iPhone OS 3.0 review
Tonight I am booted into my Ubuntu partition, which doesn't get much attention these days thanks to Windows 7 RC, which is the primary OS on this 2+ years old Dell M1210 laptop. I will write more about that some other day, but today a different upgrade is the topic of this post - the upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0.
Being a user of iPhone 3G (converted from Windows Mobile after years of use, but that will also be discussed in some other post) I was keeping an eye on iPhone OS 3.0 since it was initially rumored. And when it was announced, I found it very exciting for the developer community with all those notifications and hardware accessories. Although there wasn't a lot new for the average user, Copy Paste, MMS and video were welcome announcements.
Then came WWDC 2009, and it was clear that existing iPhone 3G users will be left out on the video features. This didn't go very well with me, especially when I know that people have successfully demonstrated video features on jailbroken iPhones. Qik had a working app with video streaming which was never approved by Apple.
But being someone who is always eager to jump on updates, I refreshed Apple's website frequently on THE DAY and kept an eye on the Engadget RSS feed for any updates. Then the bits were finally released to the world, and the first thing I did after coming back from work was to plug my iPhone in and initiate the glorious update.
On the surface, everything went smoothly. When it was (apparently) all done, I opened the Mail app, and was shocked to see that there was nothing in my Exchange email account. Something had messed up the settings during upgrade. I went to Settings, and tried to delete the account, hoping to fix it by recreating it. And (oh, horror!) iPhone's UI hung on me. A hardware reset later, I tried again with same results. Then I poked around a little and found that the account needed my password again. So I entered it and tapped on it to save it, and once again (more horror!) iPhone's UI hung on me.
After spending 2 frustrating hours with it, I decided to flash it back to factory defaults. So I sync'd up all purchased apps and music (a progress indicator per app would have really helped for big apps like Dictionary), restored the device to its original state, and sync'd everything back again. Then I spent another frustrating hour customizing some 70+ apps again.
With all this behind me, iPhone OS 3.0 on iPhone 3G was ready to go. At first it felt somewhat sluggish and I could notice a lag between gestures and response occasionally, but with time it got smoother. Perhaps it was related to some background indexing required for the new search, which is perhaps my favorite feature in this update. Since Windows Vista introduced search in the start menu, I rarely navigate the start menu the old way anymore. I hope to find similar level of usability with iPhone search as well.
Minor tweaks in apps, and inclusion of Voice Memos app aside, the next most useful feature for me was the keyboard in landscape mode. I tried typing with 2 thumbs on Mail and Notes and it was much faster than before. It was almost on par with hardware keyboards I had on Tilt and other similar devices. Now I can realistically use iPhone to take notes in meetings.
Overall, iPhone OS 3.0 seems to be yet another step in the right direction. Although I was disappointed to see that iPhone 3G didn't get video features and didn't have a smooth upgrade experience, the free upgrade makes up for that. I hope Apple will issue updates to address the performance issues I am having, but for now it is a great feeling (as always) to have the latest bits on my iPhone.
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