Tag Archives: iphone

All posts pertaining to iPhones, including repairs, news, teardowns, service, drop tests, etc.

News

(PRODUCT) RED + iPhone = Drool-Worthy 7 and 7+

Leave a comment

We’ve talked before about color-customizing your tech, making your day-to-day smart devices help you stick out from the crowd. Now you can do it without breaking the bank, thanks to Apple and (RED). For the past 10 years, Apple’s partnership with (RED) has raised over a hundred million dollars to highlight the AIDS fundraising campaign, primarily through the sale of products and apps designed around a red color scheme. On World AIDS Day back in November, Apple turned its App Store and several top apps bright red in support. This year, they’re doing something special: iPhone 7 and 7+ in a bright, aluminum red. In the past, Apple has offered special red cases for the iPhone previously, but this is the first time the phone itself will be offered in a red finish. It’s been a long time coming, too: most people associate the partnership with red-colored devices, starting with the iPod Nano and continuing down the MP3-player line, including the Shuffle and, most recently, Touch.

 

“Apple is the world’s largest corporate donor to the Global Fund, contributing more than $130 million as part of its partnership with (RED),” said Deborah Dugan, (RED)’s CEO. “Combining the global reach of the world’s most loved smartphone with our efforts to provide access to life-saving ARV medication in sub-Saharan Africa, customers now have a remarkable opportunity to make a difference and contribute to the Global Fund through the purchase of this new beautiful (PRODUCT)RED iPhone.”

 

It’s nice to see Apple getting a bit more colorful for a change. The company is usually loath to offer alternate color options. Everyone was shocked (and pleasantly surprised) to see a rose-gold iPhone 6S, and the last color change to its iPhone lineup was warmly received even if it was just a different black finish (talking about, of course, the gorgeous glossy jet black for the iPhone 7). The new red finish is striking, softened by the matte aluminum finish, and although it’s “only” for a good cause, it is nice to see a relaxing of the strict black-or-white binary most consumers within the Apple ecosystem have been forced to choose from.

 

“Since we began working with (RED) 10 years ago, our customers have made a significant impact in fighting the spread of AIDS through the purchase of our products, from the original iPod Nano (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition all the way to today’s lineup of Beats products and accessories for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The introduction of this special edition iPhone in a gorgeous red finish is our biggest (PRODUCT)RED offering to date in celebration of our partnership with (RED), and we can’t wait to get it into customers’ hands.”

 

The (PRODUCT) RED finish will be available for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (including replacements through AppleCare) starting Friday, March 24th in 128GB and 256GB models, at the usual price starting at $749. The face of the phone will be white, so iFixYouri will be able to replace the screen at the regular price of non-red devices.

News

Android? iOS? Two Sides of the Same Phone

Leave a comment

If you’ve ever dreamed of running Android on an iPhone, you’re not alone. It’s possible, but usually involves some intensive phone-hacking and some serious warranty-voiding. Apple designed iOS to be totally locked down, making it one of the more difficult things for a hacker to do and never results in something that’s commercially viable. One company, Esti Inc, decided to put Android on iPhone by physical methods with the Eye case. The Eye is an iPhone case that takes the most simple, Occam’s-Razor route to pairing the two mobile operating systems: put one on top of the other.

The result is crazy but we can’t find fault in it. When in place, the Eye creates a Frankenstein’s Monster of a device. The back of your device becomes another screen, ostensibly another phone running stock Android. It acts as sort of a technological parasite by accessing the speakers, cameras, and microphones of Apple’s device, but other than that, the Eye works like a standalone Android phone. Two SIM card slots (very important for selling outside the US, as we’ve mentioned before), a microSD slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack (great for iPhone 7!) and contains its own battery and NFC chip. The screen is a basic 5-inch AMOLED display, but you can flip it over if you want to watch Netflix.

So, this isn’t exactly the same as running Android on your iPhone. Sure, it adds some features that your iPhone doesn’t have, but nothing that a regular Android phone can’t do. If you’re someone who needs to carry around two devices (like marketing types running social media) the Eye actually sounds like a good idea: keep your company Twitter, Facebook, etc logged in on the Android side. Esti Inc. hasn’t gone into detail on the internal specs of the Eye, but given the low price (the Kickstarter early-bird is $95 without 4G, or $129 with) it’s hard to imagine a powerful full Android experience from this piggybacking thing.
If you’re planning on backing the Kickstarter, be careful. Esti Inc. is a brand-new company with no prior products and no history, so invest accordingly. A few of us at iFixYouri think it’s a really neat idea, despite what the naysayers around here are mumbling. Soon, we won’t be able to hear them over the nightmarish sound of two cellphones ringing simultaneously.

