Discussion on:

Our Apple iPhone still works (Cracking open the Apple iPhone)

I wish I had $600 that I could risk blowing away. Congrads on taking it apart and not completly killing it! Nice job.

And I was just about to take this thing apart when I got your
email. Thanks for saving me the effort!

Very cool cellphone/ipod indeed. Not such a great choice of
a phone service provider though...

Someone put an iPhone on my desk. Fortunately, my hammer was also there so that I can smash it to pieces. Screwdrivers are overrated.

After reading your other post about losing your job because your iphone battery went dead,
(http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=228477&messageID=2275828)
I completely understand why you felt the urge. Exactly where the hell do you work? A hammer on your desk, and people just freely leave Iphones lying around. I need to pay a visit.

very nice cellphone/ipod indeed welldone. university highschools diplomas | online ged

You can seperate money from ones wallet.

All this has proven was that they can over price electronics and the public will fork out the asking price.

I like to buy things after the price gets down to almost what it costs not let the manufaturer mark it up over cost that it takes one weeks pay to off set the purchase and then get hooked with a device that only works on one network.

Wonder how long it will take for the FCC to notice that users can not port their devices to Verizon or Nextel sprint for better service...

Now, can you make it work with Outlook Exchange Servers! Heck, if I can't check my work e-mail on it, why would I pay $500 for it when I can get a pocket pc phone for about the same price, and it will do most of the same things the iphone does.

I'll wait for the next incarnation and hopefully I'll be able to get it with a better service provider.

Good work guys...it was a very interesting article!!

Glad you did it so I don't have to!! Looks great - very thorough and congratulations on getting it done without using a hammer and chisel!

Hammer and chisel would definitely get "part" of the job
done!!! Congratulations guys!!

When you get right down to it,who cares? Its nice to see that you have $600 plus money for a two yr contract to throw around when it could have been spent on something worth while that we would be interested in.$600 for this is just a waist.With the size of the screws holding it together,you could have just dropped it to open it.It would have been faster! lol

$600 for a second rate cell phone PLUS a contract with a (third rate cell carrier)?

Sad.

I am curious to know about your comparison point.

I do not understand all these hippes about iphone.Please can someone tell me what it can do better than any other standard cell phone such as Nokia's N-seris, Motorola v3xx or Samsung P300.
ONYEUKO CHIGOZIE TEDDY

Where are you getting these figures?

ATT is the second largest wireless provider in the world; the largest in north america. If anything, "second-rate carrier" would be more appropriate.

The RAZR was some $4-500 when it came out, and for the first year or so, was riddled with hardware and software problems.. Yet when you look at the numbers, the RAZR has been the single most successful phone to date - as far as number of sales goes..

From everything I've heard, the iphone has excellent voice quality, and some pretty innovative features.. accelerometer, proximity detector, multi-touch display, 1000x the storage capacity of the razr...

The iphone sold out across the country within the first 2 days of launch, and has generated more hype than any other phone... I don't know where you're getting "second-rate"

if Microsoft released this, the same people that pan it and talk about what a rip-off it is would be falling all over themselves to gush over how great it is. the name apple (mysteriously, like the name "clinton") seems to fill certain people with an uncontrollable urge to spout vitriol about what an overpriced piece of garbage it is.

on another note, it's nice that you all are willing to risk the $600 investment so the rest of us can see the innards. amazing what these engineers can pack into such a tiny space.

whether it's crap or not, the iPhone will give the other manufacturers a kick in the a$$ to sharpen their interfaces and do their best to one-up it ASAP. this is a VERY good thing for the rest of us who like the look and don't have the $600 to shell out.

So, your battery is getting low during a business trip, while doing customer support in an Internet cafe. The battery is almost out and you let the customer know that you'll be right back. You hang up and go to swap the low battery with a fully charged one, and then remember that you cannot. You have an iPhone. You are SOL. Quickly you look around for a pay phone, but there are none. You then search for an outlet to plug your iPhone charger into, and there are none that you can use ( the cafe doesn't want to pay for customer electricity usage ).

The customer, frustrated that you did not call them back, decided to switch to your competition. Your boss is none too happy with your losing such a large account.

Battery recharged, you take a phone interview call while in the unemployment line, all the while wondering if you spent your $600 wisely.

Sounds like it happened to you.. Lose your job because your cellphone went dead? Wife divorce you because your battery died late night on the way home from your girlfriend's house?

Luckily, I-phone users can get an external backup battery, however, I'd imagine that someone with client-based job of that magnitude and importance didn't get there by NOT taking necessary precautions. Regular cell phone batteries go dead too, not just the I-phone. ALL of them I've seen require an electrical outlet, and not all have swappable batteries, AND most have a cigarette lighter charger where you can talk and charge at the same time. SO, said that, don't do your big business deals while hungover in starbucks, retard.

And I thought I was negative.

This is exactly why you don't buy Apple.
Sure it looks good, but there are many things you can't do with an iCrap that you can do with other cell phones... like the simple things like changing the battery.

You lose all your data when you need to change your battery (have to send it into Apple) for $90USD. What a load of crap!

