Should I erase my iPhone before going to Genius bar to have it replaced/repaired?

[DieterRams]

I'm having a problem with the home button my iPhone, it doesn't always recognize every press so I have to press harder than I should to get it to activate multitasking, for example.

If I go to the Genius Bar to get it replaced or repaired, should I back it up and fully erase it before going? First of all, I don't even know if they'll help me so what if I erase it and they end up not doing the replace/repair? I would have just erased and need to restore again for nothing.

Any suggestions?

 

[dtanqt]

I'm having a problem with the home button my iPhone, it doesn't always recognize every press so I have to press harder than I should to get it to activate multitasking, for example.

If I go to the Genius Bar to get it replaced or repaired, should I back it up and fully erase it before going? First of all, I don't even know if they'll help me so what if I erase it and they end up not doing the replace/repair? I would have just erased and need to restore again for nothing.

Any suggestions?

Yes, you should backup everything unless you are ready to loose them.
You are going to erase and need to restore again for trying, not nothing.

 

[M-5]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/534.32 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

You should definitely back up everything if you're expecting to have your phone replaced. Before they do so I believe they make you sign an agreement form concerning the data on your device and that it may not be recovered, especially if they replace your phone. I don't know if I would erase all of the content on it unless you have some very delicate data stored on it.

I'm actually looking to go to the Apple store for the same problem; my home button appears to be wearing out prematurely, and I want to have it replaced before my warranty is out later this month.

 

[d123]

Definitely agree with doing a back up and clean restore, even if they don't replace the phone (which they probably will with a hardware issue) there is a very good chance they will do a restore themselves and so erase the phone anyway.

 

[LxHunter]

If they replace your phone they will ask you to do an erase on the spot

I went to the Genius Bar at Apple Store at the Eaton Centre in Toronto because of a problem with an app deleting and scrambling my contacts. I thought Apple would have a diagnostic. The Apple diagnostic was inconclusive. The Genius Bar Lady then reached into the drawer and pulled out a new replacement phone. Mine was out of warranty, but she insisted on replacing. She had me do an erase of my phone - can't remember exactly - but it deleted all my stuff.

Later I figured out it was the app, not the phone.

 

[magicpinkdrink]

You definitely should back up and then wipe your phone on your own before you go. When my lock button broke I took it in for a replacement and didn't wipe it before I went because I had heard they have you do it before they swap it out and I wanted to be able to play my games and listen to my music on the hour drive there. When the genius tried to wipe it, it asked for a passcode, which is weird since I did not use a passcode lock on it. So the genius jus powered it off and gave me my new one and sent me on my way. 2 days later, my iTunes account was hacked. Just seemed like too big of a coincidence for me, so that's a mistake I won't make again.