News

Apple Breaks Sales Records in End of 2016…but How Well Are They Doing?

Leave a comment

The results for the final quarter of 2016 are in, and Apple came out as the winner. With 78.4 billion dollars, the tech giant broke its own incredible records for quarterly earnings. CEO Tim Cook presented these findings, citing record sales company-wide, including the iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, and Services divisions. However, Apple had the advantage of a fiscal quarter that ran a little longer than their competitors. Due to (totally legal and normal) calendar quirks, Apple’s Q1 was 14 weeks instead of the usual 13. It is worth noting that the calendar year doesn’t line up with the Apple’s fiscal year, which ends on September 24th, so 9/25-12/31 is Apple’s first fiscal quarter in their 2017 fiscal year. In the earnings report, Apple CFO Luca Maestri openly addresses the extra week while mentioning a number of handicaps that he claims counteract the year-over-year boost. Among them, the company received a one-off $548 million patent infringement payment in the same quarter last year, the iPhone 7 being released earlier in September than the iPhone 6S was last year (causing more revenue to be accrued in Q4 instead of the following quarter), and supply issues in the new products failing to meet customers’ demands. No mention of demand for the iPhone 7 being so low that Apple scaled down production almost immediately after its release, but the company traditionally refuses to discuss sale counts.

Financial mumbo-jumbo aside, clearly getting a big leg-up from the 14th week was the iPhone. 2016 overall wasn’t a strong year for iPhone sales; it was actually the first full year of decline, with a 7% drop. But the added seven days helped Q1 2017 iPhone sales beat out the last quarter of 2015 by 4.7%. On a bigger scale, Apple is now the largest provider of smartphones worldwide, finally beating out close rivals Samsung Electronics. This isn’t so much a huge achievement for Apple as it is a down note for Samsung, and no, the Note 7 issues weren’t much to blame. The South Korean mega-corporation is slowly losing its foothold over smartphone-crazed Asia, and Chinese competitors are popping up with high-quality phones at lower price points and better innovations. Take OPPO, for instance, arguably the most successful smartphone company in China (exact numbers are difficult to come by). They took the Chinese smartphone market by storm after popping up in 2008, and since then have debuted both the world’s thinnest phone (2/3rd the thickness of an iPhone 7) and possibly the first “selfie-phone” with a 16-megapixel front-facing camera (and a paltry 12MP shooter on the back). Other Chinese brands like Vivo (owned by the same parent as OPPO) and Huawei are close behind, and their presence is leaking into other major Asian markets such as India. Samsung just can’t keep up.

So, yes, Apple made a fair amount of money in late 2016, but when you look past the headline, it wasn’t as earth-shattering as it is at first glance. In our opinion, you’d expect a lot more to happen when a company of Apple’s size and stature releases a new phone, new laptop, new smartwatch, and debuted their first wireless headphones…all in the span of a few weeks. The sign of a truly successful quarter in this case would see Apple sweeping the tech world, annihilating everyone in their path. Instead, each product was met with grumbles about price, gimmicky features, and/or availability.

As both consumers and other manufacturers look to Apple to innovate within the tech industry, the pressure builds. Criticism is coming in whispers, of the product ecosystem growing stale, of Tim Cook’s inability to fill the massive shoes left behind by the late Steve Jobs, of the famed cult of die-hard fans becoming disheartened with the most recent device lineup. Apple can’t rest on their laurels (despite the nice stock jump the announcement gave them) and they need to let this good news push them through 2017, where we’ll hopefully see, at the least, a new iPad model.

Uncategorized

AirPods: Good Enough, but Worth the Wait? (Or the Price?)

Leave a comment

The wait is over, and Apple’s AirPods have arrived. For $159, you get a plastic box resembling a Tic-Tac container with rounded corners, but instead of mints, there are wireless earbuds inside! Superficially, they resemble the old EarPods with the cords cut, but they’re a little beefier; the thicker stalk presumably holds the W1 chip (in all its connective glory) and enough battery for the promised 5 hours of use.

