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.