Get your information straight negative nelly.
People love it because it IS apple and not one of the mainstream companies. If Microsoft had anything to do with it there would be huge posts about the monopolistic ways of Microsoft and how they are now into building phones. All this piece of junk is is a spin off of the iPod merged into a cell phone.
As cheaply constructed as that mess is - it will have more issues.
The fact that you cannot not easily replace the battery puts more money into Apple's pocket and less into yours.
KUDOS to the patience on the part of the author and Thank you for the detailed pictures and comments.

I don't have the money to go and spend on something that I can only use with one provider, at least if I buy it in the US... I would buy it in a different country where it would not be locked into a provider. I can't see spending $600 to only be able to use it with a AT&T, Verizon, or who ever I bought it from.

As for branding, if it was Microsoft I definitely NOT buy it. being apple I would be more likely to buy it. the downside I don't like is the non removable battery that makes it difficult for the non technical user to change the battery. I think that is a brain fart on apples part. I would expect the price to come down over a period of time though...

Wait, why does the SIM card have the 3G logo on it? I thought the iPhone did not support 3G.

no solid answer to that yet.

Well, technically, it's not a 3G phone, but it does have some of the features, such as YouTube. Therefore, it needs that type of SIM Card while passing all of data to the phone, for the iPhone and Google Maps capabilities.

And of course, you MAY be right in the fact it could have 3G items one day, but I doubt that.

All sim chips now are 3G compatable even if the device is not.

carriers provide backward compatibility from 3G to 2G (GSM). If your phone has 3G, it will work as 3G, otherwise as 2G. YouTube and Google Maps are not the 3G features. They can be implemented over every technology which provides internet access. 2G+GPRS does it now well. The difference between 2G and 3G is in radio frequencies and data bandwidth.

I LIKE IT!! 10/10.
Wud be good to see how they manufacture these gadgets!

Have anybody opened the Nokia N95 previously??

While you were in there, did you notice who's graphics chip is used?

Real page turner, will he reassemble, or can we laugh!

Very Thin Blade? give me a break! my pen knife is the thickest blade I own. Try a Scalpel Blade next time, I recommend a 11 blade.

They need to make the Hard Reset combinations easier to find, it can be a real give away that someone's had one apart!

Good to see I'm not the only one who has an intense and insatiable urge to take apart the lastest toy I get.

Mine stems back to Childhood, my parents once commented: "We remember you taking lots of our things apart, fridges, radios" - "Cookers, microwaves, Vacuum cleaners, door bells, phones..." I added.

"We don't remember you doing them," they said:
"That's because I got them back together and working again...." I explained.

yes but can you use it to serf the net like a computer and not a mobile fone? Or is that still not available. My nec 616 stubbonly refuses to load up pages from the "url" prompt. However it will load gif's and jpegs from my website. Whats your view of this beast?

Congrats looks like taking it apart was mission impossible!

where's the 8 GG storage? I guess you can't upgrade to a higher storage.

I understand typos, but you need to do better to retain any credibility.

I noticed the poster that you commented on was from Bangalore. Maybe if you weren't the self-imposed Grammar Nazi you would have noticed that. It's probably just a misunderstanding on his part of our American abbreviations. And get off your high horse - it was just a question. If you base credibility on the use of GG vs. GB or gb or gig or whatever, you truly epitomize the overly-critical hypocritical moron. Gee I hope you don't have family members subject to such idiotic criticism.

Here?s a clue O? Grammar King, make posts on the content of the subject, not the fact that you failed to achieve your high goal of being the "Grammar Moderator of the Internet and other Galactic Communication Mediums?.

Geez ? no wonder other folks think we are arrogant ___holes.

So I assume you can easily use any other SIM with this phone? Anyone tried to use Tmobile or any other provider?

As with the other phone, I think it has FW lock to not accept other operators SIM card

As I understand it the phone will only work with this card. You are stuck with AT&T and even if you have an old AT&T compatible SIM you can't use it. This seems like an odd decision because it greatly limits the market for this item in the US and completely blocks all potential Canadian customers (if you live in Canada you can still use this as an expensive MP3 player / picture viewer / calculator I guess, if you can get your music and pics onto it).

http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/Daily-News/718bce09-9ad7-4158-8fe3-bb6fafb9a9a3.html

Rogers uses GSM and SIM cards in Canada.

90% of the world uses GSM, and therefore, SIM cards... but all carriers put a subsidy lock on their phone (because they give them away free, or for less than they paid for them) to ensure you don't take it to another carrier.

The iphone has more than just a subsidy lock, it will refuse to work if any other sim besides the one it came with is inserted.
The iccid/imei must match what's programmed in at the hlr. If you need to get a new sim card, you have to go through the itunes activation again I think.

What's more, ATT has no plans to ever unlock an iphone, they have no way of generating an unlock code, so the device will never even turn on with a foreign sim inserted.

Luckily, ATT only has 2 year exclusivity, and they should be coming to the rest of the world then.

It may be that all carriers in the US place subsidy locks on
'phones but here in Cyprus (and many other parts of the
world) there are no subsidies, we just buy a 'phone and
either open an account or more commonly use a pre-pay
system. Is the iPhone going to be usable as a pre-pay 'phone
or is Apple going to shoot itself in the foot (again, like the
old days) and lose a huge chunk of world wide market share?

I saw that the iPhone was designed in California and assembled in China, which leaves the question of the country of manufacture of the components. I didn't see that inscribed on any parts.

Does anyone have an estimate of the cost of production of the iPhone?

Amazing!

Wow !!! awesome