Unlocked iPhone sound system stopped working

Very annoying. Today I took two phones out with me. Busy day. Lots of meetings, first day back and what not.

I took out my fancy unlocked iPhone and my o2 Blackberry.

The Blackberry is email/data only £10/month. The phone doesn’t work. I didn’t want yet another phone number to deal with.

All was good until I answered a phone call in the early afternoon and couldn’t hear the other person. I then realised that no sound *whatsoever* was coming from the device. They, interestingly, could hear me. No sound, no music, no video, no alarm sound, no *phone* audio. Deary me.

That screwed me.

First day back and I had lots of calls to make and receive. SMS Text News reader Gaylene, from Hill & Knowlton, was a bit confused. I’d been trying to meet her but she was wondering why, every time she called, I didn’t answer and texted back. I ended up having to type an enormously embarrassing “hi, my iPhone’s audio has just stopped working, so, er, could you text me?” explanatory message.

Deeply, deeply unimpressed. Couldn’t use the Blackberry to call anyone, obviously. So I spent the whole afternoon texting. And surfing at the speed of slow. There is, perhaps, nothing worse than sitting using an iPhone fandabbydosey (“good”) browser next to a chap on a boring but 3G Samsung — and note that he’s getting better browsing speeds.

It is a seeeerious let down, the data speed. It’s even more annoying when you can’t use the handset’s primary function — voice.

Reflashed it with 1.1.3 and unlocked it again with ZiPhone and piff, paff, poof, the device is fine. But my confidence in Apple is chipped, ever so, ever so, ever so slightly chipped. How annoying. I hope it doesn’t happen again.

This experience, by the way, combined with a few other experiences today, pushed me into a Vodafone shop…