At the September 9 Rock and Roll event, Apple introduced an update to the iPhone, OS v3.1. And if you have an iPhone, you would be better off not updating it!
All over the Web, reports are springing up about the new version crashing the iPhone, freezing it, hogging up battery life and numerous other bugs and glitches – which is now being labeled as ‘Coma Mode’.
“The problems being reported are legion. They include iPhones becoming totally unresponsive, dropped calls, poor battery life, difficulties with Wi-Fi connections, failed Microsoft Exchange syncing, dead GPS service, loss of signal after syncing, tethering no longer working in ‘legally’ unlocked phones outside the US, and more,” reports The Register, although the writers of the site note that they have not experienced any problems with their own phone.
The staff at Engadget, though, was not as lucky. After apparently facing many issues with OS 3.1 on their handsets, they put up a poll on the blog asking if the iPhone OS 3.1 has screwed up a reader’s phone. Almost 37 per cent of readers reported problems, with 21 per cent reporting major issues.
But obviously, the most flak was reserved for Apple’s own discussion forums. Topic after topic is cropping up reporting several flaws with the update, as more are being discovered almost by the hour. And Apple’s lack of a response about the issues hasn’t helped matters at all. In fact, some users who went to the Apple store came back reporting that the staff had no fixes for it. In quite a few cases, resetting the phone is having no effect either!
The best way to judge the users’ frustration is by looking at some of the comments in the biggest thread on the forum, which started off the ranting and raving:
“In the 2 days since upgrading my 3G 16gig to OS 3.1, it has crashed at least 10 times. Yesterday, I was on a plane trip and had the phone in Airplane mode, so none of the comms circuits were active. The phone crashed twice during the flight. In both cases, I had paused the song which was playing on the iPod software in order to listen to an in-cabin announcement,” writes masont.
“This is unbelievable. To have a phone that becomes unresponsive and you don’t know it’s unresponsive is not only crazy but dangerous. You don’t even know that it’s not working. This needs to be fixed immediately! I’m carrying a rock around basically,” complained SCHiN101 .
User ‘Kermit has an iPhone 3G’ had the comment that should scare Apple the most: “I am starting to lose faith in this product. I am on the verge of just buying some other phone.”
We doubt Kermit is alone on this one…