Aug 20, 2009

24 hours of Love

Dead but doesn't know itOn the weekend I managed to let my iPhone 3G slip out of my pocket while riding my bike. Not an approved activity... The screen shattered into a crazy spiderweb pattern. When the new iPhone 3GS came out I had idly looked into an early upgrade, but the $450 cost put that idea out of my head pretty fast. Was I going to have to "turn and cough" after all?

Looking down at my fatally(?) wounded little friend, I determined that everything still worked fine. "I can live with a crackled screen", I said to myself. But the glass was slowly losing slivers... The Rogers Wireless web page revealed that an early upgrade was still $450 but there was no stock of any model of iPhone anyway. A third-party repair (replacing the "digitizer") was going to cost $150. Talking to the techs at the nearest Apple Store I found out that they could do the same official repair for over $200, but they did have iPhones in stock and suggested that I call Rogers and get the real upgrade story.

It turns out that I did qualify for a no-penalty early upgrade. I could get the new faster, bigger iPhone for the normal $199 price! Back at the Apple store I managed to get a new iPhone on the spot. (In the sense that an Apple sales dude and I spent an hour on the phone the Rogers Wireless sales people.)

Now I am in the 24 hour after-glow of tech salvation. Tomorrow I will again hate Rogers, but not today, not today. What to do with the old phone? Repair it anyway? Sell it for parts on eBay? Hmmm...

Listening to: Hammerhead by The Offspring from Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace.

2 comments:

  1. The 3G models are really easy to take apart. Just unscrew and pry. You can replace the whole top half (which includes the screen) yourself for 200, which is super easy. Or if you want to replace the glass you'll just have to figure out how you're going to stick it to the case. You can either glue it or order a kit that comes with sticker adhesive (which sounds a lot better to me. Unfortunately the site I found won't ship to Canada, so I just paid someone 150 to do it.

    There's a big market for iPhones on craigslist, so I'm sure you'd have no problems getting rid of it there if you wanted. I kept my old broken one as backup as a phone to play around with or take on vacation.

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  2. Never saw your comment come in... I was OK with another Rogers contract, so the replacement ended up being the best choice. I do have a spare iPhone now though, if I can get the parts I might try to revive it anyway!

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