You would think the iPhone's touch screen--the hallmark of the whole dang thing--would last for more than five months. Well, think again.
After a particularly wet bike ride on Saturday here in the Bay Area, my iPhone got somewhat damp. (You know, the type of rain that soaks through a coat but doesn't ruin anything.) After the ride, I wanted to text people and noticed the top row of the text keyboard was not responding. I had to press, no squish, down to get a letter. And the cursor would flip out. And the screen looked bad when I did so, just like when you press down on an LCD screen too hard.
After a reset, power-cycle and testing out different touch-based functions (aren't they all?), I was convinced I needed to get help at the Apple store. I made an appointment online for the next day. (All the Saturday appointments were gone by the time I looked online.)
The next day, I found out I wasn't the only one who had a "dead zone" on their screen. The guy next to me at the Genius Bar had the same problem. After attempting a restore, the Apple clerk (who asked me to write that customer service was fast and efficient--it wasn't) brought out a white box (a coffin I thought?) with a new iPhone in it. The clerk said Apple would exchange my phone, and there'd be no charge. It was exactly as I had expected.
The clerk swapped my SIM card out, with a pin conveniently stored in his name tag, and I was on my way, after half an hour.
What surprised was was how all of my settings had been "restored"--ringtones, photos, SMS messages, IMAP settings. The iPhone was activated by AT&T in seconds, the transfer of all the junk on my iPhone took about 30 minutes. Not too bad.
The downsides: the process was a bit of a pain and the restore missed a few pictures I took. (I have to re-assign all the pictures to particular contacts again.) Also, it's a little distressing that such an integral feature failed after five months. The clerk who helped me did say that the technology was very new, and that, as an early adopter, I should have expected as such.
Yeah, the iPhone sucks in my opinion. Although I'm a big Apple fan, and have purchased 3 of their notebooks within the past year as well as 3 iPods, the iPhone didn't strike any interest to me. First, I've had Cingular before and to me the service was not that great compared to other providers in my area. Second, the wireless Cingular offers (EDGE)is definitely one of the worst. Finally, I don't put music into my phone because it takes a lot of the charge, and having touchscreen would most likely freeze the system up.
ReplyDeleteI even don't like the Treo I own because of it.
No doubt Apple makes great products that are better than other manufactures. However, anything in the first generation is most likely going to have problems.
ReplyDelete