I upgraded to iPhone firmware 2.0 yesterday, and now a portion of the touchscreen has stopped accepting input. It’s roughly equivalent to where the third row of icons lives on the main screen.

I’m mostly annoyed with this, but not too much… I brought it into the Apple store this afternoon, and they said they’ll replace it with a new one when I come back tomorrow. (The Genius Bar was booked solid for the rest of the day at 3:00pm, and the place was packed.) I’m going to try to parlay my replacement (8GB 2G) into either a 8GB 3G or a 16GB 2G. If I have to pay a bit to do it, that’s fine. If they’re not willing to go for it, that’s fine too. Getting a brand-new replacement phone for free is a good deal either way.

If anyone at Apple actually took the trouble to track my interactions with them, they’d never do business with me again. They’re lost money on every purchase I’ve made: I spilled whiskey in my MacBook, then convinced them to replace it. Now my iPhone has crapped out, and they’re going to replace that as well.

Yeah. Stick it to the man.

Update: I brought my phone in this afternoon, and they replaced it with a brand new identical model for free. I asked about the possibility of trading up, but apparently only identical trades can be done. I wasn’t really expecting to walk out with a 3G, but it was worth a try. Go Apple.