Apple products tend to be high quality, but sometimes there’s a glitch that can mess with your life. Check the new phone and make sure you don’t get a lemon.

The background here is that I went all the way to Louisville (nearest Apple store is over 90 miles away for me) to have them look at my broken Ring/Silent switch (it had snapped off); they swapped out the whole phone. I got almost all the way back home and found that the “new” phone had a microphone problem. If I plugged in the Apple headset, no problem; it was only when I tried to use the iPhone as a “candybar” style handset that there was any trouble. I made it back to the Apple store with 12 minutes to spare before their closing time… and they Apologized profusely and gave me a second “new” phone.

So — here are some things to watch out for when you’re taking in a misbehaving iPhone to your nearby Apple store for a swap-out:

• You did back up (sync) your phone, first, right? It’s likely that the Apple support folks will give you a new phone, meaning that you surrender your old phone to them. They’ll delete all your private data, and the only way to get it back is to restore it to your “new” phone via iTunes.
• Can you hear me now? My new iPhone had intermittent microphone problems. That is, I could hear whoever called me, but they could only hear me 30% of the time. Unless you can simulate morse code via the “dial keypad” somehow, this ain’t too useful.
• Can I hear you? Make sure your handset speaker is working, too! If you can’t hear them, it’s not much of a conversation, is it?
• Confirm your data connectivity. If you have access to both 3G and Edge networks, test the 3G of course, then turn off 3G (settings > general > network > ‘enable 3G’) to confirm that Edge is operational. Look at some google maps in an area where you haven’t cached any ‘map tiles’ lately, and browse via Safari for a few screens.
• What firmware is on the phone they gave you? My first “new” phone of the day was already set for 3.0.1 which was great, until I ran into the intermittent-microphone problem. The second “new” phone had been on the shelf for a while, as it only had 2.2 on it. I tried to restore my docs via laptop in the car on the way home but without an internet connection it could only get part-way there, since it couldn’t update to 3.0.1. It was a bit frustrating to wonder on the way home if I’d be able to get the new device working as well as my original had been.

So when you get back home (or to the office) with your “new” phone, treat it like a new phone first, and make sure it’s been updated to the latest firmware. Then right-click (or control-click) on your phone in the iTunes interface, and choose “restore from backup”. Here’s where you pick your latest “sync” to restore from, and now you should be off to the races.