A few weeks ago, we ran reader Stephen’s sad tale of iPhone warranty replacements and reached out to our readers to see whether anyone else had gone through similar cycles of endless replacements. We’re sad to report that yes, some iPhone users have ended up trapped in smartphone replacement purgatory. When a phone only has four buttons, we suppose things are pretty awful when one of them stops working.

Reader Blue writes:

I saw your article on the guy who’s on his fifth replacement iPhone 5. Seems the odds would be high and I thought I might have been the only one but I’m on my 5th iPhone 5 right now. I’ve gone through 4 iPhone 5’s in the SAME WEEK.

From Monday to Friday I’ve had to go to the Apple Genius bar 4 times this week and it’s always been a hardware issue. First three phones had an issue with the lock button. It took me one day to find a problem with the lock button with two of the replacement phones. The third replacement seemed fine except the internal compass and display were broken the same day. Overall, my experience with Apple’s quality control has been a complete disaster.

I’ve had many problems in the past with Apple products but nothing like this where I’ve had to replace my iPhone each following day. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I appreciate them replacing the phone for free but after a while it gets very tiring.

James got stuck in Smartphone Replacement Purgatory with his iPhone 5, but both he and Apple were delighted to discover that the problem wasn’t the phone. It was his Lightning cord.

I had to replace multiple iPhone5’s, and realized after #3 that it wasn’t the phones, but it was the fact that I was using the same cable to charge them. At some point, I’m guessing (with little more than a barely-referential understanding of electronics) that at some point I got the business end of the adapter wet. At that point, everything I plugged the phone into became subject to the same fate.

A co-worker with more hands-on experience with electronics said “Aaah, the STD. That happens a lot.”. Again, my armchair understanding of this phenomenon has the plug effectively electroplated (water + copper + electricity) which then has a similar impact on the phone where connections between terminals in the phone are made that shouldn’t exist. My symptoms were perpetual problems with the battery life, where the battery would charge really fast and drain really fast because the phone OS couldn’t get an accurate read of its capacity.

Eventually, a phone conversation with Apple yielded a similar “aha” and they took back a phone and the diseased cable in the same envelope. I never had the problem again.

Reader Aaron says:

I’m going down the same road, I’m on my 4th replacement and I have to replace it probably again since now my home button isn’t working. This is starting to become a hassle I must say.

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