J. Evans Turner

I went in yesterday to the Newnan, GA 30263 store. The guy in the mobile phones section didn't know anything about it, then pretended that he knew and said the kits would be coming later in the week.

Engadget search is really broken and wouldn't show anything relevant, so I couldn't dig up this article. That wasted about 30 mins in my car searching for the article with the press release. After verifying what I wasn't 100% sure of, I called the Best Buy 1-800 number. The first person was obviously from India and didn't have any clue what I was asking about. She tried to transfer me to the Rewards Zone dept and the f%#^ing system hung up on me. I called back and chose the RZ options and waited AGES even though the estimated wait was "less than 10 minutes." I reached a woman who also knew nothing of it and couldn't help me, so she transferred me to the BB Mobile dept. Then I spoke with a youn man who didn't know anything about it, but was able to look it up on the Internet. After confirming for me what I already knew, he didn't have any suggestion on how to resolve the problem with my local store. I said I would go to the CS counter instead he agreed that would be best and said the Geek Squad would be the ones to install it anyway (no, it's normally the guy in the mobile phones dept). CS called someone in the mobile phones dept and he said they had them. I waited about an hour for him to finish with some customer that seemed like he was already sold a new Sprint phone, so I really have no clue what took so f#%^ing long. When he finally got to mine, kit took another 10 minutes for him to install. It came out horrible. Nothing was lined up everything was coming off. I stopped at the front of the store and tried to straighten out the pieces before they would set permanently. I noticed that the pieces between the buttons weren't staying at all. I think they were put on upside-down or something. I straightened them out several times and was fully aware that they weren't sticking at all. When I got to the car and sat down, the piece between the top button and the ringer switch was already missing. I'm peeling his garbage off and going back to the Bumper case (and deal with it's problems). Hours were wasted. WHAT A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME!

@DefPoet Both GA Fry's stores and Microcenter are about 1.5-2hrs away from me. :(

@ArhcAngel
I've owned lots of portable systems. The original Game Boy had pitiful battery life compared with all later Game Boy models, but it was stil much better life than the competitors.

Tetris is the reason the Game Boy got a foothold. I got mine when they started to include a free copy of Zelda: Links Awakening.

Still BY FAR my favorite Zelda game to this day!

I found a Turbo-Express at a Goodwill thrift store in the $3 toy section marked with a $3 tag. The sales clerk peeled it away to reveal a $6 tag and charged me $6. I should have raised a stink so they would know I didn't put that sticker over it...but I didn't want to blow my chance at buying it.

@419man
You've got to be kidding me.

There's no shortage of those useless pieces of junk. How am I going to effectively manage email, browse the web, and use productivity apps with one of those? The battery life would be abysmal!

Seriously, Bluetooth was MADE for stuff like Bluetooth watches and headsets to interact with your phone at the same time, but no one actually DOES it!

@weinerschnitzelboy We needed you to say that?

@WGSXFrank
Even if it doesn't cause your call to drop, the person on the other end can't hear you when you're touching it that way and you usually have no indication that something is wrong.

IMO, that's worse than a dropped call.

Many people attribute their dropped calls to the antenna issue, but I'm sure most can be attributed to the proximity sensor problem (in my own experience).

@clochard42
Hmm. I've already seen this exact reply on other comments (word-for-word). You sound like some kind of tool.

If you had read my post, you would notice that I said it doesn't really drop calls. In fact, most dropped calls that people attribute to this are really attributable to the face proximity sensor problem!

What has been DEMONSTRATED is that touching that point causes your voice to cut-out and the person on the other end can't hear you. You have no indication that this is happening because you can hear the other person just fine.

The design is flawed, period...even if it doesn't really result in dropped calls. It's been a non-issue for me because I use a case, like any sane person would if they understood how breakable the back is. I know it's not the best protection possible, but official bumper + a Zagg-style film is a good balance between aesthetics and protection.

However, Apple's bumper DOES impair usability in many other ways, so it's not a perfect fix.

What Apple doesn't admit is that their problem has nothing to do with grip. you can simply TOUCH the specific spot and the signal will drop. Even worse, it doesn't usually drop calls, but the person on the other end can't hear you and you usually can't tell anything is wrong!

@Fez
I don't know why it's not showing my previous reply to you (comments system must be glitching)

Can't compare to the Microsoft 360 fiasco. Microsoft continued to sell the flawed systems for 2 years and still denies that there was a SYSTEMIC problem (the flawed cooling design combined with brittle lead-free solder for RoHC compliance). MS never fessed-up to the full extent of the issue (it's closer to 95% of the flawed units failed, not 33%!). Many had already been told that their warranties were up and had opened up the system to attempt repairs, and couldn't get Microsoft to fix it when they were suddenly "covered" again.

Apple has sinned here, but there's really no comparison to the 360 failure.