Today is such a happy, joyous occasion! The 2.1 firmware update was released early this morning for all iPhone users! Firstly, let’s look at what Apple said the update would include:  

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduces time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages (in case you missed the beep the 1st time)
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

  As soon as I switched my iPhone on after updating I instantly recognized that everything was snappier. The contact list loaded must faster, the scrolling is smoother and I now don’t feel worried about stressing it to crashing point.

The two fixes I am most happy about are the faster backup times and faster application install. Like many other people I experienced 20 minute backups that didn’t even work when I was forced to restore my iPhone. That was annoying. Now, after the 2.1 update, the backup took about 20 seconds. The is a massive improvement which I am so happy about. I can now quickly sync my iPhone before I leave the house without having to furiously cancel the backup.

The second fix I am really happy about is Applications.  Applications now load lightning fast, about 20 seconds from my experience. This is down from around 3 minutes of hell when my iPhone refused to do anything until the application installed.

There are more signal bars in more places but at the moment, I don’t know if there are less call drops because I never had any. Similarly for the battery, it will take a full day of normal use for me to see if that battery life is better.

The new Genius feature has been implemented very well. It works just like iTunes 8, no compromises for being on a mobile device, you can do it all (including saving Genius playlist!)

I’d also like to include a new, unmentioned feature: New 3G, EDGE and GPRS icons in the status bar. However useless and insignificant, I still wanted to mention it. Let me have my fun.

I’m confident that this update will quell all the uproar about the iPhone and that we will all be able to live in peace and harmony with our revolutionary phones/digital music players/mobile internet devices (not that I experienced many of the earth shattering, God forsaken imperfections with the iPhone. Were they really that bad?) Meanwhile, you can check up with Engadget to see what their response to the update was