Apart from that it was a great design, very user serviceable. Whole thing comes apart with just two screws, glass isn't part of the touch screen so smashed phones can be fixed for <$10 in < 10 minutes.
Apple likes to bleat on about how environmentally sound they are but glueing everything together and making it disposable piece of electro-garbage just makes that whole spiel ridiculous to me.
Having replaced the screen on a 4s myself, I can say your 10 minute estimate was way off. You could replace the back glass in 2 minutes flat, but the front glass was much much more involved.
Replacing the front glass required you to disassemble every 0.something mm screw in the thing and pull all of the parts out. It took me over an hour, partially because I had to carefully document each and every screw to make sure they go back in the right place (I didn't want to swap a 0.7mm and a 0.8mm screw somewhere).
I think the screw heads are a red herring. The screwdriver costs next to nothing, it's really not a problem spending a few dollars on tools for a phone that comes apart well. I think there are much more relevant things to complain about as far as actual "serviceability" goes.
The reality is, if you aren't the kind of person who can spend a few minutes researching and procuring the correct set of screwdrivers, you really should not be opening the case anyway. If you've ever opened up an iPhone and for example replaced the battery I think you would agree, the pentalobe screws are just the appropriate level of deterrent. Crucially, there's no DRM on the battery preventing me from swapping it out myself.
The iphone 4 originally shipped with regular phillips head screws on the outside, but Apple quietly switched those out to the pentalobe head screws sometime after the initial batches of phones came out.
While I totally understand what you're saying and agree with you, I've had 2 of the 85W Mac power adapters replaced out of warranty (2012 rMBP). I'm a "road warrior", travel around 250k miles / year, probably pack / unpack my computer 4-8 times per day, and I'm good about winding/unwinding the power cord, but it's just not designed for that kind of wear & tear.
I think I've gotten replacements because I've been able to show the electrical arcing that takes place (for anyone reading this who doesn't know what electrical arcing is, look it up). Between the nice spark, the sound and especially the smell, employees are pretty damn quick to replace the part. (I did have an employee initially try to just replace part of it, and when I showed him how the problem remained, I just walked over and grabbed a new one off the shelf and told him "I'll just take this." He scanned it and off I went.)
FWIW, the problem I'm talking about is the little 2-prong AC adapter that slides on to the main power "brick". On an 85W model at least, all that weight is borne and supported by the connection, and the torque (or maybe I should be using a term like "lever" or "moment", I don't recall my physics very well) is too much over time.
Last comment - generally I just take Shoe Goo and goop it over the weak strain relief where the cord emerges from the brick. Sure, I don't look cool, but that part of the power supply doesn't fail.
While anecdotal, I have a charger from a 2006 MBP that has no fraying at all and is in great working order with a MagSafe 2 adapter. I've beaten the crap out of it too and travelled a ton with it. It's a bit dirty looking, but not damaged and perfectly functional, especially for a 10+ year old charger.
It was generally only noticeable in areas of marginal signal, IME. I found it possible to make it happen deliberately if signal wasn't great, but never did it accidentally.
It did work just fine, it actually had the best antenna of any phone on the market at the time - dramatic improvement on the previous models. Yeah it lost signal when held wrong but was still superior to other phones. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
Curious: What happens when, during a call, you lose signal and don't recover it? If the call doesn't drop, does it just stay connected, waiting for the signal to come back?
I think the point is that it wasn't ever a complete loss of signal. Signal strength drops a little, maybe the baseband turns up its gain and burns a little more power, and the call stays connected.
You didn't have to hold it a particular way - you had to avoid holding it a particular way. I had one for 2 years and didn't experience dropped calls beyond expected norms.
Apple likes to bleat on about how environmentally sound they are but glueing everything together and making it disposable piece of electro-garbage just makes that whole spiel ridiculous to me.