I blogged here how I’d swapped my 1st gen iPhone out 4 times for hardware problems.  So I had under my ownership a total of 5 iPhones and now as the owner of a 2nd gen, 3G-network iPhone the number is now 6.

Tomorrow it will be 7.  The casing has cracked, but I haven’t dropped it or rough-housed it at all.  It drops 1 out of 3 calls. Accessing the contacts takes about 5 seconds.  And the 3G data connection during peak hours is non existent. Yesterday (after I had applied the 2.01 firmware patch) a dropped call managed to lock the entire phone and required a reset.  Having owned mobile phones for the last 13 years, I can’t remember having such problems placing and receiving calls.

These don’t seem to be isolated to me, and don’t seem to be the fault of at&t.

Of course I’ve applied some introspection and checked with my neighbors that they aren’t running giant Tesla coils in their apartments.

So, the well trodden path to the Genius Bar will be walked again.