iPhones, iPods, and iPads forum: New iPhone behavior

Okay, to begin with, I have an 8 Gig 1st Gen iPhone, and it has the latest (2.1) firmware (I updated the day t came out). Everything has been working great since the update.

But this morning when I powered the phone on, it didn't come up to the usual password screen... I got the dreaded prompt to connect the iPhone to iTunes (well, perhaps not as "dreaded" as an iPhone that explodes... still). I am getting ready for work, but I need to have the iPhone, so I power on my Power Mac and connect the iPhone. iTunes tells me it can't access the unit because it is locked with a passcode, and to enter it into the iPhone in order to continue.

Long story short, I force the iPhone to shutdown, bring it back up and all is fine. iTune starts to sync the iPhone and I go off to finish getting ready for work. 15 minutes later, the unit is still trying to sync my mail (this still takes forever under the new OS) but I need to leave, so I cancel the sync.

Later, at work, I am using the iPhone on my break, and I access Stocks, Weather, Mail and Safari with no problems. But when I try to access Twitterrific it gives me the "Splash" screen, and then quits. It turns out I can no longer run ANY non-Apple application. I shut it down and bring it up. I force shutdown again. Nothing works, and I now notice that the badges next to NetNewsWire and Shoper (the ones that tell you how many unread posts, etc) are gone.

When I get home, I plan to try a complete sync, and failing that will try to restore, but I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue? I can tell you that I have plenty of unused storage on the iPhone (the capacity bar is somewhere around 60%). iTunes did update an app when I synced last night, but otherwise there've been no changes.