Apple releases iPhone 2.1 update

by Peter Cohen, Macworld.com

As Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised during the “Let’s Rock” press event in San Francisco earlier this week, Apple on Friday delivered iPhone 2.1 Software Update, an update to the software that operates the iPhone.

The 2.1 release contains many bug fixes and improvements, according to Apple, including a decrease in call set-up failures and call drops, significantly improved battery life for most users, dramatically reduced time to back up to iTunes, improved e-mail reliability, notably fetching e-mail from PP and Exchange accounts and faster installation of third-party applications.

Apple indicates that the new 2.1 release also fixes bugs that caused hangs and crashes on systems that use lots of third-party applications, improves performance for text messaging, loads and searches contacts faster, improves the accuracy of the signal strength display for iPhone 3G models, adds a repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages, adds an option to wipe data after ten consecutive failed passcode attempts, and adds Genius playlist creation in iTunes.

The best way to load the 2.1 release is to connect your iPhone to iTunes and synchronize it.