The AirPods fit decently well. They’re slightly larger than the wired EarPods for a more secure fit, but that means you’re out of luck if you already have issue with getting the stock Apple buds staying put. If they fit, though, they fit. After a few migraine-inducing head-shakes and creaky jumping jacks, the AirPods stay put. Sweaty exercise (although we’re ashamed to admit that our three jumping-jacks met that criteria) might be a whole other animal, however. Pairing them to a device is as simple as advertised; just open the lid of the case and hold it a few inches away from your iPhone, hit “Connect” on the prompt, and…that’s it, let the tunes flow.

The sound quality is about what you’d expect from this price point. Full, rich sound, nowhere near wired over-the-ears, but the bass response is surprisingly adequate. Many are pleased by how much nicer the quality is over the EarPods, but $159 headphones should always sound better than the freebie ones. We played genres from classical to club music and it all sounded fairly good, and the bass didn’t get crunchy even at higher volumes while vocals stayed crisp.

As a controller, the AirPods work great. Pull one out of your ear and the music stops after a second; pop it back in and it continues. You can also call up Siri by double-tapping. If you don’t use Siri regularly, it seems especially odd to call her up without a visual interface and you might not initially know what to do with her besides play the next track or find an album or playlist, but off the top of my head, I like the idea of having Siri jot down memos or add to my shopping list. If you’re not a Siri fan, just open the settings via your iPhone and change the double-tap to simply pause and play.

Overall, we think the AirPods are solid but not mindblowing. It’s sort of absurd that early iPhone 7 adopters had to wait so long and pay so much for something so ordinary. The price point is a little unnerving, especially when you consider the $69 price to replace a lost bud regardless of warranty. But they do work, and they work well. If Apple is able to start bundling the AirPods in for free (as they do the EarPods), it’ll definitely push the company ahead as far as audio is concerned. For now, we recommend saving a little more and exploring the other options out there on the market. If the headphone jack on your device is broken, you should know that iFixYouri repairs them for much less than the cost of good Bluetooth headphones, so send it in and save some money!

News, Software

Android vs iOS: Third-Quarter 2016 Head-to-Head

Leave a comment

ios-android

The results are in, and Google is in the lead. Third-quarter stats put the Android mobile operating system as being present in 87.5% of mobile phones worldwide. That’s almost 9 out of 10 phones. Meanwhile, Apple sold about 5% less phones than it did in the same period last year. We’re fairly certain there’s a good reason for that.

It’s worth noting that this is WORLDWIDE market share. In the US, it’s about 53% Android, 42% iOS. It’s easy to see where Android’s dominance both here and abroad stems from: price. iOS is only featured on iPhones, which don’t feature a “budget” model (unless you count the iPhone SE), while Android appears on phones that cost as little as $20 and as much as $650. This appeal to the lower end of the market gives Android much more appeal in developing markets, especially with import taxes and other tariffs (a brand-new iPhone 7 can easily go for double its US price in other countries). Apple seems content to hold the higher, smaller end of the market pyramid; its entire marketing and image essence revolves around a “luxury” or “elitist” niche. In that respect, 42% of the market is actually great. iOS, and the iPhone itself, is essentially THE top-end phone as far as consumers are concerned. It took quite some time for a challenger to the throne to arise (the Google Pixel) and it’s too soon to tell.

But let’s talk about that 5% drop. While every company wants to do better every year, we think this drop is okay. Yes, it’s true that the 7 didn’t seem to live up to the hype, especially compared to that surrounding the 6S a year prior. However, we’re sure this isn’t a bad sign for Apple.

  • The period was until the end of September, and a lot of potential buyers were waiting to upgrade to iPhone 7, which was released September 25th. The 6S came out September 16th of last year, so it had two weeks of sales to help bolster numbers.
  • With the 6S released one year and nine days before, and considering the popularity of that device, one can assume that the majority of buyers were and are still under Apple’s one-year warranty. Why buy a new phone if your current phone is still…new?
  • October began with the Samsung Note 7 debacle, and many users of those phones switched to iPhone. This most likely gave Apple the boost they needed in October.

