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What have you experienced with the iPhone’s 2.2 Update?
Now that we’ve had a week or so to let the update settle it in lets take a look at the highlights and
the cruel reality for some users.

With the release the 2.2 firmware update for the iPhone released Nov 21st we are now enjoying
some very exciting features such as Street View Podcast downloads and a quicker response from applications. But has this once again compromised our OS experience?

The new update brought you Google Maps Street View which displays a 360°
horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic street-level view of cities. T-Mobile’s
new Android phone was the first to offer the Street View service coming pre-installed
on the device. Street View is not available in my Canadian city and I was surprised to see
no major Canadian cities had it. I have however walked down the virtual streets of San Fran and New York and at the risk of sounding like a geek.. it blew my mind.

Google is examining the possibility of adding major Canadian cities to Street
View, however the Canadian privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddard, like many
other countries made it clear that unless major alterations were made such as
blurring citizens, licence plates, house etc. Street View would not be developed
in Canada. Jennifer Stoddart stated Google Street View may violate Canada’s personal
information protections and electronic documents act.
Google hopes to eventually have the world completed.
Cities in the U.S. with Street View.

To use Street View just start up your native iPhone application “Maps”
and choose a destination supported by Street Views. On searching your destination you will see an orange icon next to the city title.

Apple also added a share function to maps in 2.2 which will
send your location to e-mail, pasting your Google URL in the body of the email.
Just drop a pin to find you current location and tap the blue arrow in the bubble
displaying your location. This will launch your location details giving you the option to share in email.

Apple gives podcasters a breakthrough allowing iPhone users to download podcasts over 3G or WiFi to the iPhone on the fly. Saves time, no syncing with iTunes required. Podcasts over 10MB can only be downloaded over a WiFi connection. For me personally,
this does not help as all the podcasts that I subscribe to are all over 10MB, and WiFi is not yet that ubiquitous in my area.

App store now shows you multiple pics of apps before you buy.
Choose an app in the app store and double click on its screen shot activation
a slideshow of pics to go through.
Users will be able to make a more educated buy!

Noticeable improvements to the Safari browser. Greater stability, specifically when typing within text boxes on Safari. Additionally they moved the Google search next to the address bar which I am luke warm about.

Unfortunately while in the process of fine-tuning the OS and fixing some bugs,
Apple has seemed to create issues for some users.
Many users have complained that their pictures saved prior to 2.2 have become blurry and resolution degraded in the photo roll. Photo’s hadn’t actually lost resolution but were viewed this way on the device and when transferring to other devices.
E-mails have reportedly been disappearing from inboxes as well. Others have complained about audio apps not working due to the drastic changes in the audio core module, leaving apps unusable for weeks. Isn’t this something Apple should be notifying developers of ?

At the end of the day as fun as the features like Street View are, it doesn’t
make up for the fact that the 2.2 update has caused some serious frustration for some. This may cause some iPhone enthusiasts to be reluctant to update immediately as the updates sometimes feel like Apple is still beta testing.

Please leave me your comments I’d like to hear about your experiences.