When you've been using a particular gadget for some time, you develop what seems to be a personal, and perhaps, even a somewhat intimate relationship with that object. The contents, the settings, and even the characteristics of a gadget that you use all the time is defined by you with one purpose alone: to serve you.

It is at that personalization juncture, when a very common property, a gadget that everybody uses, turns into a real personal property, one that's meant for you, and your use alone. It becomes what it is because of you, the owner and the user.

It can be an iPod, a Macbook, and yes, an iPhone.

And because a common property is now your personal property, sooner than later, you also become keenly, and often painfully aware, of the somehow seemingly strange and quirky behavior of your gadget. You really get to know it, almost to the core. You more or less can divine whether it is working well or if there's something wrong with it, and even guess what needs to be done to care for it.

In most cases, and in general, manufacturers recommend that you take certain diagnostics and then take certain steps to isolate the problem which will then eventually lead to a certain solution. From the point of view of the manufacturer, it is always a matter of cause and then effect. Do this, and you'll end up with such-and-such a result. Very logical. And it almost always works for many owners and users of all sorts of gadgets. Including the iPhone.

I have the original iPhone, and I've been happily using it for almost a year now. And yes, I must admit, I am one of those who has developed a "relationship" with it, to the point that I've become so familiar with its workings that I am able to diagnose if there's something wrong.

And that's where Bejeweled 2, the game, comes in. Bejeweled was of the first games I bought, downloaded and installed in my iPhone. I've played Bejeweled in my other previous devices, and next to TextTwist, of which I'm still patiently waiting to be available, Bejeweled has been my classic, personal, favorite time-waster.

My intent, of course, when I bought Bejeweled, was to fill in the blank, odd, anywhere snippets of time with something pleasurable to do. However, all the time spent playing on my iPhone, little did I suspect, that Bejeweled in my iPhone will somehow serve me yet another purpose. As a diagnostic tool. I cannot recall how it turned to be my diagnostic tool, but because compared to some of the other 3rd-party applications, it's bigger, heavier and requires "full power" to run. Hence, to my way of thinking, the system on which it operates, meaning the iPhone, must be, for all intents and purposes, robust. At least that's how I see it.

And so, whenever I install additional apps, and if I get the slightest inkling that something is wrong with my iPhone, if there seems to be a matter that's not slightly right, I immediately fire up Bejeweled to check if it will run properly. If it doesn't, then that's when I know there is indeed something wrong. In which case, I hook it up to iTunes, go through the snail-paced backup process, and then restore. When done, I fire up Bejeweled again to see if it solved the problem.

I've never done so much restore or caring for my iPhone before it turned version 2.0. Things used to work so well, and I was expecting that such would be my experience after 2.0, in fact, magnified because of all the new, additional wonderful capabilities. Of course, that was not the case, and like many iPhone users, I've been beset by a number of challenges. Still, despite the imperfection of the firmware, I'm still for the iPhone.

And because I have Bejeweled installed, it somehow, along the way, unscientific and non-sensical, became my favorite tool (which actually gives me an excuse to play) to see if all is well with my iPhone. I'm not sure if there's a logical explanation for this or if there is sense in doing this, but somehow this elliptical diagnostic "method" works for me.

How about you, what sort of diagnostic do you do and what steps do you take to check if your iPhone is up to snuff?