With firmware 2.1, is iPhone 3G finally out of beta?

So what's new in 2.1 and why should you upgrade?

First off there are 'bug fixes' galore. While Apple didn't get specific, Steve Jobs emphasised this point in the 'Let's Rock' event from last Wednesday when he said 'We have fixed a lot of bugs where if you have a lot of apps on the phone, you’re not going to get some of the crashes and other things that we’ve seen.' 

Bug fix updates aren't new for iPhone users, having already seen two come out of Apple in the last 60 days, but, well, anything that gets the phone running more smoothly is a good thing. The amount of crashes on the iPhone 3G has been a significant point of disappointment for owners.

Next, the update makes backing up to iTunes 'dramatically' faster. In general, a sync for me took anywhere between 10 minutes to 2 hours. In my initial assessment of 2.1, I haven't seen a sync longer than 90 seconds, and that's if I've installed new software - but most seen to be less than a minute. Along with faster syncs, applications downloaded and installed directly from the App Store now install much faster too.

iPhone 2.1 isn't just about bug fixes. If you've read about the new Genius feature in iTunes 8 you'll be pleasantly surprised with the new features in the iPod app. Genius functionality is now available on the iPhone - start listening to any song, click on the 'Genius' icon in the music scrubber (tap once anywhere on the album art to bring up the scrub bar) and you'll get a Genius playlist with your original song as the seed song. You can even save the new genius playlist for listening later or refresh it to change the music.

As an aside, I'm really enjoying the Genius functionality in iTunes 8. While the suggestions iTunes makes aren't mind-blowingly creative they certainly are spot on for my tastes. However, I also have a large amount of Classical music in my library, and for that genre, Genius need not apply.

Apple has also refreshed the iPod layout with the update. Lists of Songs and Albums now include an extra line of information. For songs you get the song title, but also the artist, and for album lists you get the album name and the artist. The font also seems to be larger and more legible. If you listen to podcasts you'll also appreciate the refreshed layout that indicates a blue dot representing the number of unplayed episodes you've got, and for episodes you've already begun, you'll get additional information about the time remaining.

This update also makes using your iPhone, you know, as an actual phone, much, much better. Contacts now finally load as quickly as they used to back on the original iPhone (with 1.1.4 firmware), and using the search bar at the top of the contact list is now nearing the 'practical' phase. The lag that used to drive me nuts when I pressed the 'phone' icon now seems to have disappeared all together.

Apple has made other cosmetic changes too - for instance the '3G' icon is now displayed in a clean font rather than being surrounded by a box, and Apple say that you'll now get two alert messages for new SMSs - in case you miss the first (which I do, all the time). This is a feature and not a preference, so if you want to turn it off, well, you can't. Battery life for most users is also said to be 'dramatically improved'. Put it this way, it couldn't be any worse (or could it?)

Other updates include a decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls, improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts, improved performance in text messaging, improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display, and an option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts.

The update, like the previous ones, weighs in at around 250MB and is available now via iTunes.