You may have seen past posts where I had less than good luck with my iPhone 3G purchase. Some of it had to do with process snafus, but the root cause was material defects. Well to recap, the first iPhone had a Home button that simply did not work. The second iPhone developed a crack in the case. Ok, so I can deal with a couple of unrelated defects, it can happen to anyone. The third phone seems good for the most part, except for the power button, which is difficult to push down because it seems to be buried in the case. Unlike previous iPhones where it was much easier to operate.

So, if you’re a regular reader, then you know I’m on vacation with the family in Martha’s Vineyard. I had hoped to report all the wonderful things you can do with the 3G iPhone, the Apps, coverage of the island, GPS, etc. And for the most part all that is going well. There are some software quirks, like slow response in many of the new Apps, and GPS inconsistencies, and Contacts that mysteriously disappeared (that may have been my fault). Of course there’s the constant need to manage power consumption, as GPS will suck the battery dry in no time. So I have to keep Location Services turned off until needed.

But today my wife was trying to get my attention while I was listening to some classical Baroque, specifically Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Primavera 1 Allegro. I reached for the mute button on my ear buds and the music didn’t stop. I had to pull the iPhone out of my pocket and stop the music through the Touch interface, very annoying. The image to the left shows my old iPhone, which now belongs to my youngest daughter, and my new 3G iPhone. If you click the image to enlarge it, you’ll see that the power button on the 3G does not stick out as far as the 2.5G.

Apparently this misalignment I experienced with the power button, extends to the head phone jack as well. I tried plugging in my Shure SE110 head phones (which I highly recommend) with the iPhone adapter, and experienced the same problem. I found that if I pushed the plug hard into the case, I could get the mute switch to work, telling me that there’s definitely an alignment problem. I also missed a couple of calls because I spent too much time fiddling with the answer button, and by the time I pulled the phone out of my pocket the caller hung up.

So now I’ll be going for my 4th iPhone! This is totally unacceptable. What are the chances that a single person would have so many issues with a product? I can only conclude that either the manufacturer that Apple is using has really dropped the ball, and is not meeting Apple’s specifications for tolerances and quality control, or Apple has made a serious blunder on several design aspects.

The real bummer is that I have to live with this annoyance for another week and an half, as there are no Apple stores on Martha’s Vineyard. There should be, I see them every where on the island. There’s definitely a big Mac community here.