A few days ago, I posted about my defective iPhone 3G. I received this phone last Monday, but by the evening, I realized that it was broken beyond repair. That night I went through some troubleshooting with a friendly and responsive Rogers iPhone specialist and she assured me that I would receive another unit within 48-hours. So, assuming that the phone would ship out on the Tuesday, I expected it to arrive sometime on Thursday. Thursday came and passed, and by midday Friday I felt something was wrong.

I called up Rogers and went through the usually steps to speak with a representative. After a couple transfers I was connected to an iPhone specialist. I told the representative that I was still waiting for a replacement unit, and he perused my file to see what had happened. After putting me on hold to chat with his boss, he came back to tell me that my order had been cancelled!

Apparently, the lady who submitted my request for a replacement iPhone did not complete the troubleshooting checklist correctly, and as a result her boss decided to scrap the entire order. Needless to say, I was a bit perplexed. Clearly, I was expecting the imminent arrival of a replacement phone, but I guess this didn’t concern someone in management who deleted my order without making any effort to contact me or to correct the mistake made by his or her subordinate.

Later that night, after my frustrations had died down, I looked over at my almost-perfect iPhone with somewhat mixed feelings. The thought that it was going back was good and bad. On one hand, I felt annoyed by the extended delay of receiving a replacement — I hate being stuck at home waiting for deliveries and it’s almost impossible to get a tracking code from Rogers — but on the other hand, I’ll have a brand new iPhone 3G to unbox next week!

So I’ve begun to see my current iPhone as much like a test model that I’ve been allowed to take home and review. I have it in a soft case with a screen protector so that it’ll remain pristine, but short of destroying or losing it, there’s really nothing holding me back from pushing it to its limits. I’ve thought of running some battery tests, like draining it from full charge under various settings, or seeing how many free apps I can install until it breaks or shows signs of slow down.  There’s always a silver lining if you look for it, and I have to remind myself that dealing with telecoms is rarely a smooth process when you have issues.

Do you have any suggestions for testing my temporary iPhone 3G? Do you want to know how many hours of continuous Youtube it will play before dying or catching on fire?