Replacing the iPhone

My iPhone hasn’t been happy lately and I finally got around to taking it down to the Apple Store for a check-up. Symptoms included poor battery life and a wonky home button that felt like it was grinding or clicked multiple times when pressing it down. Unfortunately neither of these issues were 100% reproducible and so I was turned down a replacement on my first visit. I decided to try and document the issues as best I could so that when I experienced a problem again, I had proof and could use that in an attempt to get a new iPhone.

A couple of days after my first visit, my phone started to experience the same button issue that I had complained about previously, but it seemed more pronounced and definitely lasted longer this time than it had before. Once I figured out that it was going to last for a while, I stopped playing with it at work so that I could get it on video (audio, mostly) at home. When I got home, I took out the wife’s pink Sony camera and recorded it making the strange clicking sounds. I posted it to YouTube, made an appointment for the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and then headed in with the wife and her working iPhone. I spoke to the same guy that I had previously and pulled up the YouTube video with the wonky button audio on it with my wife’s iPhone and that was good enough for him. I walked out with a new iPhone 3G. Great!

Unfortunately it turns out everything was not so great with it. The replacement wound up having scan lines across the screen that you could see when menus changed (animated) or if you moved the phone up and down slowly. They were really annoying. The tint of the screen seemed very “cool” compared to the “warmer” screen tint that I was used to with my previous iPhone 3G and my wife’s. I made another appointment for the Genius Bar. We got there and spoke to another employee who took the phone to the back and played with it for a few minutes. He came back out and let me know that the scan lines gave him a headache and that he’s going to replace the iPhone because of that. Apparently Apple sometimes uses different screens in different models of their iPhones and the bluer/cooler characteristic of my screen was considered normal and my new replacement might be the same. Fortunately it was not and the new replacement does not have any scan lines.

Even though I’ve had more issue with iPhones than any other phone, I can still say that I greatly prefer them to any other phone that I’ve used (and I’ve used practically all of them). Being able to go direct to the manufacturer when there’s an issue with the device is also a huge plus. I’m well outside of my 30 day return period to the AT&T store (I bought the phone when it released this year), and if I had anything other than an iPhone I’d have to either mail it out to the manufacturer and be without a phone for who knows how long or buy something new. I really enjoy being able to take my iPhone somewhere that I can show someone the issue with the device and walk out with a new one that same hour. It’s great. To ensure that I’ll be able to do this into the future, I also bought AppleCare for both of our iPhones to extend the service coverage from 1 year to 2. Hopefully we won’t need to use them, but it’s good to know that the coverage is there and that the replacement process is very quick and painless if we do.

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