A couple of quick notes…

Just a quick note on some changes to Chapel Wireless’s service offerings.  Trust us when we say that all of this is for the benefit of mankind.  If it doesn’t appear to be to your benefit then we apologize.   You will just have to believe us  All of these changes are effective as of 5 seconds ago.

• We will no longer be offering any repair or replacement services for the original/ 2g iPhone.  I love that device.  It is slightly heavier and slightly narrower and the aluminum just feels good in your hand.  It is no doubt the slickest first release of any recent piece of tech.  The issue is that it is a $%&* to work on.  It really is a case of “more trouble than it’s worth”.  The cost of parts and intensity of labor put it in the Beyond Economical Repair category for the vast majority of consumers.  If this causes you pain we apologize.  Our open position has been to upgrade for some time now, we are just putting action to the sentiment.
• We are cutting the cost on nearly all repair and replacement services for the iPhone 3g.  You can expect to pay an average of 20% less on almost all that we offer with the exception things like full transplants and water damage.  Pricing will be up on the website shortly, but for example replacement of cracked glass is now under $100.00; a savings of over $20.00 and fully half of what you can expect to pay at an apple store.  In addition, thanks to some innovative advances in tactics, we can get you out of the door in less than 5 minutes in most cases as opposed to 5 days with the genius bar.
• Chapel wireless will be stocked, locked, loaded and looking to execute on 3GS repairs within a week.  Call us at 985.845.4800 or drop us an email for updates on the availability of those parts and repairs.  The cost on 3GS repair services has yet to be finalized, but we will have that for you soon enough!

Big thanks to everyone through this little transition.  Please feel free to contact us for any reason at all.  We answer the phone

The Quick and Dirty on Battery Replacement

“Battery life was never great, but this is getting a little out of hand…”  If you have noticed the longevity of your iPhone has been diminished as of late, it may just be the natural way of things.  If you were an early adopter of the 3G and have not slid into a 3G S as of yet, then chances are you are about to be in the business of changing your battery.  Apple claims that the 3G is good for around 400 charge cycles– unlike many manufacturers their battery numbers are usually pretty alright so we will give the Cuppertino boys the benefit of the doubt on that one.  So what does 400 cycles look like?

I have never known anyone to go more than a full 24 hours of  regular usage without needing to shackle up to that white ball and chain we call a charging cable.  Sorry, it just doesn’t happen.  Unless you have all location, data polling, and multimedia functions disabled and stay strictly on edge while keeping your phone locked religiously, you are probably plugging in on the way home from work every day.  The point is that even under “normal” usage your time between charges is probably 18-20 hours, which puts your 400 cycles ending around yesterday.

So what can you expect to gain from a battery swap?  It is very dependent on your usage patterns, but there is certainly no reason why even under heavy data usage why you should be able to leave the charger at home tomorrow morning.  Unless you are watching season 2 of lost while “working”, in which case you may still need to bring it.  So what next?

1. You can send your handset off to Apple for replacement if you don’t mind spending nearly $90.00 to be without your phone for 5+ days amd losing all of your data. (Better than nothing)
2. You can send your handset off to a 3rd party and you can be without your phone for 5+ days and $15.00 richer with data intact. (Better than Apple)
3. You can swing by Chapel Wireless and have your iPhone back in your hands in less than 30 minutes with data intact and enough money left over for lunch.  (Infinitely better than any other solution)

Lets not forget that your wireless device is supposed to be wireless. You don’t have to live like this with your iPhone shackled to a white chain for half the day.  Call, write or drop by for any additional details or answers to wireless questions.   Contact data can be found here as always.

Anticlimactic: iPhone 3.0

If you are one of the millions of iPhone owners who braved the congested servers and and fought back potential download snafus in search of mobile software bliss, I have some news for you if you haven’t figured it out already:  There is not much to be excited about.  Now before you go shaking you that arthritic, forever cocked in swiping position finger of yours at me, lets take an objective look at this incremental improvement.

I own an iPhone and i think that it is easily in the top 5 pieces of consumer technology to be born in my nearly 30 years on this planet.   I am not going to sing of its wonder or worship at the alter of Jobs, but I assure you that my right index finger is also arthritic.  Also in all fairness,  I use a jailbroken device and frankly don’t know if I could go back to the big house.

1.  MMS
I am not a huge user of MMS and never have been, but for those who are:  No dice.  At least not yet  Your SMS icon now bears no initials as if to indicate that it is now “messages” but no sendy or receivy.  Supposedly be here round August if you are drinking the At&t kool-aid.  I have had a conversation with an At&t engineer and he confirmed my theory which will be forthcoming.

