I only come to the @gilroygarlicfes for the food and schwag.

I only come to the @gilroygarlicfes for the food and schwag.

I only come to the @gilroygarlicfes for the food and schwag.

Vitamix is still selling for $400 after all these years. Crazy!

How to replace a toileted iPhone 4.

Last Friday my mom came to me with a sound issue on her iPhone 4. The phone was working perfectly, except for sound playback on the speaker. You could hear everything with a pair of earbuds plugged into the 3.5mm jack, but just nothing when you unplugged it. Not even the volume controls would show up. It was only after some fiddling around that my mom informed me that she had dropped it in the toilet at work. (note: the toilet was unused at the time of dropage)

Once I knew of the damage done, it was obvious to me that tinkering around with the settings would not resolve anything. A peek at the moisture sensor under the dock connector validated the claim, potentially putting the said iPhone out of warranty.

Moisture Sensor Locations (they are the same on the iPhone 4):

Luckily for us, earlier in the day at Apple’s “Antennagate” press conferece Steve Jobs explicitly restated Apple’s mission to keep customers happy. I thought that in the event that my mom’s iPhone was out of warranty, I could try to push our “dissatisfaction with reception quality”.

The following Sunday, my mom and I took to the local Apple store in Valley Fair to try for the swap. An elderly Apple employee helped us run some diagnostics and simple tests to verify that the issue wasn’t able to be quickly fixed. It was at that point when he checked the moisture sensors to find that indeed it had been exposed to liquid damage, so he took it to the back for further inspection. After a few minutes he came out with good news and a brand new iPhone 4. Since the top moisture sensor (inside the 3.5mm jack) was not triggered, the phone was still under warranty and able to be swapped. Seeing as how the whole phone was submerged under water for a brief moment, my mom and I were curious as to how it avoided being activated. Anyway, the swap took 10 minutes and we were on our way.