68 bugs and counting: Can we expect a firmware update for the iPhone soon?

Folks at AppleHound have just published a comprehensive list of reproduceable bugs after spending around 40 hours with the iPhone. The good part of the news for those who have already bought the iPhone is that overall they found the OS X graphical interface and applications extremely solid.

The list of bugs, a total of 68 of them, range from minor display issues to application crashes and they should be reproduceable by iPhone users. The bugs have been listed after testing on two iPhones, they have also put a disclaimer here by stating that some of the steps required to reproduce unexpected results are obscure and may not occur during normal usage.

This is no mean effort and to top it they have also submitted the bugs to Apple, I am sure Apple wouldn't mind additional QA to help them out in testing this revolutionary phone with OS X running on it. The only serious bug mentioned in the list has been given below:

"The screen will begin flashing off and on when the proximity sensor detects an object for only one second. To reproduce, call a friend -> press the home button -> slowly run your hand over the proximity sensor near the receiver (not the speaker on the bottom of the phone). Move your hand more quickly if the screen turns off and back on once. Move your hand more slowly if the screen doesn't turn off at all. The trick is to cover the sensor for about 1 second. Stop the screen flashing by covering the sensor again for more than 1 second, pressing the home button, or launching an application. The expected result would be for the screen to turn off for a second then come back on without flickering."

iPhone users or those planning to buy the iPhone don't get worried as the best part of the iPhone is the firmware can be easily updated and hence we should expect Apple to release a firmware update for the iPhone fairly soon not only to unlock some of the features missing from the iPhone but also to fix some of the critical bugs reported.

It was quite an exhaustive list to come up with our favorite bug, however it would be good to know from you folks in the comments below or a bug which you found out and is not in the list. Check out the complete list of iPhone bugs here.

[Image courtesy Engadget]