SOOPAH256

Last Friday my mom came to me with a sound issue on her iPhone 4. The phone was working perfectly, except for sound playback on the speaker. You could hear everything with a pair of earbuds plugged into the 3.5mm jack, but just nothing when you unplugged it. Not even the volume controls would show up. It was only after some fiddling around that my mom informed me that she had dropped it in the toilet at work. (note: the toilet was unused at the time of dropage)

Once I knew of the damage done, it was obvious to me that tinkering around with the settings would not resolve anything. A peek at the moisture sensor under the dock connector validated the claim, potentially putting the said iPhone out of warranty.

Moisture Sensor Locations (they are the same on the iPhone 4):

Luckily for us, earlier in the day at Apple's "Antennagate" press conferece Steve Jobs explicitly restated Apple's mission to keep customers happy. I thought that in the event that my mom's iPhone was out of warranty, I could try to push our "dissatisfaction with reception quality".

The following Sunday, my mom and I took to the local Apple store in Valley Fair to try for the swap. An elderly Apple employee helped us run some diagnostics and simple tests to verify that the issue wasn't able to be quickly fixed. It was at that point when he checked the moisture sensors to find that indeed it had been exposed to liquid damage, so he took it to the back for further inspection. After a few minutes he came out with good news and a brand new iPhone 4. Since the top moisture sensor (inside the 3.5mm jack) was not triggered, the phone was still under warranty and able to be swapped. Seeing as how the whole phone was submerged under water for a brief moment, my mom and I were curious as to how it avoided being activated. Anyway, the swap took 10 minutes and we were on our way.

So by now, you should know if you'll be getting the iPhone 4 on launch day (6/24). If you were patient enough on Tuesday to keep hammering the pre-ordering system, you were given the coveted reservation notice allowing you to pick up your brand new iPhone 4 next Thursday. It took me a good 90 minutes, but I eventually made my way through the AT&T account verification and reserved my pre-order.

Unfortunately my mom did not. She waited until Tuesday night only to find that the first batch of pre-orders had been spoken for. However, she noticed in one of the FAQs that it might still be possible to snag one on launch day. It's a little hidden away, but if you do some snooping around, you'll find a sort of "loophole" that customers have taken advantage of in the past, allowing customers to buy multiple iPhones/iPads.

With the increasing demand and limited supply for this latest iPhone, I wanted to find out if this policy will still be valid on launch. So I called up my local Apple Store in Valley Fair (the store where my reservation is placed), hoping I could get two questions answered. I spoke with a rep named Tony. According to her, there's no official statement from Apple whether or not a reservation will be needed for each additional iPhone purchased. But if the previous iPad launch is any indication, you probably will be able to with only one reservation. Additionally, it hasn't been stated yet, but there will most likely be a buying limit of two (2) iPhones per customer. I'll try following up later this weekend, in case any new info comes out of Apple HQ. The second question I asked Tony was whether or not there would be a line for overnighters, to which she responded, "only if there's people that line up." So basically...Yes.