After a few months, I just the other day noticed some cracks in my black 112s from the 2008-12-02 batch.
I see the usual cracks on the vertical sections of both the left and right phones, and there's the chip out of the left. I only just noticed these, but I wouldn't be overly surprised if the former had been there for a while and only came to my attention when I saw the latter.
I think I'm planning to ask for a replacement when the new stock finally comes in, but I'm not sure how long I want to wait, since the foam tips are getting a little ragged in spots, and I no longer have both of the large silicone tips, due to the one on the left being a bit loose and having come off at some point, probably on its way out of my pocket or something.
I've been meaning to contact Phonak for a while now due to some other issues, but I now have a bit more motivation.
I too have had the sound fade out in the left ear. Fortunately, my Rockboxed Fuze has balance control, so I could compensate on the go up to a point. I have, however, done a little bit of filter-fiddling to try to get sound back. Merely removing and replacing the filters doesn't seem to fix the problem reliably. Removing the filter, blowing or sucking air across the opening, and replacing the filter (or just leaving the phones to sit overnight) appears to do the trick. I also noticed that it happened a lot less often when I went back to the foam tips from the large silicone tips. Is it a problem of ventilation or something like that?
On another issue, I also noticed that the cables didn't stay in all the way in the ear guides very well. I shrugged this off and stopped using them since they were catching my hair anyway. Will the new cables stay in the guides any better?