I love the iPhone.   I bought mine a year ago, actually the day of the product launch.  I didn’t have to queue for it - the SoHo store was strangely subdued by 8.30pm on the launch day.  So, I was rather sad when that particular iPhone broke.  The poor thing thought the headphones were plugged in when they weren’t.  So, I took it into the Genius Bar and received a replacement unit. 2 days later the earpiece speaker blew, so went back to the Genius Bar and received another replacement.

A day after that replacement #2 started to reset itself.  I tried restoring and the damn thing reset during the restoration.  Dead as a doornail.

Went back to the Genius bar and the chap set up replacement #3 which promptly died.  The genius said it might be the SIM card until he tried replacement #4 which worked.

That was Monday.  Today, Wednesday, Replacement #4 just reset itself and its touch screen no longer works, even after restoring.  So, yet another trip to the bloody Genius Bar beckons.

Beyond bad luck, I think there’s an easy answer to this:  each replacement is a refurbished unit, which itself was sent back for some malfunction.  There haven’t been any new first-generation iPhones available for quite some time, so there is no option but to replace defective units with previously defective units.  Needless to say, this isn’t the way to win and retain corporate clients.