Comment My review after 2 days of using iPhone OS 3.0beta (Score 1) 619
I definitely debated long and hard about installing the 3.0 beta OS, as I can't go back to 2.2.x now that it is installed, but I wanted to see the new features first-hand, and also get a feel for what is new and possible for app development and how the new OS would impact one of our existing applications, TaxiFlasher (App Store Link: http://su.sg/cf07 or search for it by name).
In short: I'm glad I tested it, I wish I could go back to 2.2.1 now -- the 3.0 beta is just too buggy for everyday use (and I miss the apps that 3.0beta broke.) BUT, I can still use my phone, and I'm sure new versions of the beta will fix some of the problems. However, I doubt the apps will be fully fixed until after 3.0 is launched.
First, the Pros:
* Cut, Copy, and Paste works great, and works anywhere you can input text, as well as places where large blocks of text are displayed (like in Safari, the web browser). I really like this feature.
(Note: Sadly, it does NOT seem like you can copy and paste calendar events.)
I can't seem to copy images from web pages, but I can save them, and then use the photos app to mail them or attach to contact, etc.
* You can "Edit" a SMS conversation now, to delete specific texts (instead of clear all) and forward specific texts (HUGE!)
* You can now "Share" a contact by emailing (as .vcf) it or sending it via SMS. This is very cool.
* You can now email a note in the Notes app, as well has have them auto-sync inside of Apple's Mail.app MacOS program, which is nice.
* Landscape view and text entry in IM, SMS (now MMS), and Mail -- this is HUGE for me, having fat fingers I had real issues with the portrait-mode keyboard both in incorrectly pressing keys and in slowdowns from finger/thumb awkwardness. Landscape mode is significantly easier for me, and I can type faster and more accurately as a result.
It also appears that Apple has updated both landscape and portrait keyboards slightly, both in looks and in function, which feels less visually polished (less pretty) but more usable and accurate.
* New features in Apple apps (e.g. Mail, maps, etc...): there are several small, mostly subtle changes that are all generally positive. They are almost all "oh, that's better" instead of a "WOW, that changes everything!".
* Ability to search in Mail, even across IMAP accounts, is HUGE and a major upgrade from the previous mail app. This is critical if you're using an IMAP account and need to reference a long-ago previous email.
* The phone-wide search feature (iPhone spotlight) is GREAT, although I haven't used it since I tested it out. (I think this is because I don't even think to use it, which should change over time). This will help me find apps that I rarely use, contacts quickly, and stuff in notes.
* So far nothing has crashed without an ability to recover, either by re-launching or by freeing up memory or rebooting.
* I really like that I can now encrypt my iPhone backup data from an iTunes sync, BUT, being beta X.0 functionality I don't trust it yet. Might wait for 3.0.1 first.
Now, the cons, of which there are many:
* SIGNIFICANTLY slower across the board. Everything, including other apps, goes MUCH slower, and you can feel it. Sometimes you worry that apps have frozen as they take so much longer. Gets slower the longer you go without a reboot.
* Serious memory leaks. Sometimes you can just use the "FreeMemory" app to clear up space, but often that clears out the memory but it just quickly fills back up, and you still have to do a full hardware reboot. I generally have to do this between each app usage, and have to reboot several times a day. (With 2.2.x I was rebooting 2-4x/day on average, with 3.0beta I'm rebooting 4-16x/day). One time I used FreeMemory, made 22+ MB avail, and within 15 seconds it was back down to less than 10MB and within 30 seconds it was down below 2MB free, all without actually leaving FreeMemory. I repeated the process several times, each with similar results. I ultimately had to hard-reboot to get it to stop. (This is possibly a bug in FreeMemory, but it seemed to work as it did in 2.2.x...)
* App problems across the board. Apps that worked fine in 2.2.x (like WordBook and SkyCoaster3D) have problems in 3.0beta. Sometimes I can fix this by using FreeMemory, sometimes I fix it by rebooting, and sometimes I just can't fix it and it's really annoying. (e.g. WordBook's "search" feature just doesn't work despite many attempts.)
* Rotation bugs abound -- there's lots of places in the apps that in 3.0 have been updated to support landscape mode (mail, SMS, etc...) that do not handle rotation perfectly, and sometimes a rotation will result in a broken view layout (e.g. the display table doesn't stretch to fit the screen) or there is missing buttons, text, or other controls after a rotate.
Usually, just rotating the phone to a different orientation and then rotating back fixing things, sometimes you have to exit the app and re-enter, sometimes you have to reboot.
* Some new bugs force a reboot -- I got stuck in Mail when something I did caused the top navigation bar to go away and I couldn't get out of the message view/compose/edit interface and go back to the inbox listing. The only way I could fix this was a hard reboot, BUT that did fix it so it's not a show-stopping bug.
* iPod (music) functionality has some hiccups, often causing music pauses or scratching. Occasionally, but unreproducible for me so far, it'll just switch to a new song altogether, sometimes one you don't even have in your playlist. It's like it gets confused and jumps into shuffling of your whole collection. But that's only happened to me the one time, and I haven't seen it happen again since (I also did a hard reboot after it started happening).
* Still a 9-page limit for the main screens listing apps
* No change to the annoying mechanism for turning wi-fi on/off, changing the delay time to auto-lock, or any of the other buried settings.
* search (spotlight) will search across contact names, but NOT contact data -- so you can't search for "CA" to see everyone you know in California, or "415" to get all the phone numbers that have 415 in them. (So, no reverse search trying to figure out, given a phone number on your last AT&T bill, who it was that you talked to that one time for 3 hours...)
* I see no new mechanism to print (as expected, there was no announcement).
