How the iPad Shattered the iPhone

If you have a sensitive constitution, please be forewarned this article contains graphic images that might nauseate you. If you’re willing to be shocked and somewhat saddened about the shattering of a iPhone by an iPad, then read on — if you are unable to abide the inexcusable accident — turn away now. Okay, then. Here’s how the story began:  A mysterious and cryptic email arrived late yesterday afternoon.

After Janna sent me that curious email from her iPad — how could she send me an iPad email with the iPad in her bag and why was she using her iPad while walking home and not her iPhone? … the iPad is more for lap-holding than hand-holding… — but before I could fish through my thoughts, two SMS images popped up on my iPhone:

Here is the first image.  It looks like Janna found a stand we might use for our iPads.  That is the most annoying thing about the iPad:  You don’t have a convenient and safe place to put it when you’re not using it.  An iPhone fits into any little niche.  The iPad, no so much.

Ah-ha!  My suspicion was confirmed!  Janna took another photo of her iPad in that holder to see if the iPad would be safe and strong and not wiggle away and crash down to the floor.

A few minutes later, Janna appeared home.  She was heartbroken as she rendered the story of her shattered iPhone and I blamed it all on her new iPad.

When Janna left the PATH train in Journal Square to walk home, she was excited to tell me she found the perfect iPad stand.  She carefully put her iPad in its padded bubble mailer and pulled her iPhone from her pocket to share the good news with me.

Yesterday, it was over 90 degrees in Jersey City and the iPhone 3GS is sleek — and slick! — and when her naked, case-less, iPhone met her sweaty hands, she almost dropped the phone on the ground.  She corrected the holding of her iPhone and SMS’d me those iPad images.

Then, seconds later and glistening with success, she plopped the iPhone back into her pocket — only to have it slip from her fingers, miss her pocket, and skitter/sled/ski across four bus lanes and into the gutter across the street.  Janna ran to her current hot Apple love only to find it a cold, shattered, mess.

When she handed me the phone, it refused to turn on using the front button.

However, the top button worked.  The screen would light up and you could swipe your finger across the shattered screen to unlock the phone — but that was it.  Nothing else happened.

When I plugged the phone into iTunes to do a backup, the phone would not charge and it would not register.  Any images Janna took on her iPhone 3GS before her last backup were now dead to her.

I was able to find her old iPhone 3G from a year ago — now she accepts why we save our old iPhones instead of reselling them — and I was able to restore her last 3GS backup from months ago to her old phone, and she’s now sort of back in business until the next generation iPhone comes out and we take the plunge together again into our next obsession, but this time, we’ll have one less screen to swipe in the transition.