Is a cracked iPhone still an iPhone?

KATHMANDU, July 9: As I write this on Tuesday evening and prepare to publish it two Saturdays later, I wonder if this post will even make sense – at the rate I’m dropping my phone, it might cease to function by that point.



On Friday, I dropped it in Thapathali – right on the sharp edge of a rock butting out of the road, and it cracked at the bottom left-hand corner while shooting a sharp slash right up the middle. [break]



This only further accentuated the seven lines of dead pixels voraciously spreading through the middle of the screen (who knew pixels could even die?).



Today, as I got out of the taxi, it plonked from my pocket and cracked across the top.



If I was an angry-teen it could even pass as one of those skins you get for a phone to communicate how much I hate the world, but I’m about ten years too old for that.



Thankfully (and obviously) the phone always seems to fall on an edge rather than smack on the middle face; so this means it still works – sort of. I’m learning to maneuver around properly.



I’m not as upset as I would have been had it been the iPhone 4 (please stop showing me how fast yours is, Mr you-know-who) or the 3gs because I have the 3.



This means I got it some three years ago, and well, it’s an old phone.



It has served me well and it has been a friend to me through the thick of it (calls that came through to inform me I got the job I had been praying for!) and thin of it (emails from that guy who every year sends 30 attachments, including pictures of him posing at Fewa Tal, reference letters from INGOs he’s worked at, his certificates and diplomas and about 2,000 words on his marriagiability – you know what email I’m talking about, right?).







So, really, I can’t complain – at least I had a good run with my phone.



But the thing about an iPhone is that it’s more than a phone – in fact, the least advertised part of it is that it can take and receive calls because everything else about it is so cool! Now that you can also hop into a cafe anywhere in the city to pick up wifi, you can use googlemaps, if not the urbanspoon application (unless you want to be constantly available and get that wifi thing for your phone).



You don’t need to carry a phone, camera and planner – you just need what an old friend called “my magic.” And, really it is magic.



The other day, Republica ran a story on how Apple products are more available to Nepalis now – I remember three years ago, there were a handful of people with iPhones and Macbooks, and now there are entire stores servicing their customers so that must mean there has been a sharp increase! (When I got my now-found-in-museums-“ibook” back in college, my Nepali tech-savvy friend said, “Are you sure? There is no Mac help in Nepal” – and a few years later, DHL started some scheme with Macbooks. Do you guys remember what I’m talking about?).



Of course I’m not gonna pretend it is truly available – to everyone across the region/classes/creed/income group/blah-blah, least of all to all those that could really produce magic with it.



But at one point in my life, a computer was worth more than the piece of land my house is built on. I see ads on tempos saying some office in Dilli Bazaar or Bag Bazaar is selling desktops for less than Rs 10,000 and netbooks can be purchased for Rs 25,000 – so I look forward to the day when iPhones are significantly cheaper (hopefully the unlocked version will drop from US$700 to about $70 this year!) Why? Because, my phone is quickly dying and I can survive longer without water or air than I probably can without my iPhone.



(I’m serious. Once I was at the Apple store in DC and waiting by the door for my friend who’d gone to get something and this lady walked in and asked me if I liked my phone. I went on about it for so long she ended up buying the phone rather than the laptop.



I realized Steve Jobs may not be so pleased with me when she waved goodbye and said “Wow, you Mac staff are so honest!” Hmmmm).



Seven hundred 90 words later I’m finally getting at what I wanted to say (oh, the joys of blogging, it’s not a paper, it’s not a piece – it’s a web log and I am logging the slow death of my phone) that: God has a very good sense of humor.



Just mid-last week I had boasted I was not materialistic. I told my boyfriend I’d hate to be someone who cried over a piece of plastic, metal or gold.



I told him obnoxiously I appreciated what I had, but was sure I could always do without it.



Of course at the time I was not thinking of my piece of magic being torn apart from me. Three years later, I realize it really really is the first love of my life.



RIP iphone 3 – my birthday’s coming up (iphone 5 anyone? : )



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