close sometimes. My battery life on the old one seems to be less now with 2.0 with same usage, maybe its doing some location based stuff in the background? Could be one of the new apps? Who knows, but my bet is that its the firmware that has the issue and not the hardware of the new or old Iphone. Lets hope anyway.
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#59 written by Felipe 3 years ago
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#61 written by M Chan 3 years ago
I been having the slow keyboard issues too when texting… Though i find if you go back to the home screen and then back to SMS, the keyboard works fine again… I hope they fix it in the next release…
Battery life, i have the same problem too…. Have to bring a apc battery pack to keep it alive
… Turning off 3G does make it last a lot longer… Just can’t surf as fast.. sigh..Mike
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#62 written by TJ 3 years ago
From what I’ve heard, the keyboard lag is a known issue. I had the same problem, but have found that doing a few things have helped (mind you not entirely).
When I upgraded from the original iPhone to the 3G flavored one, I used the restore from back up feature, went about using it, and noticed, that along with a few others, I was having issues with the keyboard, searching contacts, GPS sometimes not linking up, etc. etc. It got me thinking, one of the first things I do with a new Mac is reinstall the OS. So that’s what I did with the iPhone, and it seems to have improved the overall usability of the phone.
And as far as battery life is concerned. It will get better. Obviously, it’s a new gadget so it people are “playing” with it more than they are “using” it. Secondly, I’ve heard from a lot of people that say lithium ion batteries are not at their prime until they’ve been through a few charge cycles. I’ve noticed, that after a week, the overnight charge is lasting the whole day.
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#63 written by Zaz 3 years ago
Eek! I put my order in but my phone hasn’t arrived yet. I guess I’ll just be sure to put the brand spankiest new build of the firmware on it and be conservative with push, 3G, GPS, x, y, and z. Weee, technology!
My phone is about five years old though and randomly turns off so I have a feeling I’ll be pretty thrilled even if I have to charge it every day, since I have to do that now.
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#64 written by Lars H 3 years ago
You americans seems to have no experience with 3G-phones
They really sucks your battery dry in no time if youre to far from the base station.
I have had a SonyEricsson Z1010 almost burning a hole in my shirt pocket trying to find a non-existing 3G base station once during a train ride in Switzerland and emptying the fully loaded battery in one hour!
I am on my third 3G phone now (a N95 with multicrashing) in about four years they all have needed daily charging, and using 3G-data really drains the battery.
I have used both the Nokia N70 (Symbian 2 sucks more than the 3rd edition) and the N95 with GPS and navigation software which loads maps over GPRS/EDGE/3G-network and without the car charger you drain them in no time ( < 1/2 hour).
I ordeded my 16Gb iPhone 3G on July the 12th but here in Sweden they are sold out and back-orded, expecting delivery in late august
Hopefully they have fixed most of the bugs by then…
( on the other hand i’m used to daily crashing of my 3G-phones)/Lars H
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I’ve had the EXACT same issues that you’ve described above. I have the 8gb and got it the day after it came out. Battery life is terrible, i have to charge it twice a day… when i was using the GPS and it was plugged into the car charger, it just maintained the life it already had, didnt charge the phone at all.
Turn off the 3g if you’re not using it, that will help you get through the day… i mean we all dealt with the edge network before a week ago, its worth it to preserve battery life…
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I’ve had much the same problems; and I pulled down the one ROM upgrade they did sorta release. (connect the device, back it up, hit restore, follow that process; and it installs the one kinda-sorta ROM upgrade they did release, kinda…sorta…)
Even then, I’ve still had problems with app crashes, keyboard stutters and slowness, etc. Its all code optimization/memory management related. After 11 years with Windows Mobile, I’ve sung this song before and know the words by heart.
@TJ is right about the battery life. It will get better as the battery gets conditioned. However, it still would have been better if the battery was user replaceable; but don’t get me started on that.
Apple should be addressing this fairly quickly (I would think), as they likely want to keep the $330M in revenue that has been reported they made from their 1M iPhone 3G’s sold. Without some much needed updates, quickly, there are going to be a number of people returning their devices, me included.
The behavior and experiences I’ve been having with this thing are reminiscent of early Pocket PC Phones/Windows Mobile Phones, and I am SO over going through that again just for a cool device.
Kind Regards,
Chris Spera
Gear Diary Review Team
http://www.geardiary.com -
#69 written by Jeffrey Johnson 3 years ago
This is my first iPhone experience so can not compare to the original but I do know what you mean about the typing slowness, though it only happens every once in awhile. I did not have a smart phone before so really don’t know what to expect for battery life but I have only needed to charge at night which seems better then I thought it would.
The only other issue that I have is the GPS seems to stop working. Seems to work after I restart the phone, plan to run by the Apple store to see if they can do anything.
