I am getting rid of my iPhone.
No, this is not an Apple rant. Heck, my phone feels very secure these days (pffffttt FPI). I adore my sleek iPhone6s — the one I am getting rid of is a twice cracked screen iPhone5.
That is the phone I bought in December 2012 after returning home from a year of travel and finding AT&T had turned off their already crappy service in the small town where I live. At the same time, Verizon had 4G in the same location. Easy decision to switch.
I was going to be fine to use the 5s for as long as possible; in June 2015, I dropped it on a sidewalk in Denver and cracked the screen. I’m a bit hard on the phones; I don’t put them in plastic/rubber condoms, just using them naked like the Great One did. Hence, they get worn:
Worn back of my iPhone5, there is a thumb wear and tear mark on the right
I considered a new one, but then found I could get a screen replacement for only $80, rather than paying more under the funky new plans. The local shop only had a white case, which gave it a unique look (only for 2 weeks, something was wrong, and I when I took it back, they replaced it black).
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
But only 4 months later, while in Puerto Rico, I dropped the phone again on the tile floor of a hotel room. Smashed again (some may question my caseless choice as an option, but that cracked screen in 2015 was the first drop I had since using several phones since 2008).
I took it as a sign I should get an iPhone6s (if only because Jim Groom had gotten one weeks early, my photo is a copy of his)
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
There was no trade in on the cracked iPhone5 so I tossed it in a box of old technology, thinking maybe I might find a use for it was an iPod or something. That never happened, but I do see on eBay that even the cracked case iPhones sell for maybe $100 (someone can slap a new screen on cheap and resell), so I decided to take photos yesterday for the ad.
I did notice some interesting things on resetting an iPhone to factory settings (3 warnings on the device). I turned off the wifi to ensure that the Verizon network was not active (it was not). Then I did the process to reset the phone, and was stopped because it could not connect to the Apple Store
a tip for the FBI- you cannot factory reset an iPhone without a network connection
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 24, 2016
Interesting. Anyhow, I turned on wifi, and reset the phone. That was easy. It’s just a Hello screen (cracked) now.
Then rather interesting, I get an email notification from Apple. Not that I disconnected the phone from their data grasps (and who knows if data is ever deleted) but that the Find My iPhone was disconnected- not quite a clear message IMHO:
Apple is telling me something.
Parting is such Apple Sorrow.
Goodbye iPhone 5. Nice knowing ya. Maybe someone else will get some use out of you before you get tossed into the toxic waste stream.
I was pondering my iPhone history, for no real reason than my own fanaticism of documentation. I have no firm purchase records, and iTunes does not seem to reveal all my past devices, but I do have my own photos.
I have a photo where I held an iPhone for the first time, while in Chicago in August 2006 2007, trying it out on my blog.
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
The timing is odd since they were not released until January 2007, but maybe they had test models out earlier to entice us? (See comments below, these photos were uploaded August 2007, I am guessing I set the camera date wrong).
I waited two years one year, and got an iPhone 3G in August 2008 (purchase by my then employer, NMC):
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
A little less than two years later, in July 2010, I upgraded to an iPhone 4, again, bought for my by NMC. It was sure thin…
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
In my exit from NMC in 2011, I negotiated to keep my iPhone. It traveled with me up to the northwest, across Canada, and all the way to Virginia, where October 15, 2011, I inadvertently dropped my iPhone in a canyon.
Right Before I Dropped My iPhone a flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
I divorced the iPhone lineage for a brief time, trying out, in the sense of equity, a cheap Android model. It was not a good fling. We argued a lot and I found myself yelling at it.
When I returned home in December 2011, I restored my sanity with an unlocked iPhone 4s.
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
This one I had but one year, not because of any relationship issues, but because when I got back from more travel in December 2012, I had zero AT&T coverage at home
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
And this was the one I had the longest, it served many travels, and silly videos for DS106 and the You Show
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
But now it’s over due to my twice dropping negligence.
Goodbye.
Top / Featured Image: I made this animated GIF from two photos I took yesterday, one is on flickr with the “hello” screen on, the other was with the screen off (I did not upload, I am using this images for an eBay ad).
The images were not the same size, but when I imported to Photoshoop via File -> Scripts -> Load Images into Stack I get each in a layer. Then I in the Animation window I created a frame animation, and then from the menu in that window used Make Frames From Layers. I enabled both layers in each frame, and in one, made the layer 70% transparent so I could resize them to match the size of the phone screen. Then I deleted everything from the “Hello” frame except the screen, and used the other image as the background. Layers are almost everything.
For the animation I made in one frame the Hello screen layer 0% transparent, and in the second left it as 100%. I can then use the Animation menu’s Tween... feature to create in between the “hello” frames based only on opacity- this creates 4 new frames, and I turned on the background layer. So I have an animation from nothing to “Hello” fading in. I then copied the 4 inner frames, pasted them after the end, and reversed them, thus making a full loop.
Some frame timing adjusting (2 seconds on the full on and full off screens, 0.2s in between), and I was done. Doing this in layers means I am not stuffing repeated data in my GIF, so 600x480px the animation comes in at only 244k. If you want to see the photoshop file grab a copy now.
Sigh, after all that, my theme does not use the animated GIF as a featured image. So it’s embedded in the pst now.
Huh, either you can travel through time or Flickr is playing with you. I have a photo of myself in an Apple Store in July of 2007 playing with the original iPhone for the first time (I think it was announced earlier that year but didn’t even get to stores until June if I recall).
Hello, Still True Friend Alan,
Well, it is always an interesting story when it is told by a tale of iPhones. Because sometimes it is like the story is told on a newer TV or on DVD instead of VHS, so the picture might be clearer or bigger, but when you watch the old classics or the new ones, the hardware part of it is really only the window part and not the characters or the music or sound effects of it or the narrative, but maybe just the number of pixels or 5,1 instead of 2.1 or just stereo or monocast if it is GNA.
So sometimes it is like an old friend that you keep in a box, but sometimes it is a trade-in one because once you sync a new one or look at your blog that is in the cloud with it, all the good stories are still there and just like a True Friend.
Well, bye!
I concur with @timmmmyboy, and was checking out an iPhone at an Apple Store in Orlando during the summer of 2007, knowing that it would be a while (over a year, as it would turn out) before they would be released in Canada.
The subsequent September 2007 release of the original iPod Touch was the consolation prize, as it offered up most of the iPhone functionality minus the phone.
Yeah Andy you and Tim are right. I’m looking at that series of photos, it looks like my camera date was wrong (maybe on changing the camera time zone I set the wrong year?) They were all uploaded August 2007, and besides the adjacent photos are at the Second Life Community Conference (SLCC) which with some googling was in Chicago in August 2007.
Corrected!
You should at least get some of those corner bumper things to save your screen when you drop it again!
For what it’s worth, the cracked screen / worn our back iPhone sold for $56 on ebay.