Dust in Your iPhone? It's Time for a New One

The problem with gadgets that "don't have any parts" is that you can't fix even very minor problems. In his biweekly trends column, PM Senior Technology Editor Glenn Derene buys a new iPhone and destroys his old one—all in the name of a little pocket lint.

I generally avoid using my tech columns to complain about glitches and failures of my own gadgets, but I've come to the end of my rope with my iPhone, and the only thing that will make me whole again is a public rant.

The problem began almost imperceptibly several months ago. I found myself pushing my first generation iPhone's "home" button two, sometimes three times before the device would respond. Shortly thereafter, the "sleep/wake" button became less responsive as well. As time went on, I was pushing the buttons four or five times before I'd get a response. They didn't respond to an ordinary push: I'd have to exert multiple foot-pounds of force and hold it to get any sort of reaction from the increasingly fickle iPhone.

As the problem progressed, I became downright shamanistic in my relationship to these mystical buttons. The "home" button responded best to sustained pressure on its upper right corner. The "sleep/wake" button responded best to a quick push of the fingernail dead center. Sometimes, however, the "home" button needed to be coaxed into action. A movement of the finger from the upper right corner to the center might do the trick. Then again, it might not.


I thought maybe the manufacturer-sanctioned brainiacs at my local Apple store Genius Bar might be able to clue me into some trick to the system that I had not yet discovered. So I dragged my wife to the store, where, instead of just answering my question, they had me schedule an appointment. "But I'm just wondering if there is a simple fix for a stuck button?" I asked the salesperson. "Hmm S I don't know about that," said the salesperson, "You'll really have to ask one of the technicians at the Genius Bar."

Wait time: 2.5 hours.

When my time came up, the genius behind the Genius Bar took my phone, plugged it into her diagnostic computer, and one minute later turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, our database says that your phone is no longer under warranty."

"I could have told you that two and a half hours ago," I said. "I just want to know how to fix the stuck buttons. I'll do it myself if I have to."

"Oh, you can't do that," she said. "We don't open these things and fix them here. We just send them to the factory and get a replacement. And the replacement cost of the first-generation iPhone is around $200, which is the cost of a new 3G iPhone."

I bought my iPhone on the first day they were available. At the time, the device cost $600. Such is the price of early adoption. I still stand behind it as a miraculous machine. The user interface is beautifully intuitive. Apple made the most of the graphical user interface (GUI) and capacitive multitouch screen. It also added functionality over time, making the device more useful with each update. I was wholeheartedly satisfied with my iPhone. And then it failed me.

I would have understood had the iPhone had a logical meltdown--if my constant scrolling, movie watching and Internet surfing had caused the chip to overheat and fry the circuitry--after all, there are a lot of complex electronics inside its svelte frame. But I was instead confronted with an old-fashioned mechanical failure--I was pretty sure that what was crippling my phone was simply a faulty spring or dirt buildup beneath the plastic button.

On any other phone, I would have pried off the faceplate, popped off the buttons, and used a set of precise tweezers to clean up the debris or bend the appropriate pieces back into place. Then I would have reassembled the thing like new. But there are no seams on the iPhone--thanks the autocratic aesthetic dogma of Steve Jobs and his lead industrial designer Jonathan Ive. To open up an iPhone or iPod is to question the creator himself. It is unfixable.

This is a depressing trend in the engineering world: the sealed machine with no discernable parts. I sometimes feel that, at the age of 35, I am a member of the last generation that grew up in a world of fixable objects. When I was a kid, I had a rotary-dial phone in my room, and when I was bored I used to disassemble it for fun, then put it back together again, just to see if I could get it to work. The phone of my youth rewarded experimentation. My iPhone discourages it.

In the end, I got another iPhone. This device is just too intoxicating in its usefulness and elegance to go without. I have grown to need it--which is part of what made its failure so disappointing. But, being the neurotic tinkerer I am, I couldn't just throw the old one away. Not when a conclusive diagnosis was lying right beneath the surface of its shiny glass face.

I pried off the metal back cover with a flat blade screwdriver, removed all of the tiny screws with my jeweler's screwdrivers and piece by piece worked my way into the machine, back to front. Only after I had dismantled the motherboard, separated the screen and delicately pealed free the "home" button's backplate from the adhesive that had affixed it to the machine's front glass could I see what had disabled my iPhone.


That's right, a year and a half's worth of pocket lint had wedged itself underneath the iPhone's "home" button and compacted to the point where the button couldn't fully depress. (By the way, Mr. Jobs, a simple and inexpensive rubber O-ring would have completely prevented the problem--just a suggestion.) Before dismantling the phone, I had routinely gone over the thing with canned air to work dust out of its crevices, but the tolerances for the home button were so tight that no dust could escape. Now, however, with the iPhone's guts exposed to the world, a quick blast of compressed air cleared away the obstruction in a millisecond. The irony was inescapable--only when I had completely destroyed the iPhone could I fix it.

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