So, with my iPhone 3GS barely a few months old, this week it started doing random restarts. Oh joy, I thought. It’s a great little phone, computer and daytimer and a million other things, but it wouldn’t run properly for more than a few minutes, it becomes the brick of life.
It was an odd electrical show: white streaks back and forth over black–never colour–and then a long, boring restart that couldn’t be shortened with a power button-home button reset. It was draining! It started being a repeatable, consistent failure, so a few days ago I visited the Apple store at Yorkdale. According to their diagnostics, the issue happened mostly during the use of several key apps–my favourites of course. The iPhone was not working when it was supposed to be doing teh things I want it to do. The genius showed me the diagnostic: not as many failures indicated as I experienced, so it didn’t pick up all of them; a bunch of hard resets, showing some user frustration. They recommended resetting all settings having learned that my restore from backup didn’t correct the issue, and then if that didn’t work suggested a restore as new. I tried that and things got worse today, so back to the Apple store I went.
You know how you’re at the store wanting to show them a repeatable consistent problem, and it doesn’t show up at all? That didn’t happen! I had experienced the problem most during spotlight searches: home-home, type a few letters, blammo! The genius tried that, nothing. I said, try that again: and off went my iPhone 3GS into its little coma dance. A long, long, long restart. As soon as it danced electric, she said, “I’m glad it did that in front of me. Let’s replace it.”
As an aside, the replacement of my black iPhone 3GS 32GB was with a *new* black iPhone 3GS 32GB. It was not a refurb. It came in a new black box, and my genius stated: “This is *not* a refurb. Yes, the box is different, but the phone is new.” Makes sense; how many refurb 3GS’ would there even be right now?
Sadly, I lost my Case-Mate Stealth backing. I also had to buy a replacement Power Support antiglare film. But fortunately, when I asked if someone could install the film for me, she found another genius who was an expert. I bowed the Wayne’s World-Alice Cooper “not worthy” sign to him after he replaced the antiglare shield in seconds. That alone made up for having to replace the screen protection.
So my pristine iPhone 3GS was replaced with a brand new iPhone 3GS. (When I called it “pristine” the genius joked, “Everybody says that!” and examined it closely, found no scratches or marks, and we joked about fingerprints meaning it wasn’t “pristine.”)
So the usual fantastic customer service at Yorkdale continues. Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken two visits, with the first one suggesting this problem was software-related, but it makes sense that Apple will want to investigate all avenues before replacing an $800 phone.
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