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Home button issue - Out of warranty replacement?

bigjnyc

bigjnyc

Suspended
Original poster
Apr 10, 2008
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What are the chances of getting an out of warranty replacement for the home button issue? Has anyone achieved this at the genius bar?

I made an appointment for this evening because I just can't take it anymore. I have to click about 3 times just to get to the lock screen and get in to my phone. double clicking for the task bar gets me to the home screen... and single clicking opens the task manager :mad:

I realize that my warranty is up and 1 year is the policy, so I wouldnt get upset if they dont replace it, but can the genius open it up and possibly remove the dust under the button?
 
Apple, more often than not, gives 1 time replacements for free. I'd guess that is what would happen to you.
 
Ok that would be great, I've never taken this phone in so this would be my first ever replacement.
 
I could definitely see them helping you out with this. The home button issue seems to be quite common.
 
Well I had no luck at the Apple store, since my phone was out of warranty the genius only gave me the option of buying a replacement for $200 bucks. I guess they won't even take it apart and remove the dust under the button for you... unless I got a lazy genius.

I checked ifixit.com but there's a ton of things to remove in order to get to the home button, I suck at things like that and will definitely break something if I try it lol.... I guess I will try to look for one of those repair places that do color changes and see if they won't charge me an arm and a leg to do it.
 
That is the cost for the out of warranty replacement. The phone cost a lot more than 200 USD. If you wanted it replaced for free, you need AppleCare and they don't open phones, they generally just replace them and send them back to Apple. I believe that they will replace the glass, but that is about it.
 
I would give it one more shot and call Apple and complain. Let them know that you are aware that there are many people who have the exact same issue. They really should take care of it.

It can't hurt to try.

I generally am not one to tell people to push for stuff out of warranty but the home button is something that seems to be failing quite a bit on the iPhone 4.
 
I went to the Apple Store yesterday for the same reason and I was told the same thing. I didn't expect to get a free replacement but I figured it was worth a shot.
 
I think that going forward this is really going to damage the resale value of the iPhone 4.

It's very hard to access the button in the device (to clean or replace it).
 
Wife has been telling me about her home button and I looked at her date for the original warranty to end and it was in 9 days. So we went last night and got it swapped ahead of time. Might go ahead and get AppleCare for the new one.
 
I tried going to a different Apple store and same results.

I called around to a few iPhone repair shops and all of them were asking between $50 - $65 just to get the dust out of there, without replacing any parts or anything.... I know its tough because you have to remove pretty much all the internals to get to the front but that seems a little steep.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I took mine into Glasgow Apple store today and they took it apart and cleaned it all out for free... Works fine now... Maybe ask them to do this if they won't replace?
 
My brother and I had the same problem with our iPhone 4s. The genius took an alcohol wipe and pressed it agent the home button a few time to let the alcohol drip in to the button. The button works 75% better. The genius suggested to try it again at home to bring it back to 100%.
 
Tycoonguy said:
My brother and I had the same problem with our iPhone 4s. The genius took an alcohol wipe and pressed it agent the home button a few time to let the alcohol drip in to the button. The button works 75% better. The genius suggested to try it again at home to bring it back to 100%.
Click to expand...

and how does this get rid of the problem?
 
Tycoonguy said:
My brother and I had the same problem with our iPhone 4s. The genius took an alcohol wipe and pressed it agent the home button a few time to let the alcohol drip in to the button. The button works 75% better. The genius suggested to try it again at home to bring it back to 100%.
Click to expand...

My oh my, now there is a genius with the IQ of a worm... :eek:
 
rgarjr said:
Just do the repair yourself. Yeah it does involve taking it apart but there's enough videos, pictures to make it mote easy.
Click to expand...

I'm horrible at things like this, I will break something for sure

Tycoonguy said:
My brother and I had the same problem with our iPhone 4s. The genius took an alcohol wipe and pressed it agent the home button a few time to let the alcohol drip in to the button. The button works 75% better. The genius suggested to try it again at home to bring it back to 100%.
Click to expand...

I don't know how I feel about having liquid drip into my phones internals
 
bigjnyc said:
I don't know how I feel about having liquid drip into my phones internals
Click to expand...

The alcohol fix is actually pretty commonly recommended--it supposedly evaporates way too quickly to cause damage. I'm personally queasy about the idea as well though.

Meanwhile, for what it's worth, have you tried the fix suggested in this thread? I've done it twice now, and seen a pretty dramatic difference--though I couldn't say if it's the vacuuming or the tapping that actually does the trick, since it seems like there's no way for dust in the button area to be evacuated through the dock port. But something in that process did seem to have an effect on my home button, which was failing every 15-20 presses or so and now fails less than once a day. It may or may not work, but we're talking 10 minutes and no dismantling of the phone, so it's worth a shot even for those of us who aren't confident about their ability to replace the home button themselves.

I wish that Apple were more consistent with the policy on replacements for this specific issue. It's way too subject to the whims of the Genius and whether or not they're feeling generous that day. And $200 seems pretty outrageous for a failure due to a known widespread product issue.
 
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