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#71 written by JakeInPro 3 years ago
I had similar issues when I restored from a backup of my previous iPhone to my brand-spankin new 3G. I ended up doing a wipe and setting things back up without a restore and have been much happier since. I do encounter issues with the UI being laggy (i.e., the slider not moving smoothly, if at all, when unlocking the phone). I’m also not surprised with the battery life of the phone as it is a 3G device; having push enabled definitely makes a difference as I was playing with the 2.0 update on my iPhone 1G and noticed that it was using more juice than in the past.
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doc – if the “check your push settings,” etc., was to me, then yes, i’ve done all that, done the minor firmware upgrade & restore (should be, restore, then resync your whole music/vid library, but wotevah), followed all of apple’s instructions about calendar sycning on the mobileme support pages, i’ve done everything but take the damn thing out for chinese food, push/sync of new calendar items from iPhone to cloud & computer are just *not* working. trust me, i’ve tried.
still waiting in queue for mobileme support chat. 5 min. left in queue …
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This is definitely a problem with the 2.0 firmware. I have it on my iPod touch and it’s exhibiting the same symptoms that you’re experiencing. I unplugged my iPod from my Mac to go downstairs to do some work. After 2 hrs, I went to plug my ipod back into my Mac and the battery was at 20%. When I left it, it was charged 100%. What the hell.
Maybe this is karma for all the trash talking of Windows in the Apple commercials.
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I have the older iPhone and upgraded to 2.0 firmware. My battery life immediately tanked. I turned off location services, and my battery life went back to what it used to be.
I suspect that the bulk of the sucky battery life is location services. It’s a nice feature to have, but it really steals battery power right now.
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#79 written by IceBurgh 3 years ago
It’s definitely the software. I updated my first generation phone which had great battery life and noticed the lagginess and poor battery performance.
Rebooting the phone seemed to help the lag.
I will turn off location services as advised by the commenter above and see what this does for battery life.
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#82 written by Allister 3 years ago
Shock! Horror! The iPhone has bugs! If anyone is holding off buying because of this I hope you haven’t bought Windows yet. Did you know that STILL had bugs?
I had the keyboard lag on a 1.1.4 iPod Touch, though not 30 seconds. I’ve had half a dozen crashes from third party and Apple apps and some other minor issues.
I suggest if you want one, buy it and help fix the problems by reporting the issues you have.
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I stood in the line for five hours. I signed a two-year contract. And I traded a perfectly useful (and almost new, because Apple had just replaced it) iPhone for the new iPhone 2.0 just to be a geek. Or maybe a jerk.
I’m not unhappy with the 3G iPhone. But I wasn’t unhappy with the other one either. On balance, I probably would have been fine with not upgrading, but I cannot resist a new toy. I singlehandedly power the consumer economy.
Here’s the good and bad news: 3G is not that much faster than 2G. When I send photos, the best way to send them is wi-fi. I don’t think my new phone is that much faster. Does it put my life in my pocket? No. I will still take a laptop to conferences to live blog, and when I edit someone’s book, you can be sure it will be on a big screen:-) (Yes, I do that.)
The battery life has already been commented on ad nauseum. I suppose if you turn off the GPS and wi-fi it lasts longer, but then what’s the point? I actually do turn them both off through most of the day, and I carry the charger with me as well.
The form factor is almost the same, except my new phone has a white plastic back, which will soon be obscured by the case I ordered, because I’m sure it will scratch. It’s spiffy, though. The new phone’s a little thinner, but you wouldn’t notice it unless you weighed them with one in one hand and one in the other. Who cares about the small improvement?
The App Store is the best part of the new launch, and I could have had that on my old phone. But I forgive Apple the whole Saturday experience because I love the App store. I have downloaded Typepad, iZenGarden, SmugMug, Brightkite, and Kyte.tv. I’m not really a gamer, so I don’t have any of those games yet. I will try them, but they’re not first on my list.
The Brightkite app doesn’t work well, and neither does SmugMug. That’s disappointing. Typepad, which is the software I use for this blog is awesome. And IZen Garden is beautiful.
I must admit that I also really like the GPS services, because I can type in an address on Google Maps and it will draw me a purple line from where I am to where I need to go. I’ve never had that before.
Am I satified? Yes. Am I blown away? No. If you don’t have an iPhone, get one. If you have a first generation iPhone and you want to spend money on something else, keep it.
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#84 written by Evan 3 years ago
The most frustrating thing for me has been the contacts and how long it can take them to come up. Also, if you keep your MobileMe and Exchange contacts synced it seems to further exasperate this problem. I didn’t have a 1st gen iPhone so I can’t speak to their performance but I don’t think this is acceptable performance by Apple standards. Battery life, like everyone else is saying, kinda blows. When I get to where I am going I have to change my phone settings accordingly to conserve battery (i.e. turn off 3G in the office). I wish the iPhone had different power profiles you could switch between easily.
