Hi Everyone:

My home button recently stopped working (see this thread) and I'm still under my 1-year warranty so I'm considering taking my phone into the apple store for support or replacement.

My question is this: I've upgraded my firmware to 1.1.4 and used iLiberty+ to unlock/jailbreak. I'm on T-Mobile, and still have the original SIM that came with the iPhone. Aside from restoring it and sticking the original SIM back in the phone, is there anything else that I should do? Anyway I can do a clean restore of the firmware so it looks like it was in a brand new state?

Any advice from others with experience on trying to get an unactivated iPhone replaced at the apple store would be very helpful...

Thanks!

Man,Your title was wrong so I changed it,and maybe you should have searched.Is that to hard? Well ok I will stop and help.
For apple to even look at your iphone you must have a two year contract with ATT,so sigh up,LOL
And do a clean restore and relock you phone.

You don't need an AT&T contract for your warranty to be valid. Just make sure the phone is resetted to factory settings (firmware, bootloader, etc..)

Check yourself - https://selfsolve.apple.com/GetWarranty.do

It clearly tells you that: "Please note that warranty service is not dependent on activating your iPhone."

So if they tell you they want your AT&T number or whatever, just give them a print screen of that or something..

Expect that when you bring it back to an Apple Store the guys there will ask you why you haven't signed on and if you don't know what to answer or start an incredible reason (grandma took your phone by mistake thinking it was her iTouch and got arrested on the road 66 on her Harley for exceeding speed, she had to stay at the local police station for 6 months) they won't replace it.

Well,

I would restore start by putting your baseband and bootloader back to what they originally were, then restore to your original firmware.

I'm going to assume that you live in the U.S. so,

I'd go to an ATT store and buy a prepaid line, so they give you an ATT sim, and then you have an official ATT number that you can give to the apple people if they ask you, without having a contract.

Then I'd put your phone into DFU and bring it into the store, and tell them that it has been working fine, you've made calls, you are an ATT customer, etc, but lately it has been going blank like this, resetting and the home button is not working, and you want a replacement. They may try to restore it and see what happens, but if you have an ATT # and press for a replacement I think they will go along with it.

Usually they have pretty damn good customer service, when I first bought mine I had a dead pixel in the upper left corner and they opened up and powered on 3 more phones a let me look at them to make sure I got one that was perfect.

I'm not saying that this would work 100% or anything like that, but it's often what I have envisioned doing if I have to try to make a warranty claim. Just thought I'd share.

This is what I may end up doing if I cant fix this god damn camera problem that no one ever seems to have heard of or seen.

Good Luck

Originally Posted by XianLi

Expect that when you bring it back to an Apple Store the guys there will ask you why you haven't signed on and if you don't know what to answer or start an incredible reason (grandma took your phone by mistake thinking it was her iTouch and got arrested on the road 66 on her Harley for exceeding speed, she had to stay at the local police station for 6 months) they won't replace it.

Nice story their Xian, just remember to include how grandma activated to even use it as an iTouch.

Back to reality and to the OP, Apple may say it is not activation dependant, but honestly, like Xian said, you have the phone for 5 months. Apple would at least expect you to be activated for a month. Also, why on Earth would you buy an iPhone and not use it for 5 months [taking into account you supposedly never unlocked or activated through 3rd party software]? How do you even know there is something wrong with the iPhone before you can even access its features [like Wi-Fi not working or iPod not working]?

All these questions are possible from a Genius [they can even ask you more things]. However, you may get a hard ass Genius or an easy going one.... your move their Gloria.

if you get a "hard ass" genius just go back later and try to find a different one. You could go back the next day or go to a different apple store.

I guess there is one more thing that I'd like to know about warranty claim -

Even if you do what I said above, and you buy yourself an ATT sim and have a gen-u-ine ATT phone number (prepaid).

How can you get to phone to recognize this sim and make calls so it looks like a regular ATT phone without messing with the baseband?

I think this might be an important part of the step if they don't buy the whole DFU dark screen BS, or any other BS one might come up with.