Yeah, it could be better.

Having owned an iPhone (of varying flavors and capacities) for over two years now, I’ve had to have the thing replaced more than a few times under warranty. Which I love, because I feel very confident that I’ll never get stuck with a lemon.

But every once in a while, a problem on iPhone can’t be fixed by just replacing the hardware. It’s rare, but sometimes there will be a problem that stems from some corrupted file within the backup that iTunes creates for you on every sync. So, even if you completely restore the software on the device, the problem will return unless you “set up as a new iPhone.”

The problem with that, of course, is that you’ll lose all of your saved games, top scores, mileage logs, to-do items, and about a million other things you failed to think of. Granted, many apps do provide methods of backing up “to the cloud” or to MobileMe. But, seriously…when you’re trying to fix your phone, are you really going to take the time to go into each of the 80+ apps and back up all of that data? Or are you going to forget?

If nothing else, there really should be a way to “restore from backup, but kill all non-third-party preferences.” Of course, this speaks to the fact that iPhone is decidedly a “computing platform,” rather than just a mobile gadget. And it’s difficult to add options without also introducing complexity. But, with the latest version of iTunes and the iPhone OS, Apple has proven that more options don’t necessarily crud up the user experience.