iPhone 3G Case Cracks

A couple mornings ago I read somewhere online (Engadget, CrunchGear, iLounge, tuaw, AppleInsider, ars technica) that some owners of white iPhone 3Gs were reporting cracks in the plastic case back. I saw some photos and wondered what had happened to that poor iPhone to make it crack like that. 

So I pulled out my black iPhone 3G and sure enough there was a similar crack in between the headphone jack and sim card slot. Further inspection revealed no fewer than nine smaller cracks all located near the headphone jack or physical buttons along the top and left side. I would post photos, but I haven’t been able to take any photos where you can actually see the cracks – no macro lens.

It should be noted that I have never dropped, crushed, or otherwise abused this iPhone. It has been babied. At night it sleeps on a custom bed made of Swedish Tempur-material. OK, that last part’s not true, but I really have treated it with the utmost care.

In fact I would guess that most owners of black iPhone 3Gs haven’t even noticed cracks. In the more harsh light at my office I can see 10, but at home I can only see the largest one that I first noticed near the headphone jack.

I have spoken to Apple and opened a case with them about it. They said they would replace it at an Apple store or through the mail, but that if I wanted a “service phone” in the meantime I would have to pay $29 or buy Apple Care. I told them I wasn’t willing to pay any amount of money to replace something with manufacturers defects, and that I’m also not willing to go without my phone for a week. Frankly at this point I’d rather wait and see what Apple will do about it since I have no reason to believe a new phone would be any less prone to cracking. 

I was going to post a link to the thread on Apple’s support forum where we discussing this, but as you can see it has been deleted. Beyond Lame. [EDIT: apparently this was due to "polling", people were asking what the 4th and 5th digits of the cracked iPhone serial numbers were to determine when they were manufactured] There’s a new one here - let’s see how long it lasts.

I also spoke to my local AT&T store where I purchased my phone on day 1. They said they would replace the phone inside of 30 days, but they have none in stock. I asked if they could put me on a wait list or notify me when they have new stock, but they said they would not. They said that if I could not get it replaced within 30 days at the store that they would not honor the warranty regardless of the fact that I told them of the issue well within the 30 days. Complete nonsense.

We’ll see what happens from here.

UPDATE: Over the weekend I checked the iPhones at my local AT&T store. Two out of the three had cracks near the headphone jack similar to mine. I know it’s hardly an adequate sample size, but of the four iPhones present at the time 75% of them had cracks. This would seem to indicate that the issue is pretty widespread. I imagine Apple is preferring to take care of it quietly at this point; I just hope we get some confirmation that the defect has been corrected.

FINAL UPDATE: It’s now 4 months later and I happen to be in the vicinity of an Apple Store. I took my now-even-more-cracked-than-last-reported iPhone in and made an appointment with an Apple Genius. He was genial, quickly offered me a new iPhone after inspecting mine with something that looked like what doctors use to look in your ears. I left with a shiny new iPhone, free of cracks which also seems to have a snappier home button and a quieter vibrator, and a receipt acknowledging that my iPhone had be cracked by no fault of mine.

A day later (yesterday) I noticed that it has a a dead pixel – so I’m headed back tomorrow (I don’t think they are open on Christmas). So almost a happy ending. All in all though the Apple Genius experience was great.