Patch = Format your iPhone?

Not that I'm aware of. I've never had to restore my phone and I started on 2.0. I just update and move on. I do a reset every few days though.

Each person has difference experiences.

For me I have an iPhone, my wife does, and two friends. All of us for each update have had zero issues and have yet to have to do a Restore ourselves.

I use phone daily (phone, iPod app in car, email, games a lot, facebook app, other 3rd party apps, maps, browser, etc).

Maybe one of the things I do (and have my wife do) is we reboot the phone at least once a week (I try to remember each morning when I take it off charger).

Reboot meaning the both button approach waiting for Apple Logo, not turn off and on. Just my experience that by not doing so, memory leaks, etc tend to build up over time and back before I started doing the reboot thing, I did see some issues now and then. I also make sure I do a reboot before any firmware update and also ensure I have the latest iTunes first as many of the firmware updates have been updated the same time as iTunes as they work together for many of the new features each time.

And just for more info, my wife, one of my friends, and I all have had the original iPhone since day 1 and have done each firmware update the day of or day after the firmware was released.

If there is one thing you learn quickly after using Apple products/software it's that they don't do patches. Any upgrade to anything requires complete reinstall of the entire program. iTunes, iPhone firmware updates, Safari, Quicktime, iPod firmware updates; are never just patches. You download the entire package every time and do a total install. You think a patch is 250MB everytime the iPhone gets an update? Or that an iTunes patch is really the ~100MB you download everytime there is a new version?

Next time you update iTunes watch as it renders any short cuts you had made or put in a custom locations be rendered useless and it puts new short cuts all over the place and then you have to remake all your shortcuts again and delete the new ones.

They're not patches. Each release of iPhone software is the entire firmware image.

Incremental updates are problematic and it's easier to release the full update each time.