Apple iOS 8 Causing Apps To Crash More Often While iOS 8.0.1 Expected To Bring Multiple Bug Fixes

Mobile applications on devices running Apple’s new iOS 8, which was released last week, are crashing more frequently than they used to on the older version of the operating system, a new report said. Another report claimed that the company has already provided carrier partners with a new version of the latest firmware, which is likely to fix several bugs.

According to a report by Crittercism, a San Francisco-based analytics firm, the iOS 8 firmware update causes apps made by Facebook, Dropbox and other companies to crash more than 3 percent of the time, which is about 67 percent more than the frequency seen on the iOS 7, Bloomberg reported, adding that many customers have complained about the issue on Apple’s App Store.

“We at Crittercism have analyzed data across iOS users between September 17th and September 22nd, and found that app crash rates across all devices running iOS 8 landed at 3.56%,” a blog post on the Crittercism website said. “On the same devices running iOS 7.1, apps only crashed 2% of the time, though that figure is up from 1.6% in March. So, who would ever crash Apple’s party? We would.”

Crittercism also found that older devices were more likely to be affected by the glitch, compared to new ones. For example, the apps crash rate on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c and iPhone 4S was 3.57 percent as of Sept. 22, while apps on the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus crashed 2.63 percent and 2.11 percent of the time, respectively.

According to Andrew Levy, Crittercism’s CEO, iOS 8 includes more than 4,000 new functions and changes that developers are struggling to adapt to, while new coding language could also be a factor causing the crashes.

“It just goes to show how hard it is to test everything before it’s sent out into the wild,” Levy told Bloomberg, adding that Apple will address these issues with iOS 8 in future updates to the platform.

Meanwhile, MacRumors reported Tuesday that an update to iOS 8, taking the firmware version to 8.0.1, is already being tested by Apple’s carrier partners. The iOS 8.0.1 update, which is expected to be released soon, is likely to fix many of the bugs.

Here is a list of the issues -- provided by MacRumors -- that are expected to be fixed in the iOS 8.0.1 update:

• Phone: Fixes bugs that affect call forwarding and freezing when accessing visual voicemail
• Keyboard: Fixes a bug that makes the keypad disappear while entering iCloud Keychain verification codes
• Safari: Addresses a problem with videos occasionally not playing
• Sharing: Fixes a bug related to AirDrop support for Passbook passes
• VPN: Fixes an issue with installing VPN profiles

Following the rollout of iOS 8, many users had complained of issues they faced while downloading the update, which requires up to 5.8 GB of available storage on the device if downloaded over-the-air. Users without the required storage on their device have to delete or move memory-gouging apps, photos and videos off their device to download the update.