ARGH! My iPad is broken...isn't it?

I guess I posted this in the wrong forum earlier!

I've just turned on my iPad and I have a couple of inches of horrible squiggly pixels across the middle!

I've not dropped it and it's been kept in a pretty robust leather case the whole time - however, I've just noticed a small dent in the aluminium on the back in the same place as the mess on the front.

I have an appointment at the genius bar tomorrow but does anyone know what they might say? Will the dent mean that they won't replace it?

Here's a picture.

Let's try that again.

Here's a picture - don't look if your squeamish... http://a.yfrog.com/img340/9599/m78.jpg

What happened to it? You don't get a dent in the back without noticing it.

Nothing! It's not really a dent - just a kind of unevenness - it may way have always been there - It's been in a hard case since day one so I might not have noticed. I was using it to read an ibook last night and it was fine, I put it on charge and went to sleep - then woke up to this today. Devastated!

Good luck. I just took my case off, the Apple one, and I could see no unevenness anywhere -- just nice smooth, evenly curved aluminum. Hope it is all under warranty for you, including the unevenness in the case.

I take it you've fully turned it off and on, and done a hard reset?

Thanks. Yes, I've done the resets and it's not worked. Looks like some kind of manufacturer fault I think. Weird how it just happened though.

Good luck!!!! Please let us know how it turns out.

So how did it get the dent? It came from the factory? I would have taken it back for sure...of course now the back of mine is all scratched and whatnot but still, I wouldn't have accepted one with a dent in it.

Unfortunately this story didn't end well.

The genius guys said that the dent on the back is consistent with the damage to the LCD so it's not covered by the warranty. It does look like something has been dropped on it, but I know that this hasn't happened on my watch! I'm now on the case to find out just who has done this - I've let a few people play with it so I'm guessing that someone's not been as honest as they might have been.

They've offered me a replacement which is going to cost me £299 (64gig wifi), better than nothing - I guess that's what credit cards are for...

So, the moral of this story is - be careful with your shiny new iPad - they clearly aren't as robust as iPhones - and if you let people use us - make sure that they treat it just as well as you would.