iPhone Firmware 2.1 Release Coming Friday

The next iPhone firmware update will be released this Friday, according to Steve Jobs at Apple's Let's Rock event in San Francisco. The new version will include fixes for many ongoing problems reported by users in version 2.0.1 and 2.0.2. On the list of fixes is a solution to the application crashing problem, battery life improvement, faster iTunes backup speeds, and other bug fixes.

In addition, firmware 2.1 is purported to solve many connectivity issues and reduce the number of dropped calls. The download will be free for iPhone users, although iPod Touch users who haven't already upgraded to 2.0 will have to shell out $9.95 for the upgrade. Along with the firmware, iTunes has been updated to version 8.0 and is already available for download.

Jobs did not mention the push notification service that application developers are hoping for in iPhone firmware 2.1. The API was seeded to developers in July with the second beta release of the firmware. Background push notification will allow apps to receive data such as counter badges, pop-up messages, and audio alerts from a third party server while the application is not running. The third party server will ping Apple's notification service, which will relay the data to the application.