iPhone OS 2.0.2 released, 3G reception problems fixed?

By Davey Winder
Tuesday, 19 August 2008 04:15

Mobility

We all knew it was coming, but the speed with which Apple has released the latest iPhone firmware update was a little surprising. Could this be the much anticipated 3G reception problem fix?

Connect your iPhone to iTunes and you should get notification of YAFU. That's Yet Another Firmware Update.

Yes, Apple has started to push out the iPHone OS 2.0.2 firmware update hot on the heels of the previous bug fixing software upgrade. Guess what the official reason for this is? Yes, you guessed it: bug fixes.

Apple does seem to like using that broad generalisation to pretty much cover all of its mistakes. iPhone users the world over are hoping that the particular mistake being covered this time around is, of course, the 3G reception bug that has been widely reported .

"This version of the software includes the following improvements and supersedes all previous versions: bug fixes" is all Apple is going to admit to though.

The chances are pretty high that this is the software fix that Business Week claimed was coming after well placed sources confirmed that the Infineon chip used by Apple was at the heart of the 3G reception problems being reported by many users.

Business Week suggested that the Apple software checks for more 3G bandwidth than is required, triggering a switch to GSM when that switch is not actually needed.

If you were one of those users who had an iffy 3G experience with your iPhone, and have successfully updated your firmware to 2.0.2, please be sure to let us know if the connectivity stability improves as a result.

No improvement would suggest that the Business Week story was wrong, and their sources mistaken. Which would, of course, be bad news for Apple as that would tend to lead us down the road of a hardware fault instead.

Not something that Apple or iPhone users will want to hear...