If you follow me on Twitter than you know I did the unthinkable today, I upgraded my iPhone to firmware 3.0. I refer to it as the unthinkable because I am not an iPhone developer and didn’t download the firmware from Apple’s website, instead I acquired it from bittorrent. This may terrify many of you and I’m sure most would rather wait until June 17 to get the official download from Apple but for some of us that is just too long to wait.
I actually downloaded it last night but didn’t muster up the courage to install it until this afternoon. The update process only took about 10-15 minutes and once finished all my settings were restored from the backup I had created by syncing just before the firmware update.
I’m not going to post links to the firmware or explain exactly how to install it because I can’t find the torrent page that I downloaded it from and if you don’t know how to choose an ipsw file to restore from you probably shouldn’t be doing this anyway. But, if you remember that it is firmware version 7A341 I’m sure you’ll be able to find it, the instructions are usually posted in the description of the torrent.
Everything seems much faster, I don’t think it is just a placebo effect either, I noticed a significant increase in page loads on some web pages and haven’t experienced the very common keyboard lag while typing. Copy and paste is great but I still haven’t found any real use for it and Find My iPhone is pure genius.
I am running the first generation iPhone so there are some features that I haven’t been able to experience but what I have I love.
One feature that doesn’t get talked about often enough on many of the blogs out there is the 30 second jump back button while listening to podcasts and audiobooks. It is a life saver. When listening to long podcasts it is very difficult to just skip back 10-15 seconds just to re-listen to something that you missed. The best option was to hold down the previous button and wait for it to rewind, but this 30 second skip makes it so much easier.
Getting 3.0 on my current iPhone hasn’t changed my mind about purchasing the iPhone 3GS though. I know that other’s situations are going to be different, having to pay an extra $200 or so to upgrade from a standard iPhone 3G will help sway you one way or the other but as I said above I’m using the first generation iPhone. 3G and GPS are becoming features that I really long for (my area didn’t have 3G until about 6 months ago). 3.0 is fantastic and I’m really going to enjoy it on my old hardware until I get my iPhone 3GS. I still haven’t pre-ordered it yet but I will be doing so in the next couple of days.
Here’s all the screenshots I’ve taken with my newly updated iPhone:
Update 6/12/09: I have begun experiencing keyboard lag again. I’m not sure why Apple can’t fix this problem. I know for sure that this problem wasn’t as prevalent back in the 1.0 days, why this isn’t on the top of Apple’s priority list is beyond me. On the other hand, with the faster processor in the iPhone 3GS this problem might not even exist.
Update 6/12/09: 9 to 5 Mac has posted an article showing how to enable tethering on the iPhone 3.0 Gold Master. I haven’t tried it myself but for those who are willing to risk bricking your phone head on over and try it out.
