The brand-new radio chip in the Apple iPhone 3G has been causing the company a bit of indigestion in recent weeks as customers complain about dropped phone calls and intermittent connections to the highly touted 3G network. (My own solution was to just switch off the 3G and drop down to AT&T’s slower EDGE network. It might have been my imagination, but it appeared that that the result was better power efficiency, and to my definitely random sample, a more reliable network.)

Several hours ago, Apple shipped its second software update for the new iPhone 3G. Software version 2.02 “fixes bugs,” according to the documentation accompanying the software patch. That has touched off a wave of speculation that this update will fix the new handset’s communications problems. But will it?

So far, Apple is not giving out any meaningful details about what the bug fixes might be. An Apple spokeswoman said that she would check to see if the company could say more.

If Apple won’t be more forthcoming, perhaps iPhone users can help solve the mystery. What changed after you applied the patch?

My own experience is that since updating the handset in a downtown San Francisco high-rise about 15 minutes ago, the handset has on its own shifted back and forth between the older EDGE network and the new 3G network several times. I’m not sure why that’s occurring or what impact it has on reliability.

Silicon Valley engineers have said that there have been international reports of teething problems with the radio chip from Infineon, the German chip maker, which Apple selected as the supplier for the iPhone 3G. Engineers have also said that whatever the problems are, they can be fixed with a software patch and will not require Apple to recall any of the more than a million iPhones it has sold since launching the new version of the phone in July.

Apple has already circulated several versions of another more substantial fix, version 2.1, to its outside software developers, and apparently plans to release it to consumers next month. That patch caused a stir among its programmers this past weekend when the company removed a feature that was intended to allow applications to be awakened remotely.The iPhone will not allow third-party applications to run in the background — supposedly for power efficiency and security reasons. But in the future, it will be possible to alert an application such as an instant message program or a news program to connect to the wireless network and receive information. Apple said that feature was being taken out for more testing.

Source:nytimes