Rising From The Ashes: My iPhone Is Reborn

This last week, something truly unthinkable happened. My iPhone malfunctioned (Ok so maybe its thinkable, but its definitely ‘un’ something.) All at once I felt confused, taken advantage of, cheated on...I felt like a Microsoft customer.

It was a traumatizing experience to be sure, and oddly enough one that I never even seriously considered. It was like a vital organ suddenly giving out, or the sun deciding to skip a sunrise. You just never start out the day thinking, “Hey, something essential to my survival is going to fail me today.” But when they do, it just throws everything out of whack.

The funny (read: anything but) thing is, it’s never just one problem when it comes to a complicated piece of tech like this. It's either running like you just bought it, or having a complete and total melt down! First the internet stopped loading, then the e-mail stopped syncing, then the texts stopped arriving (though the jury remains out on whether or not that was due to a malfunction or not...); and then, the games started to lag...and that was the final straw. Do what you want with me, but for heavens sake don't make Need for Speed all skippy and laggish! But surely enough,

Fortunately, there is no inexpensive way to fix the thing, especially without the coveted Apple Care Plan. Needless to say I had not had the foresight to purchase this plan, so my initial phone call to Apple for help lasted about as long as the time I called to ask Christie Jeffries out to the senior prom. (Look at me now Christie! I’m…wait, oh...)

So with that avenue removed from my repair journey, I decided to put my extensive knowledge of technology to use. First I tried to restart it, which turned out to be a complete shot in the dark. I then rebooted it through iTunes and found to my dismay that it had not been backed up properly beforehand. So I lost most (ok, all) of the content that I had. And you know what? No matter how much you memorize the layout of your phone, there is simply no way to restore it exactly the way it was before...believe me I tried, for a long time... I'm still trying.

Finally realizing my expertise lay outside the realm of phone diagosis, I decided to take this fight to the apple store itself. Upon entering I was greeted by the dapper, well-tanned employees who chuckled self-assuringly at my predicament. After a moment of gloating, they did something insultingly simple and told me that all was well. And with that, I was shuffled on my way. (Side note: Why exactly can’t their little Jedi repair tricks be common knowledge? Too socialistic?)

So I took the phone back home and the most interesting thing happened. It was like a baptism, a rebirth of sorts. I had forgotten what it was like for things to run smoothly and to load quickly. I was downright giddy at the simplest things, like an app opening when I touched it (yeah, my bar was pretty low.) One of the other fringe benefits was the fact that I could rediscover my apps seemingly for the first time. Games that I hadn’t played in a long time (but rocked at-like Sway), I could now play from the beginning levels and totally skew the score stats! Anarchy!

It was amazing, though likely only because I had been in the dark for so long. It was like the fist taste of chocolate after a tedious diet, or the first drive in a luxury sports car after driving a clunker your whole life (or so I’m told.)

So that’s the silver lining to my cloud. Have ya’ll had any problems with your phones? When it was fixed, was it like a proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes?

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