Geekshow

Apple iPhone 2.0 Update

Apple realeased their software update 2.0 on July 11th. This update was highly anticipated and hyped, but does it live up to the hype?

I got my hands on the update the day it came out and decided to wait a week or two before coming to any conclusions. Downloading apps from the Apple store is a breeze. You have two options to get your apps, from iTunes or from the new AppStore icon on the phone itself.

There were tons of free apps when the store launched and three times as many paid apps. Some apps are useless, while others are the best thing since sliced bread. My wife and I have had issues with some apps randomly crashing and/or taking the whole system with it. It seems that we experience this less and less since we are no longer just playing around and actually using the apps we are comfortable with.

There are a couple of new features added to the phone but the one most people asked for was a contacts button. Before, you had to go into the phone and there was an icon at the bottom for viewing and editing your contacts. Now there is an icon on the home screen that can be placed anywhere.

If you don’t have the 3G iPhone with GPS, you are not totally shut out when it comes to location specific apps. Using the cell tower triangulation technology, most apps will work fine. The apps that require more precise coordinates may seem buggy, but that’s to be expected without GPS.

The biggest expectation I had for this update was the ability to play games now. Sega has announced that the iPhone is about as powerful as the Dreamcast. This was no lie. With games like Super Monkey Ball being a launch title, this phone looks like it could be a great new gaming platform. The battery, however, is the only thing holding it back. Playing a simple tile game seems to drain my battery so fast that I have to plug it in to play.

Overall, I would say that Apple has finally made the iPhone worth the price, especially since they lowered the price. Now my only quarrel is with AT&T. Please lower the monthly cost. $200 a month for two phones is killing me!

One last thing I have to add, a new WordPress app was added to the store the other day, so this whole review was written on my iPhone.