Replacement iPhone 5 in another country

Hey guys, I'm studying abroad in the UK (I'm from America) and my iPhone 5 decided to royally just...start sucking.

Before anyone asks, it is a Verizon iPhone 5 (A1429) and it is jailbroken on 6.1.2 (only for Auxo and BiteSMS, amazing).

Lately it has just been really slow for no reason, so I uninstalled everything and went to a vanilla 6.1.2 and it still has been acting weird, and on top of all that, it has seemed to have gotten dirt lodged between the screen and the bezel, which is blowing my mind because I don't know how that gap even opened up to let dirt and debris in.

It wouldn't be that bad but yesterday I noticed that there was a lot more debris and stuff in there than normal and coincidentally my phone has been slowing down a lot today as well. So I went into the apple store near me in London and have a Genius Bar appointment set up for tuesday afternoon.

If I go there, what do you think they will say? If they choose to replace it (since the phone is only six months old and shouldn't be opening apart at the frame), would they give me another A1429 model since that's what I have in America or A1428 because I know that is more popular in other countries.

Thanks in advance

I included a picture of the top (where it's bad) and the bottom (what I feel like it should look like) for comparison. They're taken with my iPad so bear with me for the bad quality.

Sunn8760 said:

I'm backpacking in Asia and had asked this question at an Apple store in Canada before leaving on my trip. The employee said that Apple would ship a North American compatible iPhone to the Apple store in Asia where I would make my claim... Maybe the same logic would apply in your case.

Does this help?

Click to expand...

Well that is certainly interesting, I wonder what they will do in this case. I was looking online and the A1429 model that I have (Verizon LTE i5) is the same model that is sold in the UK for their carriers but I don't know if it would work exactly the same....

I guess I will just wait and see what the deal is!

Hey just wanted to reply and give a status update:

got my genius bar appt bumped up to today and here is what went down,

They saw my screen was messed up and said "oh yeah no worries that warrants a replacement, we'll just swap them out really quick, lemme get that for you" I was super excited, until the girl at the genius bar told me she couldn't find my phone's model number in the system, when I told her that it was bought unlocked in the US she gave me a sad look.

She told me that I couldn't get a replacement in the UK because the iPhone 5's sold in the UK wouldn't work properly back in the US, so I would have a working phone here, only to have a faulty phone back home.

She did tell me however that there is a thing called Apple Express Lane, and gave me their website/phone number to call. So I set up an appointment for them to call me tomorrow morning and the genius told me that she has heard stories in the past of the AEL sending iPhones from overseas to customers in need so hopefully the phone call goes well!