The iPhone...

A wild guess; but as mentioned in the 'comments' section in the linked page, like any first batch that comes out from production it has a few minor defaults. The plastic moulds are not "worn in", not enough material gets injected in the one side, too much on the other.
As the phone heats up, places where there is not enough material will crack because of the expansion. With minor adjustments later, these would be gone 99.99% of the time. I think because of excess demand, they're not checking the raw material's quality due to time constraints. Or they're not using the heat-resistant additive enough to save costs.

Or maybe I'm just playing Mr. Know-it-all without any facts or making scientific observations .

it is great but ...

I'm a nerd when it comes to new technology ( I could spend hrs in best buy) I ran out and bought the iphone last june. it is great but is also one of the most stolen phones right now.
Good news is I was able to re sell my iphone on Ebay for what I paid for it( it was 6 months old ) my new love is the HTC tilt!!!

Since dropping my Blackberry Curve in the water 3 weeks ago (wasn't eligible for my equipment upgrade until October and Blackberry Bold not yet released), I figured I'd give the iPhone 3G a try...big disappointment.

Touch screen for typing means mistakes galore - try to hit the delete key and you're likely to just add "m's" to the mistakes you've already made.

Typing lag springs up randomly and can be maddeningly slow.

No cut and paste - this is a business tool for me and I find myself needing this basic feature (around since the first word processors back in the 80's) and amazed at its absence.

Battery life - what battery life? This device is being hyped because of its 3G, wi-fi, internet, music, video capabilities. Great, but use any of these for more than one hour and you'd better be near an outlet.

Wonky software. I find myself having to hard boot this thing almost every day.

No push email unless you're a corporate client or want to pay yet another monthly fee for the mobile.me add on (no thanks, I pay over $150/month for the thing as it is).

No MMS? WTF? Every other camera/phone does.

Lots of great features, but it's more a toy than a tool and I need a tool.

Blackberry Bold comes out in a few weeks, coinciding with my eligibility for equipment upgrade, and I'll be selling my iPhony to someone I know who wants it...

The keyboard lag in the SMS program seems to have been eliminated with the 2.0.2 software update. Since I installed it yesterday I've had no trouble typing, or even getting the Contact List to show up.

I have to agree about the Copy/Paste issue though... serious omission on Apple's part there!

I got mine yesterday!

Would have been good to know before yesterday!

Don't get too upset Ken... except for the laggy keyboard and Contact List (which are now resolved) I haven't had the troubles mentioned above. I only find battery life to be relatively short when doing a lot of browsing and GPS use. Listening to music (with the screen OFF) barely makes any dent at all. It's the screen ON functions that drain. On that end of things, it's no different that a regular PDA.

Sorry, but I maintain that the iPhone is a great entertainment device and a great novelty but not a serious tool you'll come to rely on when your primary need is to send/receive emails.

Besides everyone saying "they've gotten used to typing on it", I've yet to see anyone crunch out emails the way Blackberry power users do.

Oh, did I mention that my fellow Blackberry users are crunching out emails while my iPhone has no signal? Not "no 3G signal", but NO 3G, NO EDGE, NO GPRS, nada, zippo, nil, bupkis...?

Can you hear me now?

I'll vouch for this guy. We've met several times and I'm pretty sure he's too busy running boats to be bothered with corporate shenanigans.
I'm just glad I'm not as disgruntled as Skip is.

Ditto on Ken, I'm meeting him for lunch in about 2 hours.

I have to say that's an AT&T issue. I've heard nothing but complaints about their iPhone service in general. Up here (Rogers/Fido) my network's great. I've been all over with the iPhone recently, in some pretty remote areas even, and if there was a signal to be found, I had at least Edge.

So Carl, are you upgrading to the New iPhone?

AT&T is coming out with the new Blackberry BOLD this October.
It has some new features you might be interested in.

Hi,

This guy has already indicated his preference for a Crackberry here

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/64459-post83.html

LOL ... you're right.
Thanks!

So I spoke with this fellow the other day, and I said 'aren't you afraid that you'll drop that thing in the water or it will otherwise go blank on you and you'll lose all your appointments, etc.?' He said 'Oh no. Every night I plug it into my computer and download everything to there.' 'But what if that crashes?' 'I back everything up onto a memory stick. I also print out a hard copy of anything important.'
"Wouldn't it make more sense to just carry one of these?" I said showing him my black book containing my calander, log and contacts. "Oh I keep one of those in my truck."