iPhone Woes: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love iTunes

I have been generally quite happy with my second-generation, 16gb iPhone; even amidst all of the reports regarding its poor software performance and quality, slew of irritating bugs and reports of poor call quality. I personally haven’t experienced these significant issues but could understand the frustration of consumers who have. The big update — iPhone v2.1 — was released to address all the significant consumer pain points yesterday.

To date, my only major gripe with the iPhone was its uncanny ability to drop calls consistently. I was tolerating the issue though since I knew that an update was imminent. So you can imagine my excitement when Ars Technica reported a positive experience after upgrading their iPhone to v2.1. The glowing review gave me the confidence to go through with the update. It was around 11pm and I figured I didn’t need my mobile for the time being.

I fired up my Vista desktop and plugged in my iPhone. I clicked the button to upgrade but was presented by a dialog informing me that I must first upgrade to iTunes 8.0 before I can upgrade my iPhone. I need to upgrade to upgrade? Reads like an old Microsoft joke. In any regard, I moved forward and after waiting more than an hour for it to complete — I was on my way to upgrading the iPhone.

Eventually the upgrade and verification steps were completed and my iPhone was back in my arms. I unhinged the USB cable and decided to take my new shiny firmware upgrade for a spin. The first thing I did was try to go to Settings > General > About to ensure that my firmware was indeed upgraded. I could not imagine it doing anything else for the past hour or so, but wanted to see the clean and crisp “v2.1″ for myself.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t even open the Settings application. I would push the icon. And nothing would happen. Never having this problem in the past, I decided to try other applications: Facebook, Yelp or even Shazam. Nope. They all refused to open. Except these third-party applications would launch — then a black screen would appear then the desktop would represent itself again. Totally unashamed. I tried to restart my iPhone a couple of times but alas to no avail. At least rebooting your Windows Mobile phone always fixed the problem. Then it dawned on me: I just upgraded to the latest and greatest — and it was a major step back. I longed for the days of iPhone v2.0.2 where my applications would launch and my phone was, you know, generally operable.

I decided it was a lost cause and would tackle the problem again in the morning. And here I am: sitting, waiting, wishing. I’m in the process of restoring my iPhone since the firmware obviously broke something. I just hope the backup and restore processes are in fine shape since I really do not want to go through and configure everything again. I still lost about 7gb of music that I need to transfer over again. On the bright side, it did give me the time to compose this post, read the news, take a shower and respond to some e-mails. Now I just have to figure out which novel to finish while waiting for the music to sync.

Adieu. Navid.