So there’s no need to worry about Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, and the rest of the folks in Cupertino. The stock (AAPL) took a small dip at the news but that was part of an ongoing slight downward trend. Google will continue to thrive, as well; the Pixel is selling a lot of units, and new high-end Android phones from LG, LeEco, and Xiaomi will continue to push sales around the world. Well, maybe just the first one. Here at iFixYouri headquarters, we have yet to receive any Xiaomi or LeEco phones for repair, but we’ll just assume that it’s because they’re indestructible. But maybe not. Regardless of what you buy or plan on buying, remember that iFixYouri is here to fix it. Can’t make up your mind? Leave a comment below and we’ll be happy to help out!

Employees, Locations

Employee Spotlight: Ethan

Leave a comment

img_6917.jpg

Our first employee spotlight to hit the northern iFixYouri contingent focuses on Ethan, assistant manager of our Newbury St store in Boston! Ethan’s been with the company for 8 months now, finding his home here after working at Fenway Park and “photoshopping eyes onto peoples faces who were blinking” (good honest work). He caught the repair bug after replacing his PC’s hard drive when he was 12, saying it was “so satisfying to put something back together that was once broken and have it work again,” a mentality he brings today to Bostonians in need. He’s a big Bruins fan, naturally, and enjoys playing guitar and videogames. Rumor is that Ethan is a decent bowler, so invite him out to the lanes if you see him in-store!

img_6919

img_6920

Accessories

Typo Creates New Physical Keyboard for the iPhone

Leave a comment

Part of the iPhone experience desired by Apple is that of a totally contained phone, with as few buttons as possible, making the majority of interaction done on the screen. Not everyone, however, loves the iPhone’s virtual keyboard. In fact, the lack of a physical keyboard tends to be among the reasons that Blackberry users refuse to switch to the successful Apple phone.

Enter the Typo Keyboard case. Typo is actually a cellphone case, currently available for the iPhone 5 and 5s, with a wireless keyboard on the bottom. The Typo’s keys are laid out in typical Qwerty fashion, with alternate keys for capitalization, numbers and symbols. re-creates the Blackberry experience for use on the iPhone; it is so close to replicating it that Blackberry has filed a lawsuit against the fledgling company.

Inside is a tiny lithium-ion battery, only 1 millimeter thick. The keyboard covers the bottom of the phone, but the ports are still accessible. Lastly, setup via Bluetooth is simple to do.

Unlike bulky Bluetooth keyboards, the 1.4-ounce Typo fits snugly around the iPhone 5 or 5S like a regular slip-on case, adding about a half an inch to the phone’s overall length, and it has shown to increase typing speed for users. However, the Typo covers up the iPhone’s home button and remaps it to a button on the bottom right of the keyboard. It takes some getting used to and if you have a 5S, you lose the convenience of the fingerprint scanner, distinctly altering the iPhone’s intended functionality. Furthermore, The Bluetooth connection disables the iPhone’s auto-correct feature, making the user have to manually correct any typos.

The Typo retails at $99; preorders have sold out and new orders will ship in February.

Apps

Credit Card Processing, There’s An App For That

Leave a comment

The introduction of the Smartphone has greatly increased the quality of access to many of our lives and no where has this point rang truer than in the world of small business. With the introduction of the various card processing systems for Smartphones such as Square and ROAMpay. The average small business owner now has the opportunity to accept credit card transaction and potentially widely increase their sales growth.

What Does This Mean for the Average Entrepreneur?

Obtaining a merchant account has not always been a easy task and for those just starting out in the open market the ability to offer alternative forms of payment, beside just cash transactions, can make all the difference. Whether the business be retail, culinary, artistic or other. Having an attachment for one’ s Smartphone (or in some cases iPad) for credit card processing alleviates the hassle of bulky point of sale terminals and worst yet, the old fashion “knuckle buster” manual imprinters. All in all presenting their customers with a smooth and convenient shopping experience which often results in repeat business.

Caring For Your Business By Caring For Your Smartphone

Having a Smartphone as a small business owner is a “no brainer” whether it be for credit card processing or simple day-to-day activities. Therefore, the protection and maintenance of such a vital tool is paramount. At iFixYouri, you can rest assured that if your Smartphone happened to be involved in an accident, be it water damage, a cracked screen or simple battery replacement issues, you are certainly in good hands. Because, when it comes to nurturing your business there’s no sense in faulty equipment stunting its growth.