So I’ve been having more than my share of iPhone problems. Suffice it to say they were slightly more than annoying and the 2.1 didn’t fix them. So I decided to take it to the genius bar to get a replacement. I had to do this with my 1g iPhone due to a bad battery. That time just walked up to the genius bar and they handed me a new phone.

So I thought I’d do that again. Walked to my local apple store. “Appointments only.” What? But the genius was nice enough to perform a restore on my secure deleted the night before iPhone. I was thankful because I didn’t have an appointment. Told me if I was still having problems to make an appointment and they’d take care of it.

So I went home and that night my problems were still evident. So I made an appointment with another apple store because it had a next day appointment.

So I went to my appointment with my iPhone and the SO’s iPhone, which was exhibiting slightly similar problems and some others. I was just expecting a replacement so I was in the midst of secure deleting her phone.

(I should mention here that in the comment section of my appointment I noted I went to the first apple store sans appointment and that they restored and I was having problems still and thought I might just need a replacement. I was upfront about it.)

So I go to my appointment tell the genius what’s going on. He tells me that in the future to not secure delete the phone prior to bringing it in so they can read the logs off the phone. He looks for signs of user damage (of which there is none, honestly). Asks me if I want to just replace both phones. I say yes. He heads to the back to presumably get replacements.

The genius comes back out and tells me they’ve decided that the problems sound like ATT issues and they can’t replace the phones. I can pretty much assure you, it’s not ATT issues I’m having. He tells me to go to AT&T (weird that sometimes iPhone auto corrects “att” to art and sometimes to AT&T) for a host of possible things.

Much like the iPhone buying experience I leave two stores in two days with zero new iPhones.

If you ask me they probably think I did something to my phone, hack, jailbreak, or otherwise. I’ve done none. I realize the need to read logs. And I have basic confidence that if I had brought in my phone with my info on it, apple would secure delete it too. But fuck that! I’m supposed to trade in my phone for a replacement without being 100% certain that all of my information is wiped securely from the phone?! No way no how no McCain as they say. Did I have anything important on it? No. But that’s not quite the point.

So I still have my crap iPhone. Maybe I’ll try again in the near future. Maybe I live with it. Maybe I try to get an unlocked android htc. Who knows.

(By the way, I wrote this on my iPhone and at least in the wordpress app, with 2.1, keyboard lag isn’t 100% solved. Ugh I have bad luck with the iPhone 3g)