In Summary: Although there are a bunch of great new features, the beta is really buggy and if you are a developer and are debating trying out the 3.0 beta, I strongly recommend you wait as long as you can unless you are planning on writing 3.0 functionality today and need the 3.0 SDK/OS to write and test it.
In short: I'm glad I tested it, I wish I could go back to 2.2.1 now -- the 3.0 beta is just too buggy for everyday use (and I miss the apps that 3.0beta broke.) BUT, I can still use my phone, and I'm sure new versions of the beta will fix some of the problems. However, I doubt the apps will be fully fixed until after 3.0 is launched.
First, the Pros:
* Cut, Copy, and Paste works great, and works anywhere you can input text, as well as places where large blocks of text are displayed (like in Safari, the web browser). I really like this feature.
(Note: Sadly, it does NOT seem like you can copy and paste calendar events.)
I can't seem to copy images from web pages, but I can save them, and then use the photos app to mail them or attach to contact, etc.
* You can "Edit" a SMS conversation now, to delete specific texts (instead of clear all) and forward specific texts (HUGE!)
* You can now "Share" a contact by emailing (as
* You can now email a note in the Notes app, as well has have them auto-sync inside of Apple's Mail.app MacOS program, which is nice.
* Landscape view and text entry in IM, SMS (now MMS), and Mail -- this is HUGE for me, having fat fingers I had real issues with the portrait-mode keyboard both in incorrectly pressing keys and in slowdowns from finger/thumb awkwardness. Landscape mode is significantly easier for me, and I can type faster and more accurately as a result.
It also appears that Apple has updated both landscape and portrait keyboards slightly, both in looks and in function, which feels less visually polished (less pretty) but more usable and accurate.
* New features in Apple apps (e.g. Mail, maps, etc...): there are several small, mostly subtle changes that are all generally positive. They are almost all "oh, that's better" instead of a "WOW, that changes everything!".
* Ability to search in Mail, even across IMAP accounts, is HUGE and a major upgrade from the previous mail app. This is critical if you're using an IMAP account and need to reference a long-ago previous email.
* The phone-wide search feature (iPhone spotlight) is GREAT, although I haven't used it since I tested it out. (I think this is because I don't even think to use it, which should change over time). This will help me find apps that I rarely use, contacts quickly, and stuff in notes.
* So far nothing has crashed without an ability to recover, either by re-launching or by freeing up memory or rebooting.
* I really like that I can now encrypt my iPhone backup data from an iTunes sync, BUT, being beta X.0 functionality I don't trust it yet. Might wait for 3.0.1 first.
Now, the cons, of which there are many:
* SIGNIFICANTLY slower across the board. Everything, including other apps, goes MUCH slower, and you can feel it. Sometimes you worry that apps have frozen as they take so much longer. Gets slower the longer you go without a reboot.
* Serious memory leaks. Sometimes you can just use the "FreeMemory" app to clear up space, but often that clears out the memory but it just quickly fills back up, and you still have to do a full hardware reboot. I generally have to do this between each app usage, and have to reboot several times a day. (With 2.2.x I was rebooting 2-4x/day on average, with 3.0beta I'm rebooting 4-16x/day). One time I used FreeMemory, made 22+ MB avail, and within 15 seconds it was back down to less than 10MB and within 30 seconds it was down below 2MB free, all without actually leaving FreeMemory. I repeated the process several times, each with similar results. I ultimately had to hard-reboot to get it to stop. (This is possibly a bug in FreeMemory, but it seemed to work as it did in 2.2.x...)
* App problems across the board. Apps that worked fine in 2.2.x (like WordBook and SkyCoaster3D) have problems in 3.0beta. Sometimes I can fix this by using FreeMemory, sometimes I fix it by rebooting, and sometimes I just can't fix it and it's really annoying. (e.g. WordBook's "search" feature just doesn't work despite many attempts.)
* Rotation bugs abound -- there's lots of places in the apps that in 3.0 have been updated to support landscape mode (mail, SMS, etc...) that do not handle rotation perfectly, and sometimes a rotation will result in a broken view layout (e.g. the display table doesn't stretch to fit the screen) or there is missing buttons, text, or other controls after a rotate.
Usually, just rotating the phone to a different orientation and then rotating back fixing things, sometimes you have to exit the app and re-enter, sometimes you have to reboot.
* Some new bugs force a reboot -- I got stuck in Mail when something I did caused the top navigation bar to go away and I couldn't get out of the message view/compose/edit interface and go back to the inbox listing. The only way I could fix this was a hard reboot, BUT that did fix it so it's not a show-stopping bug.
* iPod (music) functionality has some hiccups, often causing music pauses or scratching. Occasionally, but unreproducible for me so far, it'll just switch to a new song altogether, sometimes one you don't even have in your playlist. It's like it gets confused and jumps into shuffling of your whole collection. But that's only happened to me the one time, and I haven't seen it happen again since (I also did a hard reboot after it started happening).
* Still a 9-page limit for the main screens listing apps
* No change to the annoying mechanism for turning wi-fi on/off, changing the delay time to auto-lock, or any of the other buried settings.
* search (spotlight) will search across contact names, but NOT contact data -- so you can't search for "CA" to see everyone you know in California, or "415" to get all the phone numbers that have 415 in them. (So, no reverse search trying to figure out, given a phone number on your last AT&T bill, who it was that you talked to that one time for 3 hours...)
* I see no new mechanism to print (as expected, there was no announcement).
In Summary: Although there are a bunch of great new features, the beta is really buggy and if you are a developer and are debating trying out the 3.0 beta, I strongly recommend you wait as long as you can unless you are planning on writing 3.0 functionality today and need the 3.0 SDK/OS to write and test it.
