This just happened to my iphone. It’s apparently called a dead strip. The bottom row (grey area of the home screen) has stopped responding to touch. I can unlock it, so it’s not totally dead. But none of the buttons work on the bottom half inch of my phone. I already did a factory restore and nada. Looks like I’m heading to the Apple store tomorrow. The unfortunate part is I dropped my iphone earlier this year, so they might not replace it for free. They might assume that the error was due to the drop. And I’m pretty sure there’s still a line for iphone 3G.
EDIT- going to go to the Genius Bar at my local Apple store tomorrow. All of the appointments at all of the Apple stores in Georgia are booked. The store near me opens at 8 a.m. for iphone 3G sales. I’ll be there.
After browsing the forums on Apple’s support pages, it appears that this is a problem a lot of people are having with original iphones upgrading to the 2.0 software. Hopefully that means Apple knows about it and will replace my phone no questions asked. It is also about 18 days out of warranty. Other users posted and said that shouldn’t be a problem. Either way, I am waging war on my local Apple store tomorrow and I’m printing out all of these articles and forum discussions to bring as evidence.
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