It’s been about a year and a quarter since I first got an iPhone and boy has it been a rocky ride!  I’ve been to the Genius Bar no less than seven times and had my device replaced 5 of those visits, with another where they replaced just the screen for me.  It all started off about two months in, when my 3GS wouldn’t send text messages.  The send bar would get to about the 90% mark, but never complete and send out the message.  This also appeared to affect my phone reception, where I often wouldn’t be able to get a signal.  When I took the phone to the store, I got a new one because they determined that the SIM card was stuck in too tight, which didn’t allow for proper signal reception.

Not long after, my phone slid off my desk onto our concrete floor at work.  The corner was cracked, so I went in to see if they could fix it up for me.  Lucky me, I got a friendly Genius in a good mood, so he took care of it for me.  I even blogged about that visit!  Unfortunately, it seemed that the sleekness of the phone made it prone to dropping, so it kept happening here and there.  One day I noticed that the metal part was splitting away from the plastic, revealing the inner workings of my device.  It was getting a little dusty in there, which was a concern.  I trotted back to the store and was once again given a new one.  This actually was kind of fortunate, since I was going to upgrade to an iPhone 4 and my dad was going to take my phone.  I certainly didn’t want to give him something all beat up, so I kept this one pristine!

I had barely gotten the iPhone 4 for a few weeks when I found that my mic wasn’t working and people couldn’t hear me.  For a phone, that’s a pretty big issue.  After all, the main function of the phone is to make phone calls…  So, I got a replacement and went on my way, but only for a month, when my camera stopped working and only showed me a black screen.  After this replacement, it looked like things would finally be ok.  It had been about a 4-month stretch of problems on a monthly basis, which finally ended in early October.

In mid-July, the Apple Store in Valencia was opening up.  With the promise of a free t-shirt, I was drawn to go to the grand opening.  While in line, I decided to take a few pictures with my phone, only to find that the app would try to open, crash the phone, and then restart it.  I tried again with the same result, so I tried a hard reset.  I got the same error, so at that point I was glad I was at the Apple Store, since I was going to need some help.  Guess what happened at my appointment?  After trying to do a reset via iTunes (and failing), my Genius got me a new phone.  Fancy that.  I was pretty happy since I’d started to get annoyed with the layer of oil that just didn’t seem to get wiped off my phone anymore.  A few taps would make my fingerprints stick and no amount of wiping seemed to slow that process.  Plus, I had dropped it a week or two earlier, chipping off a small part of the corner, so aesthetically my device was no longer in tip-top shape.

I’ve got just a few more weeks before my warranty runs out, and I am debating whether I should pay to extend it for another year.  I would definitely want to upgrade at that point, so I guess the question is if I can prevent any disastrous drops or breakdowns in the next year (or if I could deal with them until it was time for a new device).  I’d like to say I can, but I’m afraid that I’ll regret not paying for the extension.