The White iPhone 4 Experiment (That Wasn't)

[siranui]

"With the legitimate phone coming and the disappearance of the person selling it, us doing the experiment would basically be a tacit endorsement of such modification. At this point, that didn't seem judicious."

Apparently, faster CPUs were available shortly after you overclocked CPUs. Was doing that experiment thus non-judicious, and why the tacit approval of such modifications then, but not with an iPhone 4? I'm not sure if you're afraid of breaking your precious 'phone more than Apple, or the other way around. But it's clearly one or the other, and neither are exactly impressive credentials for an independent tech site.

 

[techcurious]

2 weeks ago, a client of mine received his white conversion kit and asked me to convert his literally brand new iphone 4. I hardly ever disassemble laptops, let alone phones. In fact, the last time i disassembled a phone was 6 years ago, and that HP phone never worked again after I put it back together again. So I was a bit nervous, but my client was not worried. We opened up youtube and played a video showing how it should be done, and got started. Sadly, half way through we came across a factory damaged screw that had the philips grooves in the head completely worn out. It took me about 5 hours to carefully carve a straight groove in the head for a flat head screw driver. If not for this unbelievable hiccup, we would have finished the conversion in about 2 hours or less. The 6 month old youtube video made it very easy. I guess neither Andy nor anyone else at Tom's bothered to search for anyone else who had the guts to do what Tom's no longer can?
http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNM90pb-Xwk ,if the link to the video is removed, search for "iPhone 4 Teardown & Screen Replacement Video Directions"
The only scary part is trying to pry the battery away at the start. The glue is so tough the battery warps before coming loose. But then the battery easily flattens back to normal, almost like playdough. In the end it was done and the phone is working perfectly.

 

[techcurious]

oh.. and I forgot to add...
Andy, you may think you had a good reason for not doing the conversion, and some may even agree with you. That's all fine. But you do not need to waste our time to tell us about every little thing you will NOT do... save it for your personal blog or twitter.
And before people start telling me why I read the article if I thought it's pointless... I read it because I clicked on the link thinking I would find out about how something went wrong with the conversion, and cause the conversion to fail, so I could learn something and avoid making the same mistake should I need to convert another iphone. But the conversion was never even attempted!!? The only thing the article said was that Tom's was too scared to do it.. and too lazy to even research a bit!
quoting.. "Combine this upcoming availability with the lack of clear instructions on how to do it... We don’t want you to think the Tom’s family shrinks from a challenge easily."
Firstly, the video I linked to in my previous post is MUCH more clear than any PDF could be. And secondly, it wasn't much of a challenge when the video shows every step and all the skills you need are being able to watch a video and twist a screw driver anti clock wise.
And even if that "kid from New York" no longer sells the conversion kits, I am pretty sure there are other sources to get those kits.

 

[TheKurrgan]

Frankly the conversion is a breeze. I've replaced many components for various people with iPhone 4's and dont find them very difficult at all. Send me that convo kit, i'll make mine white no problem.