Apple seems content with leaving the 2G phone's baseband alone for now, it works very well. This means that iPhone 2Gs which were upgraded to 2.0 using Pwnage can be upgraded to 2.2 using iTunes. The iPhone will remain SIM unlocked although the phone will not be Jailbroken and currently there is no version of Pwnage which will Jailbreak 2.2 (the dev team is working on one).
After upgrading my 3G last night, I updated my wife's unlocked 2G via iTunes this morning. We don't really care about Jailbreaking her iPhone at this time...
The iPhone 2G running on T-Mobile USA with 2.2.
The 2.2 update includes (from the Apple email):
- Google Street View. Street View takes you on a virtual walking tour: Navigate street-level photographs of places you've located in Maps. Public Transit and Walking Directions.Get walking directions, find public transit schedules, check fares, and estimate your travel time.
- Get access to millions of free podcasts on the iTunes Store via Wi-Fi or your cellular network.
- A new search-friendly user interface, better performance, and more stability make Safari even easier to use.
- Take a shortcut from any Home screen back to your first Home screen by pressing the Home button
- Display address of dropped pins
- Share location via email
- Decrease in call setup failures and dropped calls
- Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings
- Resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
- Improved formatting of wide HTML email
- Improved sound quality of Visual Voicemail messages
My impressions so far:
- Google street is a little creepy and has a big brother dimension when you locate and view your own house from the street. But the walking and transit information is great.
- Safari seems much faster, although I do not like the way they have search box is squeezing out the address bar. I don't understand what was so hard about pressing the magnifying glass to bring up search.
- I am up to four home screens and new apps install on the last screen, so an easy way to move a shortcut to the 1st home screen is handy.
- The AT&T coverage in my house is poor and I do get a fair amount of failed/dropped calls, so I hope this helps. The T-Mobile coverage in my house works great with the 2G and I believe they share 2G coverage in Washington, DC so it is definitely the 3G's baseband software that has issues. On the positive side, if there is one with dropped calls, AT&T does not decrement your minutes if the call does not complete successfully. I will update my findings next weeks to see if there is an improvement.
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