In general, things seem more stable. I have seen many of the sites that go into detail about many of the other fixes that 2.1 brings but I didn’t see any mention of the frustrating Bluetooth echo fix that occurs with most cars that have the hands free feature.

I decided to give Bluetooth a try today in my car and woo hoo — it worked! Almost no echo. I mean it is about 90-95% fixed. What I did notice was that when I got out of the car and was not using the phone it seemed like it was chewing up some battery too fast.

I know that Bluetooth can consume battery so I went to my settings and I’m not encouraged by what I found. Bluetooth is “ON”, and it shows that it is Paired with my car (although I am not near my car).

The thing that has me most concerned is that there is that spinning gear next to the word “Devices” that never quits until I turn Bluetooth off. I am sure that this is chewing away at the battery’s charge — not good.

Okay, so I went to the paired device (My-Car) and chose to unpair that device and now there is no spinning gear next to devices — it now has a box where “My-Car” used to be which now stated “Searching…” with the spinning gears next to it. Spinning, spinning, spinning away — battery life plumeting.

The only way I have found to stop this is to turn off Bluetooth. That’s not very practicle when you are in and out of your car. Not to mention the fact that while you are connected the phone is constantly looking for other devices.

I haven’t had a chance to see how many other people are experiencing the same thing.

The only thing that was different in the state of the phone from hours earlier was that I did a software update to AOL Radio app prior to relaunching all the other apps. I have read other posts reporting that apps are crashing after 2.01 was installed. I’ll have to look around to see if this mysterious recovery from this behavior was noticed by anyone else.

I wonder if by updating the AOL app it could have somehow corrected a bad state that the iPhone was in.

Did I mention that one of the “3rd party” apps that now crash is one produced by Apple? Yep, Texas Hold’ em from Apple crashes upon launch.

More later…

dante

My dilemma was that I wanted to wait for the first iPhone but I was too impatient to wait six months. So, I went to AT&T and got a 3G Motorola planing on ditching it in six months time.

It was a pretty decent phone and then I started thinking about what it might be like giving it up for a first generation iPhone. I have had many years of experience as an early adopter of technology. What I have learned is that early adopters are like pioneers — they end up with all the arrows in their backs.

My decision was to wait for the second generation iPhone.

I got the new new 3G iPhone on July 11th and I am loving it except for one major flaw — a defect in the way it performs with hands-free bluetooth in cars.

There are threads on the Apple forums that show how widespread a problem this is.

I decided to send a brief bug report to Apple iPhone Support. I hope they make fixing this a priority.

Here is the bug report:
————————————————————————————————————-

Dear Apple iPhone Support.

Most of us 3G iPhone users that use hands-free bluetooth in our cars are having a major problem.

Here is a thread that says it all:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7566755

I have a 2007 G35S sedan with navigation but it seems to affect a many other makes and models of cars with hands free bluetooth built in.

Just to clarify, the caller and I hear an echo of my voice but not an echo of the caller’s voice.

My previous phone (Motorola V3xx) did not have this problem at all.

The echo is bad enough to render the phone unusable in the car unless I try to hold it to my ear while driving. That is not a great safety solution for people who have chosen cars that have hands-free bluetooth.

I imagine that it would be bad PR for Apple if and when people start getting tickets for holding the handset to their ear or when they start driving with ear buds which is illegal in many locales.

Worse than that — what about some attorney that tries to have Apple share in the liability due to an accident in which the jury finds that product liability contributed to the “at fault driver” not using the “safer” option of hands-free.

Now, I know that it may sound like a bit of a stretch but lawyers do stretch things when there are big settlements on the table and there is a company with deep pockets that may have contributed to the hazard which caused the accident.

I am hoping that my hypothetical scenario just helps to bump up the urgency of fixing this bug.

There is no downside to Apple fixing this quickly — you will only make a lot of 3G iPhone customers very happy.

Regards,

T. Dante DeAngelis