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Comment by xbryanx | Hacker News Reader

As my iPhone ages, the double click on the home button is becoming harder and harder to do. The physical button itself just isn't very responsive anymore. Devoting this essential function to something that can degrade over time seems like a big oversight for a company that puts such stock into industrial engineering.

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Actually it isn't. When your button wears out you can just buy a new iPhone. Same goes for fraying wires in Apple power supplies and USB cables. They have no economic incentive to provide longevity beyond the warranty period as they are primarily a hardware company.

Actually, due to a class-action lawsuit[1], Apple has to replace frayed MagSafe power adapters with the newer L-shape ones for free. I just got mine replaced a few weeks ago. I agree that Apple should have done a recall, or even notified users.

1. http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/10/class-action-lawsuit-forces...

That's a step in the right direction, but the cord still frays at the brick end unless you leave a big loop before wrapping the cord around it. And the USB iPhone connector still frays. It would be nice if they'd adopt the standard flexible nubs designed specifically to avoid this fraying problem, but when aesthetics and practicality come into conflict at Apple, aesthetics usually wins.

Many have had some luck spraying a bit of WD40 on the 'home' button to get it working smoothly again.

I agree, however, that the home buttons on iPhones (and I assume iPod Touches and iPads) wear out too quickly. My 3Gs's home button was getting pretty bad after two years of use, even with lubrication, though I will admit to having gotten a fair amount of sand and possibly a bit of seawater in it, and having disassembled and reassembled it several times, so that may not have helped things.

I have only seen the problem of the home button becoming unresponsive on the iPhone 4. I didn't have that problem on any of the previous generations. Try taking the phone into an Apple Store and see if they will replace it for you.

Have you tried recalibrating it?

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2011/12/how-to-fix-you-iphones-un...

(I reversed engineered that procedure: it does nothing. Just a placebo.)

In that case, you're either stuck with another physical button that will have the same problem, or one of those capacitive back buttons that I find extremely frustrating.

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