Before the iPhone
Recently, I've been complaining about ATT's service and iPHone pricing models. Thus my wife and I have been rethinking keeping the phones active because the lowest price plan is still a little rich for our blood. When I talk to people about my plight I'm often surprised to learn that other people without iPhones are often paying MORE than me. Wow!
I started revaluating the phone itself and tried to think back to when I bought the phone. This recent post sums up my original decision quite well. Of the reasons he lists there are a couple I like best.
3. Carriers dictated phone designs, features, apps, prices, marketing, advertising and branding
7. Affordable, unlimited data plans as standard were unheard of
11. Without Visual Voice Mail, messages couldn’t be managed non-linearly
18. Phones didn’t come with huge 3.5″ touch screens
19. Pervasive multitouch, gesture-based UI was science fiction
These are the prime reasons why I purchased an iPhone in the first place. Apple started moving the technology and mobile scene in the right direction. For that they certainly deserve their due credit. Hell, the iPhone was almost worth it just for the visual voicemail. Why the hell do I have to listen to an entire message before I can escape and delete? *shudder*
Apple comes through after phone defect
After realizing that my phone just wasn't going to be the same (read: I couldn't delete my web history!). I started realizing that this dead space, which seems to be a general problem resulting from extended use, was actually effecting my normal use. Because the dead strip occurs all the way across in a horizontal bar, it rendered any delete feature inoperable because of its placement in the UI. Scrolling was also negated when I hit the dead zone and would automaticaly select the last value touched. similarly the keyboard, while still operable, was difficult to use since I could now only touch the top of the button.
After explaining the problem to friends the advice was always the same. Take it in to Apple and see what they could do. Since my warranty had expired some time ago, I was certain to get the shaft on this one. However, as my title implies Apple did in fact come through. After a 10 second demonstration of the defect, an Apple genius took my phone, did some searches through what I imagine is their Resolution software, and announced that my phone would be replaced at NO COST. Sweet success. I imagine that they must have a backlog of G1 iPhone that they're now hording for just this purpose. Instead of selling them off, they're leveraging the extra stock to take care of the customers like me who paid a good deal of money for a cool phone.
I just finished restoring the phone and every thing with an exception to my ActiveSync account is working great. This is the second time I've ever visited an apple store and once again walk out enthused about the service. I need to go buy some stock...
My iPhone continues to decline
As if the two dead pixels wasn't bad enough. Now I have a dead space on my screen that doesn't recognize my fingers. I thought maybe it was because I was turning into a vampire, but I had it independently verified. I drug up this image which will help illustrate exactly where its dead.
Right there where it says "Delete All Future Events." Yup that's a no go for my calendar. I don't know exactly what's wrong because the same space on other apps seems to work fine, but I can no longer delete events from my calendar even after a reset. I haven't really noticed it in other applications, but if i move over to another application I can see that the "scrolling" feature breaks and stops working when i run over the dead zone.