Can I Trust My iPhone?

[eye-Fone]

So, yesterday I'm using my iPhone 3G in my car to make a couple of calls. I then plug in my cassette adapter to listen to the iPod. I get to where I'm going, unplug the adapter, put the phone in my pocket and leave my car. When I pull it out of my pocket a few minutes later, it was in "Emergency Call" mode. The phone was disabled except for emergency use only. The display told me to connect to iTunes to enable the phone. What the #$^&??

I was nowhere near my home, let alone my computer with iTunes. I had to wait a couple of hours before I got home and connect to iTunes. That went fine and my phone was re-enabled.

My questions are...

1) What caused it to go into disabled mode (emergency mode)?

2) What if I was out of town without my laptop computer (which is my phone's iTune connection)...would I be SOL until I returned from my trip? That would really suck, big time!

3) What can I do to avoid this situation again?

Here are the specifics about my iPhone:

- iPhone 3G, about three weeks old
- The operating system is version 2.0.1 (build 5B108). I upgraded to that version about three days ago
- There is about 10GB free on the device
- The phone is password protected because I access Microsoft Exchange data
- My phone has been pretty much trouble-free the whole time I've had it (eye-Fone knocks on wood)

[daihard]

I get to where I'm going, unplug the adapter, put the phone in my pocket and leave my car. When I pull it out of my pocket a few minutes later, it was in "Emergency Call" mode.
Was the iPhone already in the "Emergency Call" mode before you placed it in your pocket? I am wondering if the cassette adaptor somehow caused the phone to act up. Is the adaptor a certified device that's designed to work with the iPhone 3G?

[eye-Fone]

I don't know if it was put into emergency upon disconnection from the cassette adapter. It's an older adapter and is certainly not iPhone certified. However, isn't it just another headset from the iPhone's point-of-view? All I do is plug it into the headphone jack.

[daihard]

I don't know if it was put into emergency upon disconnection from the cassette adapter. It's an older adapter and is certainly not iPhone certified. However, isn't it just another headset from the iPhone's point-of-view? All I do is plug it into the headphone jack.
It's supposed to be another headset from the iPhone's standpoint, but weird things can happen when you combine an old piece of hardware with the latest, state-of-the-art technology. As you may know, the iPhone headphone jack doubles as the switch to toggle between the speaker mode and the headphone mode. I'm just wondering if the switch caused some weird malfunctioning. It may not be convincing, but hey, anything is possible. :)

[sights0d]

I would think the same thing... It's just a post... I've plugged mine into my ear protection I use at the firing range. It works fine... I'm not sure that anything that plugs into the earphone jack has to be "Iphone 3g Certified."

[daihard]

I would think the same thing... It's just a post... I've plugged mine into my ear protection I use at the firing range. It works fine... I'm not sure that anything that plugs into the earphone jack has to be "Iphone 3g Certified."
No, but using any non-certified device might give Apple an excuse to not help us when a problem arises. :(

But again, it's just headphones. We're not talking about anything that plugs into the iPhone's dock connector.

[sights0d]

True. I love it when tech support claims that you're outside the scope of their ability to help because you're using non-standard equipment... like Comcast when I admit to using a router. I've long since stopped doing that. "Yes sir... the computer is plugged directly into the modem."