November 15th, 2007
The bike, the rain, and a sick iPhone touchscreen
My colleague Kevin Ho is convinced that the top row of the iPhone keyboard has some kind of “dead zone” that may reveal itself when the device is exposed to the elements.
Over the weekend, Kevin went for a ride in the wet and rainy San Francisco Bay area. I know you have trouble believing it rains in San Francisco, but trust me, it does.
Long and short of it: the precipitation soaks his raincoat, and gets the iPhone he was carrying kind of wet.
So then Kevin tries texting on his iPhone but, as he describes it, “noticed the top row of the text keyboard was not responding. I had to press, no squish, down to get a letter. And the cursor would flip out. And the screen looked bad when I did so, just like when you press down on an LCD screen too hard.”
I know what you are thinking. Reset and power-cycle, dude!!
That didn’t work, however. He went into an Apple store, proceded straight to the Genius Bar (Apple’s term for in-store help desk) and swapped out the SIM card.
Happily ever after (or at least up ’til the next rainstorm). Kevin’s iPhone, and its touchscreen, were back up and running.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
