My faithful readers will remember one of my orginal posts in which I expressed my enthusiasm for a new phone I was planning on purchasing, the Pantech Matrix. Well, tragedy struck today when, for no apparent reason, the slider keyboard no longer functions. If I extend the keyboard slowly, I see the screen image reorient to the keyboard and the keyboard lights go on. But, when the keyboard is halfway extended, the keyboard lights suddenly turn off and the screen reorients back to the phone orientation. I've seen this described online as having the screen switch to landscape mode when the keyboard is extended.
I called the AT&T store at which I bought the phone, and since the phone is still under warranty, they gave me a phone number to call for warranty service.
On the plus side, the phone support person was very professional and walked me through a couple steps to see if a reset of the phone back to its factory settings would solve the issue. I didn't have much hope, since it feels like a mechanical issue to me, but I went along with the testing. Sadly, it didn't fix the problem.
On the plus side, they're going to send me a replacement phone which I should receive in 5 days. On the down side, the phone is a refurbished one, not new, and my warranty does NOT reset to the date on which I receive the new phone. I suppose I can live with the refurb, but the lack of a warranty reset doesn't exactly instill me with confidence.
I will give the Pantech Matrix this credit; being deprived of the keyboard I've had to rely on the predictive edit mode, which is actually pretty slick and lets me type on the number pad almost as quickly as I would on the keyboard...almost.
And there's the dark side to being an early adopter of new technology. Sometimes you're the guinea pig on your own dime.