Apple releases iOS 6.1.1 to fix iPhone 4S issues

Supplemental update promises to fix cellular performance issues with the iPhone 4S, though did not go out to other models.

Apple has put out a supplemental update to iOS 6.1 for iPhone 4S owners following issues with cellular performance.

iOS 6.1.1, which was released to developers last Wednesday, went out to iPhone 4S owners as a free update this afternoon. In the release notes, Apple says the update "fixes an issue that could impact cellular performance and reliability for iPhone 4S."

The update did not go out to owners on other iOS devices, including newer versions of the iPhone, or cellular-enabled models of the iPad.

Apple's release of iOS 6.1 near the end of January brought 4G LTE support for more carriers on Apple's newest devices, along with a feature that lets users purchase movie tickets from Fandango after finding showtimes using Siri. Apple also returned the option for iTunes Match subscribers to download individual songs from iCloud.

Other changes included new boarding pass behavior in Apple's Passbook software, tweaks to Safari, reworked music playback controls from the lock screen, and a back-end change in Apple's mapping software.

Despite a quick uptake by iOS users, iOS 6.1 has been the cause of headaches for some companies, including phone carrier Vodafone. Last week the company sent a message to its subscribers, urging them not to update to Apple's latest because of "difficulty in connecting to the network to make or receive calls or texts or to connect to the Internet."

Along with the Vodafone message, there were also some logging issues discovered between Apple's Mail app and Microsoft Exchange, forcing some corporate IT departments to outright block iOS 6.1 devices from accessing company e-mail.

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Vodafone apologises for Blackberry fault

Mobile operator Vodafone (VOD.L) apologised on Friday after some customers using Research in Motion's (RIM.TO) Blackberry handset lost emails in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Vodafone, the world's second-largest mobile operator with 407 million customers globally, said the problem was due to a router error and said services were now being restored.
"We apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused and we will provide updates as necessary," the group said in a statement.
RIM, which has been hit before by high-profile outages in the last two years that affected millions of customers, said it was supporting Vodafone's efforts to resolve the issue.
Users on Twitter also reported problems with accessing emails on Blackberries but it did not appear to be a widespread outage.
"Vodafone can confirm that some BlackBerry customers experienced issues with their data services this morning in Europe, Middle East and Africa," it said.
"Services are in the process of being restored and we continue to monitor the situation closely."
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vodafone to cut free social media and adjust billing or some customers

Vodafone Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of Vodafone's customers will start to notice their data quota vanish quicker than usual after the telco announced changes to take effect on February 13.

One of the changes will mean prepaid customers' access to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace will no longer be free.

The other change will see the telco begin billing data usage in 1 megabyte blocks with a minimum "session" of 1 megabyte on all prepaid plans.

This second change will mean that whenever a notification or email is pushed to a customer's smartphone, it will be charged at 1 megabyte, regardless of whether only a few kilobytes of data were used.

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The move comes after Optus stopped offering unmetered social networking access on its contract plans in December.

"No one likes to have to pay for something that they were ordinarily getting for free," said Elise Davidson, a spokeswoman for the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the peak body that represents consumers on communications issues. "But Vodafone remain one of the cheaper providers when it comes to prepaid. Because this only affects prepaid plans, customers are free to go elsewhere."

Ms Davidson said the change to bill in 1 megabyte blocks for some customers would mean that their data would disappear quicker, but noted that other carrier's prepaid customers, like Optus, were billed in a similar way.

"If you are getting your emails pushed from Microsoft Exchange every 15 minutes, that's 4 megabytes an hour," Ms Davidson said. "People are therefore going to have to look at the settings on their phones in terms of the push notifications if they want to minimise the data that they are using."

Vodafone spokeswoman Karina Keisler said the telco would start billing for social networking access because it was becoming "confusing" for customers who were using different apps to access their social networks on their smartphones.

Under existing arrangements, Ms Keisler said that if a customer used Twitter but accessed it through an app like HootSuite, then it counted towards their metered data anyway and that some customers didn't realise this.

It was only access through Twitter, Facebook or MySpace's official app or website that was free.

"Some of our customers found these charges confusing," Ms Keisler said.

The change in some plans from billing in 25 kilobyte blocks to 1 megabyte blocks was attributed to Vodafone bringing all of its plans into line.

Ms Keisler said affected customers initially "will notice that they will reach their credit limit quicker", but pointed out that there were a "range of options" available to them when assessing their current plan. One of those options was to change plans, another to purchase a data pack.

When Vodafone reviewed its 2.6 million prepaid customer's usage patterns, Ms Keisler said 117,000 were identified as being potentially affected by the prepaid plan changes.

Telco analyst Foad Fadaghi said Vodafone offering free social networking on prepaid plans wasn't sustainable, but something that would have lured quite a few customers.

"From a competitive standpoint it might put Vodafone at a disadvantage if some of the resellers continue to offer better deals," Mr Fadaghi said.

He added that the changes were unlikely to be popular among users.

"It might encourage prepaid customers – who tend to be quite receptive to churning between carriers – to shop around," he said.

"That might not be so good for Vodafone if they start losing customers because of it."

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