I received lots of helpful comments that gave me other options. One in particular was very helpful.  An anonymous commenter mentioned that he went to the Apple Store and they tried to fix it and then gave him a brand new one.

We happened to be near an Apple Store this past weekend so I gave it a shot. The Geniuses first tried to restore it without any luck. Then they said even though it was out of warranty they would replace it for free. Wow! I was totally shocked. Unfortunately it was not a 3G but I’m not complaining. I was trying to think of a reason why they would do this. The only one I came up with was that they could be trying to get rid of inventory. Just speculating though.

It’s experiences like this that make me really like Apple. But I often hear things that make me not like them.

But now I am experiencing a dead spot on the touch screen. After doing a search, I have found that this is a common problem with the iPhone. Many have described it as a dead strip. Sounds accurate to me. The dead spot on mine does go across the entire screen. As you can imagine it is quite annoying.

The most annoying part is where it is located. I think no matter where it is located it would be annoying. The dead spot is located about half way up the screen. It happens to be right where the 7, 8, and 9 keys are on the phone’s keypad. If you try hard enough, you can get the number you want. A work around I have found is to enter the number in a new contact since it uses a different keypad.

Even more annoying is that I can’t send a text message since the send button happens to be where the dead spot is.

So I am going to call Apple tomorrow and see if they will help me out. I may end up having to visit the genius bar to have them take a look. I’ll let you know what happens. If anybody has any advice, please do tell.