Have You Had to Exchange Your iPhone 5 for Warranty Issues?

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A couple weeks ago, I realized that my iPhone had stopped taking clear photos. Shots that I would ordinarily have taken and expected to be good were now coming out fuzzy and unfocussed. It was pretty obvious that my iPhone 5’s camera had a problem, but it wasn’t clear why. Knowing that I’d be joining him and the other editors at his lake house for GearFest soon — and knowing that I didn’t have a nearby Apple store — Dan told me to send him my iPhone, and he’d take it to the Apple Store for them to check out. While there Dan was told the camera issues were actually a rather frequent complaint with the iPhone 5, and while they could try to repair it that rarely fixes the problem. The flawed iPhone was swapped out for a new one.

This wasn’t Dan’s first time to take an iPhone 5 in for warranty issues, his had been exchanged for a new device when it had begun inexplicably freezing earlier this year.

This morning, David posted in our back-channel that after several days of seeing “the flashing Apple ‘screen of death'” when trying to charge the phone, he also took his in to the Apple Genius Bar. He noted that the iPhone 5 seemed to be “the hot ticket item of the day at the Apple store, as those subtle little white warranty boxes where flying out the door.” David said he was there for “50 minutes Saturday, and at least a dozen went out the door, just at that one store.”

So that’s three of us who have had three different issues with the iPhone 5, and obviously we aren’t the only ones. Granted, all of our defective phones were replaced under warranty by Apple, but it did make me wonder how many others have had warranty issues with their iPhones that resulted in them getting a “new” iPhone 5 in exchange from Apple?

Do you own an iPhone 5? And if so, have you had any issues with it that resulted in a warranty exchange?

 

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About the Author

Judie Lipsett Stanford
Judie is the co-owner and Editor-in-Chief of Gear Diary, which she founded in September 2006. She started in 1999 writing software reviews at the now-defunct smaller.com; from mid-2000 through 2006, she wrote hardware reviews for and co-edited at The Gadgeteer. A recipient of the Sigma Kappa Colby Award for Technology, Judie is best known for her device-agnostic approach, deep-dive reviews, and enjoyment of exploring the latest tech, gadgets, and gear.

6 Comments on "Have You Had to Exchange Your iPhone 5 for Warranty Issues?"

  1. Mitchell Oke | July 15, 2013 at 3:56 pm |

    I exchanged a number of 4’s and 4S’s in my time with them, but my iPhone 5 was flawless from launch day till I sold it a couple of months back.

    While it was disappointing to have issues at all, the way Apple handle it (walk in, confirm issue, walk out with replacement) is just superb.

    • I agree that Apple is fantastic with regard to warranty issue replacements; it’s one of the (many) things that makes buying products from them a no-brainer. =)

      • Mitchell Oke | July 16, 2013 at 3:47 pm |

        I’m always reminded of my mum’s defective HTC Magic, it was away 6 weeks for repair at only 2 months old, and she was given a dumb phone by her carrier as a loaner. Total garbage.

  2. loopyduck | July 15, 2013 at 5:45 pm |

    In February (sometime after the 6.1 update, but I don’t think that was the cause of the problem), I noticed that there were a lot of purple specks showing up in any pictures taken, as well as when the Camera app was open. When I brought my phone to the Apple Store, the rep had my phone replaced the instant he saw the specks. Apparently dust in the lens assembly was a common complaint for first-run phones.

    With a few months left in the warranty, I’m debating whether to bring my current phone (the one I got from the first exchange) in for a checkup, as the screen has developed an unnerving creak. The trouble is that I do jailbreak my phones (I’ve come to rely on enhancements such as Nitrous, MapsOpener, BrowserChooser, and NowNow), and the replacement would most likely have the unjailbreakable 6.1.4. The one upside would be that I’d get AWS HSPA+ coverage with it.

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