This is anticlimactic because: 1.  Well, you can’t even freaking use it, and 2.  This has been available through several apps via Cydia, most notably Swirly.  Although the At&t cripple does effect the function of Swirly MMS as well if you are really motivated, you can make it happen.

2.  Tethering
Tethering your phone to your computer is incredibly useful.  It has saved me more than a few times both on the road and in the office during an outage.  Guess what?  No dice here either.  Word is you can get this functionality in August as well.  Are you seeing a pattern here?  The end of the summer appears to be some sort of a chronological  calling card for iPhone functionality.  Although if you have been waiting for this, you are no stranger to waiting.

This is anticlimacic because: 1. Again, you cant even utilize the functionality.  Grrrrrr, and 2. This has been available since 2007 with SSH and has been fool-proof since the second quarter of 2008 with apps such as PDAnet.  Oh and by the way, when At&t enables tethering I am sure that you will enjoy the $30.00 additional charge to your bill and the 5gb bandwidth limit.  Cheers.

3.  Cut, Copy, Paste
This option actually kept me out of an iPhone for quite some time.  I need this.  No self respecting individual should tolerate being without the ability to efficiently move information from application to application.  The fact that it took over 2 years to roll this out is a criminal offense.

Why is this anticlimactic?  Well for starters this also has been available to jailbroken iPhones for quite a while and since the release of Clippy it has been a no brainer. Clippy is an 87kb download that boasts SYSTEM-WIDE cut copy paste that is actually far better than what the 3.0 offers.  Cut, copy, paste, delete and most importantly a stack-able clipboard.  Keep oft used blocks of text at hand all the time.

4.  Spotlight Search
Search functionality on a smart phone?  Say it ain’t so…  Actually if you own any “smart” device produced in the last 5 years then you are already accustomed to having this.  My nearly 4 year old BlackBerry had a really handy search feature.  Thanks for the innovation apple.

First off what can we search?  Contacts, mail meta data (but not message content), calendars, media, and a bit more.  That is just a hare limited in my opinion, not to mention that again, this has been available since almost day one of the iPhone’s existence.  With sophisticated search apps such as quick-gold adding support for web links, quick launching common and recently used apps and access to the iPhone’s 4 keyboard varieties depending on the type of data you are looking for, it is pretty tough to impress.

5.  Landscape Mode
You can turn the phone sideways to utilize a much larger and easier to operate keyboard to type in URL’s but not to type emails or text messages.   I don’t know what engineer suggested this but now 2 years after the release of the device they have had a change of heart.  Let’s look at this:  I think there have been around 8 software releases since the iPhone’s inception and now we get this “advanced” feature.

Landscape mode is and has been available for SMS and email via several applications my favorite being biteSMS .  biteSMS offers landscape mode, forward and delete of individual message  bubbles, allows you to receive AND SEND tex messages on top of nearly any open application, and offers a quick compose that is accessible from any screen as well.  Not to mention that if you have a pay per text plan or text internationally, their credit based messaging is at least half the price of At&t!

Conclusion
The 3.0 update is.. well an update.  It is an incremental improvement not much different than the ones that M$ asks me to install on a monthly basis.  I can keep on talking about how and why I feel this way as I have about 15 additional points, but this post is getting long.  I would rather shut up and listen.

iPhone 3G S Upgrade Giveaway!

Starting Friday, Chapel Wireless is giving away (2) iPhone 3G S in our shop in Mandeville. No, we won’t ask you to whore yourself out on a social media scavenger hunt to get the goods. We are just asking that you finally get that cracked-up, jacked-up screen on your 3g fixed. Nothing more, nothing less.

• Come on over to Chapel Wireless and have your touchscreen and/ or LCD replaced and you just might leave with a brand new 3G S. Starting 6/19/09 we are going to hand out a new iPhone 3G S to the 25th and 50th customer through the door that hands thier 3g over for touchscreen/ LCD replacement.

• While there is no guarantee that you will get out of here with a $600.00 mobile device, we guarantee you that 2 people will. We will post pics of the lucky customers getting the hookup on facebook and twitter as well as our website and blog. Let’s not forget that the worst case scenario is that you get your present 3g repaired while you wait for the results

• Of course, while we won’t require you to tell the the world at large how great Chapel is at what we do, or how noble and generous we are in our pursuits, we do certainly appreciate it:) Lastly, remember that Chapel Wireless gives 15% off on repair services to active followers on twitter, and fans on facebook. Please check out the FAQ for more information. Thanks!