Sync only works Intermittently

[tbridge]

Hi all,

I have a client running FMTouch and FileMaker Pro 8.5 together.  For a long time, until she upgraded to the most recent FMtouch and iPhone operating system, everything worked just fine.  After the upgrade, she can only complete syncs about once per five or six times, with constant interruptions.  The wireless network is your basic Apple Airport with WPA encryption, which hasn't changed in the meantime.

What's going on here?

[Michael Petrov]

This is the bug with the latest iPhone operating system. In a significant percentage of cases when you update to iPhone OS 3.0 and restore from backup - some old settings get left behind and make the system go crazy. One side effect is its inability to hold sustained network connections for continuous communication - it works fine for email, web browsing, etc since those use short bursts of data. FMTouch on the other hand needs a constant connection and fails quite often - there are two ways to fix it: restore to 3.0 again but do not restore from backup, a fresh install fixes it. Another counterintuitive solution is to put it into Airplane mode and enable wifi - this seems to stabilize things quite a bit. There isn't anything that we can do about it, unfortunately, and only a fix from Apple can solve this. Another app that is affected is Skype for the iPhone, its calls drop every few minutes when the iPhone is stuck in this state.

Also there were reports that battery life is quite bad when the iPhone has this problem (likely from the constant disconnects and attempts to reconnect).

[tbridge]

This is the bug with the latest iPhone operating system. In a significant percentage of cases when you update to iPhone OS 3.0 and restore from backup - some old settings get left behind and make the system go crazy. One side effect is its inability to hold sustained network connections for continuous communication - it works fine for email, web browsing, etc since those use short bursts of data. FMTouch on the other hand needs a constant connection and fails quite often - there are two ways to fix it: restore to 3.0 again but do not restore from backup, a fresh install fixes it. Another counterintuitive solution is to put it into Airplane mode and enable wifi - this seems to stabilize things quite a bit. There isn't anything that we can do about it, unfortunately, and only a fix from Apple can solve this. Another app that is affected is Skype for the iPhone, its calls drop every few minutes when the iPhone is stuck in this state.

Also there were reports that battery life is quite bad when the iPhone has this problem (likely from the constant disconnects and attempts to reconnect).

Does 3.0.1 fix this problem?

I'm going to have a mighty frustrated client to do a full wipe...

[reddog]

3.0.1 does not fix it.  I just restored using my backup.  Looks like I will have to do a fresh install or hope 3.1 comes out soon and fixes it.

[reddog]

I did a fresh install of 3.0.1.  It did not fix the problem!  I also tried Airplane mode.  This did not fix it either.  I cannot maintain a network connection long enough to download a DDR.  This is really bad.  Fortunately I found a way to maintain a connection.  Turn off Wi-Fi and make a connection via 3G.  This had no problems.

[Lance]

I've been wrestling with this issue too and here's what I have come up with:

I had to first put the iPhone in DFU mode before it would actually replace the problem files, doing a regular restore didn't fix it in 3 tries.
Instructions for DFU mode are here or can be found on Google of course:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1034

Also I found out that iPhone OS 3 does not play well with WEP wireless security. Changing to WPA improved it's connection considerably, including it's range. BTW, if you have an old iBook or something like I do, it won't support WPA2, also known as WPA-AES. My old clamshell will support WPA which is also known as WPA-TKIP, which seems to work fine with the iPhone as well. WPA2 is reportedly about 10-20% faster if you can use it.