I fear the worst - a hardware problem. I think there is a connection issue between the "top" of the phone (the part with the screens and the buttons) and the bottom.

Over the last couple of days the phone has not behaved properly. The touch screen does not work so good sometimes - touching it does nothing. The windows menu repeatedly drops down for no reason. Giving the slide part of the phone a light push (squeeze, but very, very light) causes the windows menu to drop and rise.

I've missed two important calls because I hit the answer button and the phone does not answer.

But its intermittent. The problem only happens sometimes.

I'm incredibly sad about this. I love this phone - especially after all the software I've added to it. I was kinda hoping this thing would last until next fall or so where I could evaluate the new Palm Pre.

So now what? Call insurance and go for a Touch Pro? Switch to an iPhone?

what you can do for starters is backup your phone, then do a complete hard reset. without installing anything back, use the phone for a day to see if it behaves... if it does, you know the phone has an issue and should be replaced.

if it doesn't.. it was a software program or similar and you go to troubleshoot... loading a few programs at a time...

kind of a pain but this is the best way to find out.. and the cell shop will not have any answers for you. they will play with it then hard reset so its best you do it...

as far as what phone you want.. thats a personal decision...

It is possible for dirt to get wedged between the case and the screen along an edge. Then when you flex the case, it presses on the screen.

Sure sounds like that is all you have.

If you have a screen protector, pull it off and inspect the screen.

Great advice guys...

Whats the best way to completely backup the data on the phone?

As for the dirt under the edge of the screen - brilliant! I'll bet that's it. It didn't even occur to me. Later today when I have some time I'll check it out and clean it. Betcha that'll do the trick.

sprite backup , spb backup.. couple others. do a search on the site to get more results.

Wayne Orwig, thanks for the tip man - I think you saved my life (or my phone's life anyway)!

For years, my dentist has given me free samples when I see him, the bulk of which are these boxes filled with flexible plastic toothpick things. About as long as a toothpick, they are 1/4 inch thick on one end, and taper down to a tiny point.

I used one of them to gently 'clean' between the clear plastic touch interface and the silver plastic 'frame' above it (with the Verizon logo on it).

I was amazed at how much crap there was under there. Pocket lint mostly, and a few teeny tiny crumbs or rocks or something were jammed under there too. None of it was really visible until the toothpick treatment. I noticed a particularly large chunk of something near the upper left hand corner with the Windows logo. (And by large, I mean 1/2 the size of a head on a pin and smaller. We're talking particles so small they are barely visible.)

And of course, the problem I had was the Windows menu would pull down without me wanting it to - which was right where a big chunk of dirt was.

And my problems seemed to immediately stop after the cleaning. So thanks again for the cleaning tip, Wayne Orwig!

So guys, you may want to try cleaning the screen crack with a toothpick or something thin if the touchscreen goes wonky. The soft plastic toothpick was probably better than metal because it couldn't scratch my phone. A wood toothpick might have broken and made things worse.