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I have to say ive been using 3g phones in Australia for several year at present i have a N95 and the battery sux with moderate use im lucky to get a day and if i want to snap a heap of pics or take a long video forget it the power it all gone very quick. Surly you must of known about 3g battery problems having used services like Qik for live video from you Nokia that chews through the battery like nonthing else. As for GPS with Google maps about 1hour or so in the car the internal battery is dead. From what ive used so far my iPhone is way superior to my N95 in the battery department, I think it is just a case of most of you Americans arnt used to 3G phones because as they go the battery in the iPhone really isnt that bad… As for the restart and mobileme problems remember this is really 1.0 new handset, new services, new apps, im positive that Apple being Apple will have most of the lagging issues and restarting problems ironed out with new firmware update ASAP….
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#86 written by Haig 3 years ago
Hey V! It’s confirmed…my friend has a 1st gen iPhone and he said that ever since he downloaded firnware 2.0 the battery life has been really crappy…like uber crappy! I’m guessing the new firmware is overtaxing the processors, which could in theory lead to a faster draining battery. Whatever it is, it needs to be brought into the mainstream so that Apple rectifies it. Now might be a good time to influence a certain Ryan Block and have him bang the “press” drums via Engadget. But you didn’t hear that from me my dear.
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I experience the keyboard lag constantly. Not quite everytime i text message but almost. I originally thought it might just be my phone and was thinking of going to the genius bar.
The battery does kind of suck, however it doesn’t seem as bad for me. I can leave the phone with almost full charge when I go to bed and when I wake up it seems to have the same charge.
-Raymond
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Some co-workers of mine played with the battery life issue and the number one culprit seems to be push. Even fetch at decent intervals won’t suck the life out of the battery quite like push will, it seems. This seems true of both the 3G and classic.
And you may have to switch it off on any “advanced” settings you have as well.
I know a lot of developers have had some questions about how Apple would manage push without killing the battery (as apparently has occured on Windows Mobile), and they probably haven’t ironed out all the bugs.
And yeah, with push your battery will get drained even as your not using it. WiFi and BT will obviously drain as well, but I wouldn’t bother with those unless you’re in zones where you just know they aren’t available.
Another tip: if you are in an area where you know you can’t get a cell phone signal but have access to wifi, go into airplane mode and then turn WiFi off. This will keep the phone from trying to find non-existent towers while on the net. My phone can easily last over a weekend like that, even with decent use.
As for stability, many apps are suffering from crash level bugs of a variety of sources, I think. A few may restart your phone. We’ve noticed this in testing of our app but not consistently, not in a reproducible way and not on every phone. My guess is that it is a mix of app performance and native OS issues, both of which should be cleared up with enough time – you can be assured it’s on both the dev community and Apple’s mind.
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God, one day I woke up, looked at my phone and forgot it on my bed all day while I went to a meeting. I didn’t even touch it at all, came back at 5 PM and it was already down to ZERO battery.
I’ve turned off location services, push email, 3G and Wi-Fi and now I have awesome battery life. Now I just don’t know why I didn’t keep my OG iPhone.
Several of my coworkers have said that a firmware reset has helped them considerably. And I don’t find it too terrible to go turn on the 3G when I want something fast and then to turn it back off.
I think the biggest pain is it’s SO AWESOME when it’s all working right, but then you get maybe 2 hours of use, and that’s using the word “use” very liberally.
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Veronica, I am so sorry for you. Now maybe is time to review the material at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trsDjosYukk, read those comments and then … cry?
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#97 written by Peter 3 years ago
The main battery drain, in normal use, on mine was the 3G by far. Push doesn’t seem to affect it much, but then again, I get very little email through my .me address. Games are a HUGE drain. I get barely 2 hours out of the battery while playing, so rarely play much unless I’m near an outlet to plug the phone back in when I ‘m done.
I’ve seen some apps crash… I had to do a restore on my touch 2.0 because apps wouldn’t even start up. Now it’s fine though. I don’t notice much lag myself. An occasional typing lag. Which I HATE. But I don’t do a huge amount of typing either.
I’ll be interested to see if your restore does for your stability issues. Keep us updated!
And happy birthday!
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For what it’s worth, my first gen 8GB iPhone has been unstable as hell. Apps constantly crash. Even the built-in Apple ones. Just last night, my phone was just hanging when I’d load Settings to turn my WiFi off. And lately, my phone’s battery just drains super fast. And when it’s on standby, it gets warm like it’s in use. Almost like a background process is stuck on in battery drain mode.
So I feel ya.
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i just upgraded my software, and my battery life with an older iphone is also reduced. in part, it’s because my .mac mail started automatically pushing to the phone with the upgrade. and it’s downloading mail more often than i ever did before. that’s the main difference i notice, and my battery life is lower.
however, it could also be that i’m using the phone more now with a couple apps i like. so perhaps that percpetion is somewhat a blind spot bias?
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I have the first-gen iPhone, and software 2.0 is killing my battery life too (though not as bad as yours!). The push feature sucks the life out of my iPhone, along with the applications.
Reading and hearing all the negatives with the latest toy from Apple, I’m glad I didn’t upgrade to 3G.