Something happened to my Android based MyTouch3G phone yesterday after I turned it on in the morning. Some of the buttons stopped working like normal (Home, Search, green phone button, and Search), and the power off menu lost a couple of menu items, showing only ‘Power off’. Plus the lock pattern stopped showing, even though it was still configured in the settings. I uninstalled a few of the last apps that I last remember installing, but that didn’t help. If you’re interested I found someone having a similar issue and I posted exact details here.
Looked like the only way to get back to normal was a factory reset. I used the MyBackup app to do a full backup of apps and data to my SD card (can’t do that on an iPhone!), reset, and then reinstalled everything back. Now it works fine. Took the opportunity to not install some stuff that I didn’t really need, so did some housecleaning at the same time, and found some features on some of the apps that I didn’t know about too. MyBackup worked great – highly recommended.
Still no idea what happened, will be interested to see if it happens again (but hopefully not!).