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Irony: Apple’s smallest iPhone firmware update borked my iPhone 3GS

Irony: Apple’s smallest iPhone firmware update borked my iPhone 3GS

Apple released firmware update 3.01 for the iPhone yesterday via iTunes. This small update addresses the SMS security vulnerability made public at a security convention.

That’s a pretty minor change, right? Well, the nearly 300 meg download (since Apple replaces the entire OS with each firmware update rather than doing partial code tweaks like Nokia’s Symbian S60) seemed to download and install perfectly. Honestly, I’ve never had problems with iPhone firmware updates and I’ve had the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and the speedy new iPhone 3GS.

Since this was such a “small update” and my iPhone 3GS had started with a virgin profile in iTunes with the 3.0 OS (I didn’t try to glom my old model iPhone’s backup onto the new 3GS), I though I was golden. Well, the iPhone booted up just fine and iTunes re-synced it.

Then I discovered not a single one of my third party apps would run. I’d tap the icon, the screen would show the app’s splash screen for just under a second, then blammo, back to the home screen. All the built-in apps ran fine though. I have 3 pages of apps installed and they’re pretty mainstream– stuff like the New York Times Reader, Amazon Reader, Facebook and Need for Speed.

So I wipe out the iPhone and restore it. I really have nothing better to do on a Friday night, right? After an hour of that fun, still the same problem. Grrr… So much for playing NFS and my favorite slots game in front of the TV for what’s left of my Friday night.

What cured it? Starting from scratch. I set it up as a new iPhone, then re-selected and installed my apps, videos, music and every other piece of goodness normally crammed on an iPhone.

All is well, a day later.

[Thanks: http://www.mobiletechreview.com]

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