Test Shows iPhone Download Speeds Fall Significantly After 2.0.2 Upgrade

10:23 am, August 20th, 2008, Lonnie Lazar

The iPhone 2.0.2 upgrade seems to have caused a significant drop in download speeds, according to statistics gathered by the Test My iPhone website.

The site, which allows iPhone users to test their iPhone’s download and upload speeds, shows that speeds for iPhones tested in the past 24 hours are significantly slower than the average speed in tests done prior to Monday’s release of the 2.0.2 firmware upgrade.

Prior to the upgrade, the average iPhone download speed is 2227.93 kbps (averaged from nearly 600,000 total speed tests made at the site).

But in tests made over the past 24 hours, the average is just 1429.31 kbps.

That’s a decrease of nearly 36 percent.

With widespread reports of 3G connection issues, the drop in download speeds seems to indicate that instead of fixing connectivity problems, the 2.0.2 update has actually made things worse. However, there could be several reasons for the speed decrease — from meteorological conditions to a spike in traffic on AT&T’s network.

The speed decrease may simply be  a bug in the site’s reporting tool. The average global download speed and the average upload speeds are the same: Both are 2227.93, which looks fishy.

We have contacted the site for further information, but have yet to hear back from them.

Apple released the 2.0.2 firmware for the iPhone a couple of days ago with cryptic release notes indicating “bug fixes.”

By yesterday afternoon, however, it seemed the company may be playing whack-a-mole with some issues, including widely reported 3G reception problems, and that disaffected users may be waiting until September for another shot at stable functionality across the iPhone product line.

Steve Jobs has written at least one iPhone customer, admitting that up to 2% of the iPhones out there could be suffering from “a known iPhone bug” that crashes 3rd party apps and will be fixed in the promised September 2.1 firmware release.

One thing is certain, with millions of iPhones now in the stream of commerce and credible expectations of Apple selling another several million in the next four months, if things are really broken the problem will soon move beyond a couple hundred complaints on Apple’s support forum.

Posted by Lonnie Lazar in Software, iPhone, iPhone 3G | Comment on this article