I have a different problem with that button: it brakes on all ios devices that I own. I broke it on a 3g, on a 4 and now i'm very close to do that again on an ipad. In the past, I had to push it just when I wanted to exit, now there are many new actions assigned to it.
Yeah, my friend had a new iPhone 4 left in practically useless state after 4 months due to the button going bad. Apple replaced it under the warranty but that's not good. (It could easily have happened out of warranty.)
iOS 4.3 has the four finger gestures to simulate the home button if you enable it, and 5.0 is rumoured to have gestures to replace all of the physical buttons.
No excuse for rapidly failing buttons, of course, but it will allow out-of-warantee devices to continue to be functional without costly repairs, which is good news.
My home button is failing. I hadn't heard about finger gestures to simulate it, but it'd be really nice to be able to exit an app without 30 seconds of repeated pressing.
I haven't experienced that but the lock button on my iPhone 4 did break. Now the phone cannot be locked manually. I have set the auto-lock timeout to be 1 minute however.
This why I use the Cydia apps Quick Lock, SpringJumps, and the SBSettings close button.
The first, Quick Lock, shows up as an app, but all it does is turn the screen off when you press it; this saves wear on the sleep button. I keep it on the home screen.
The second, Springjumps, lets you insert button (or apps) that, once pressed, jump to a specific screen number. I have one on the bottom bar that jumps back to the home screen (page 0). To turn off my screen I typically press the go-to-home screen SpringJumps button followed by tapping the QuickLock button which I've placed in the middle of the home screen (didn't want to use up a spot on the bottom row but maybe I should).
Finally, the SBSettings close button lets me close apps without pressing the home button, from inside the SBSettings display. You could probably also configure the activator to "close" given some gesture.
This keeps the wear and tear on that one button to a minimum, for when I really need it, or for when I'm feeling lazy or rushed. Triple-home-button press? Forget it.
