iPhone firmware 1.1.4 not lie after all, but real!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 27 February 2008 05:42

Your IT - Mobility

If this firmware update had been 1.2 or 2.0, we’d have known there were major new features, and Apple would have been trumpeting them from the rooftops.

But as Apple themselves say the updates are just ‘bug fixes’, the question then becomes – which bugs were fixed?

One thing discovered by readers of that the iPhone’s baseband has been upgraded to 04.04.05_G.

We all know that when Apple releases a new version of the firmware, one thing for certain is that it disables all previous SIM unlocks, meaning that hackers like Zibri from Ziphone have to work overtime to try and re-crack iPhone and bring back the SIM lock hack.

Zibri notes that his existing 1.1.3 jailbreak will actually still jailbreak 1.1.4 iPhones – but can’t unlock them yet, and he believes he’ll have it all worked out in the next two or three days – and he cautions people NOT to upgrade just yet, even though ZiPhone does successfully jailbreak 1.1.4

But what else is new? Well, iPhone Atlas has some of the details, which I’ve seen echoed across the web. Here’s what we know:

- Bluetooth works much better now with headsets and Bluetooth speakerphones that are separate units or built into GPS satnavs. Apparently 1.1.3’s Bluetooth caused pairing problems and static for some users, which they didn’t experience in 1.1.2. So the new 1.1.4 firmware seems to have fixed this.

- Due to some kind of reported time sync problem, SMS messages on the iPhone could be listed out of order on 1.1.3. Numerous people have noted this is now fixed in 1.1.4

- 1.1.3 also seemed to have a problem with sent mails, where they ‘vanished’ from the sent mail folder. 1.1.4 fixes this.

- Some comments across iPhone sites have suggested that the incidence of dropped calls and weak signals has been reduced, although this isn’t widely confirmed.

- One comment notes that 1.1.4 automatically lists ‘two’ home screens, with the second one simply blank. Although 1.1.3 officially made more than one home screen possible thanks to the ability to place Web shortcuts on the desktop, perhaps some people still didn’t realise you could have more than one screen, and so it appears Apple have tried to make this obvious.

- One commenter at iPhone Atlas said he’d experienced a lock up on 1.1.3 when capturing a photo for the contacts list. On 1.1.4 that bug has now reportedly disappeared.

TUAW’s Erica Sadun also reports that there seem to be some IMAP improvements in 1.1.4, but sadly this doesn’t appear to be anything MS Exchange specific.

Macrumors notes that there’s still no ‘Flash’ support, although that’s not likely until an SDK anyway, that iToner 1.0.6 still works, the camera works better for some and the Safari cache seems to be improved.

So, what is someone’s comedic list of 1.1.4 updates? Please read onto page 3...