With the recent release of version 2.2 firmware for the iPhone/iTouch and the attendant stability improvements provided to Apple’s native Web browser, some ask: Is the mobile version of Safari finally a finished, polished product?

I’d say no. True, it’s noticeably less crash-prone just from my couple of days of activity on my iPod Touch, so no complaints there. I could have done without the now ever-present search toolbar, but I can live with it. But those things are nothing more than taking the browser up to zero-basic.

What I’m still waiting for, in this order:

1. Option to kill page auto-refresh
2. Cut-and-paste
3. Flash support

I cannot figure out why Apple sets Safari to automatically refresh content every time it’s called up, since it should be assumed that a mobile browser’s not always going to be connected to the Web. That goes doubly for my iTouch, versus an iPhone (and even iPhones aren’t always going to have a signal). When you restart the browser out of wi-fi range, you’re likely to lose whatever you had been looking at previously, leaving you with a blank white screen. Either kill this behavior or at least make it optional.

Cut-and-paste would make the iTouch that much more useful as a notebook substitute, especially for true mobile blogging. Flash support is, truthfully, a distant third-place request — it only comes up if a site I need to access ends up being completely unusable (and really, that’s more the fault of the website than Safari; if the popularity of the iPhone somehow leads to a decrease in Flash proliferation, I’ll be thrilled).

This is not much in the way of griping. The iTouch remains one of the most satisfying tech-toys I’ve ever bought. I’ve gotten lots of mileage out of it, for both work and play. If Apple addresses those three issues sooner rather than later, the satisfaction level will amp up that much more.