The revival...

By evening today, I gathered enough courage and confidence to perform a surgery on my iPhone to see the damage inside the body and to check if it can be repaired... As I mentioned in my last post, after that careless drop, the camera was malfunctioning and speakers were producing distorted sound.

This is a pre-operative picture of the phone. You can notice a deep scratch/hole which almost pierced through the body. The dent is not visible in this picture but the area around this scratch is dented by a mm or so.

While front of the phone has the scratch guard, the back was bare and you can notice so many scratches on it.

The bottomless phone! It took a while to find a way to open the antenna cover with minimum damage to the body.

The aluminum back was the easiest to remove. Just unscrew three bottom screws and slide the back to top...

After I opened the back, I checked for any physical damage to the phone. Fortunately,there was no significant damage visible. I checked the camera and it showed no physical damage. There was nothing much I could do on it as it is a surface mounted device.

I checked speakers and found that the packing material which sits between actual speaker and the body of the phone was misplaced. I put both packings to their original place and then closed the phone.

During power on, I noticed some flicker on the screen which was unusual. Network connectivity worked fine and phone of the iPhone was working fine. Speakers sounded good too.

I turned on the camera and noticed no MTV effect. It showed perfect pictures but sometimes, it flickered. It also showed some screening effect similar to ones we see when we shoot a live TV. It would not matter much as long as camera produced good pictures. I clicked a picture of the "operation table" and then downloaded it on my computer to see if it came ok... and it did!

So, I am a bit relieved that my iPhone is back in action. But I am still scared about the flicker during start up and the flicker during camera operation. I fear that this phone too now suffers with the similar syndrome I suffer with my loved ones... they fail to support me when I need them most...

The carelessness...

Since the day I had iPhone, I was living with a fear that I would drop it one day and make it useless... I did drop it few times but not as bad as the drop few days back...

It was an evening of June 20 when I was hijacked by Jayesh chacha for a dinner at 53 GV. On the way, I got a call and after it finished, I left my iPhone in my lap instead of sliding back in my pocket. I got lost in talking with La Doobaa and chacha/chachi that when we reached 53 GV, I forgot about the iPhone in my lap and I just disembarked from the car... I heard a big noise of something badly hitting the ground and first I thought (and hoped) it was my Nokia 6230i phone... but it was iPhone. I noticed a big scratch and a dent on the back... The sim compartment got stuck and the on/off switch went inside the body.... After some tries, it finally came out and I dared to power on the phone...

After it was powered on, I noticed Airtel's signal on top left and I was a bit relieved that at least, the signal reception is working. I made a call and the other phone rang further relieving me that outgoing is also working. But when that person answered, I could not hear at first. I tapped the phone and I could hear the voice but it lost voice again. It worked sometimes and it did not most of the time. I tried playing some songs from its iPod and the same behavior...

Than I dared to check if the camera was working or not... When I opened camera application, the screen looked like MTV scene... Again, tapping worked but it stopped working later (may be I tapped too hard)...

Above is the picture of Ashram Express train by which I came back to Ahmedabad today morning. Look how the color spectrum is deviated from the original. I fear it is because of some loose contact/broken contact of camera with the circuit board... or may be its something wrong with the optics... Whatever it is, it has made the main use of this phones as a blog camera useless...

I am thinking to open the phone tomorrow and check the condition inside. Any tips or suggestions are highly welcome. Thanks in advance.

Half the speed, double the price...

I mean its "Half the price, double the speed!"

Apple announced its much awaited 3G iPhone few days back and below is the its homepage ad...

To me, its very disappointing that this new generation phone still lacks some of the basic features which even quarterly priced GSM phones offer... For example, even this version of iPhone can not accept business card via SMS (or any other way than iTuning). Sending and receiving business card is so needed in a business world, I wonder why Steve's team has missed this basic necessity. Another important feature this phone lacks is a wireless connectivity with iTunes. In order to do ANY communication between your personal information on PC and iPhone, you have to connect iPhone with its USB cable. WHY WHY WHY??? Why cant it connect iTunes over WiFi? In this modern world of security encryption, I am sure Apple could easily device a method to iTune the iPhone to correct PC.

And for God's sake, how can Apple repeat its year old mistake of leaving the headphone socket wide open for every creature on this earth to enter inside???

Months back, I faced a problem of ants entering my iPhone and making a safe heaven there like the way Talibans have made theirs in the mountains of Afghanistan... In case you want to know more about this, the whole ant-invasion is documented here...

So, for past few months, I thought they were gone after I sprayed some bug killer inside the iPhone through that headphone socket. But suddenly, few days back I noticed them one more time and in more numbers than before... I think they were busy producing more babies underground (I mean under the circuit board)...

Too bad too bad...  Apple failed to plug the hole...

Now, those who bought the 1st generation of iPhones in first few weeks, they paid $599 for it... Apple slashed the price of the phone and till last few weeks, 8GB iPhone was sold online at $399.

Apple withdrew these iPhones from the market few weeks back and created an artificial scarcity of iPhones in the market... Nobody knew the reason and now everyone knows about it! Apple reduced the price by half and saved thousands of those potential buyers from disappointment... Do you think Apple indeed considers its customers so much? I doubt strongly.

Before I share my belief on this view, I would like to mention a recent federal ruling on iPhone and similar issues... Essence of this ruling is:
"The underlying activity sought to be performed by the owner of the handset is to allow the handset to do what it was manufactured to do – lawfully connect to any carrier. This is a noninfringing activity by the user...The purpose of the software lock appears to be limited to restricting the owner’s use of the mobile handset to support a business model, rather than to protect access to a copyrighted work itself."

You can download the whole ruling from here: 
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/1201_recommendation.pdf

So, this ruling made it legal to unlock iPhones and use them with any other carriers than AT&T.

Now, Apple has halved the price of the iPhone. Any iPhone seekers would be excited and jumping out of joy to learn that he or she can buy his or her beloved iPhone now just under $200... I wish this was true...

Apple is smart though not intelligent... It brought in place a new policy that it would not sell iPhones without signing a (fresh?) two years contract with AT&T... This means that if you walk into Apple or AT&T store and plan to buy just the phone, it simply wont work. Even if you plan to cancel the contract after you pick up, AT&T is planning to decide about the early contract termination penalty to make your life miserable. So, basically, though the price is cut to half, for those "uncomfortable with AT&T" users, this is just further trouble to get an iPhone... And as rightly anticipated by many iPhone watchers, the price of current iPhones (first generation) have already started soaring high... Now you know why Apple and AT&T stopped selling iPhones since last few weeks...

Another interesting happening about new iPhone is that Apple plans to release it to 70 different countries in coming months. In US and many countries in Europe, iPhone 3G would start selling from July 11 and in months to follow, Apple will be selling to many more countries including India. In India, it has tied up with Bharti - Airtel. Now, I wonder what business model it is going to use for India. In India, no cell phone service providers offer annual contracts. Actually, annual contract thingy just does not work in India though it should. Here, people buy unlocked/unbranded handsets from the market and buy either pre-paid service or a monthly post paid service from the service providers. To my knowledge, no service providers in India has introduced "annual contract". So, it would be interesting to know how Apple will work in this market segment.

Anyway, these days, my iPhone has been a great support to me whenever I have to attend any boring conferences or while waiting for my turn to present my papers... Few days back, in a conference, while everyone was attentively listening to a presentation of an IP based security system, I was lost in playing pool on my iPhone. Suddenly, a fellow next to me noticed that and he too started playing game on his cell phone... Sometimes, iPhones are infectious...

The Me

Life is very amazing when you live it without being dragged emotionally in it... I had been passing through a very rough time recently and I noticed that more I could keep my emotions and sentiments away, I could take better decisions. Now, when I look back at what happened during that rough time, I wonder how I could manage to sail through so easily. Of course, I learned many lessons during this and I realized who is who for me.

Anyway, last Sunday, I boarded Rajdhani Express to New Delhi and that journey turned out to be very interesting. After traveling an hour past Abu Road station, the train suddenly stopped and then after a while, it started driving backward. Upon inquiring, we found that the track further ahead was damaged by some protesters and the train was going back to Ahmedabad. We reached back to Ahmedabad at 4am in morning and were given full refund of the ticket. My fellow passenger commented: "Wow, what a journey! 8 hours of journey in air-conditioned train and a free dinner!"

From the railway station, I came down to my office and checked the availability of any morning flights to New Delhi. Unfortunately, only SpiceJet flight was available but it was too expensive. So, I booked my ticket on GoAir's evening flight which cost me Rs. 99 + Tax (Rs. 2900!). Later in afternoon, when I logged on to GoAir's site, the price was increased to Rs. 1500 + Tax!

When I reached the airport, I noticed this advertisement. It was pretty interesting. While I was taking the picture of this, some fellow passenger approached me and told me that photography was not allowed inside the terminal and I might end up with a trouble from security people. I later checked with the ground staff of GoAir and she said that it was not true. 

On the flight, I had to take my medicine and I asked the crew member for a bottle of water. To my surprise, GoAir does not offer ANYTHING complementary on its flight and this bottle of water was priced at Rs. 15! The most expensive water I had ever purchased...

First few days in New Delhi have been very productive and cheerful. First day, I met many old friends whom I hadn't met for a long time. They were happy to see me back. Chachis and LaaDoobaa were cheerful and so were Jayeshchacha and Jituchacha. Despite the heat of extreme summer here, I could feel the warmth of all people here.

Honey and Yogesh are leaving for Nairobi in an hour so and it would be good for me to EOB now and be with them.