Four Island

I read an interesting article, today, by Shawn Blanc, regarding the condition of a 17-month old, well-used, iPhone 4. Yes, that would happen to be the title of the article. My interest was piqued because, for the most part, I've had a similar experience with my (only 14-month old) iPhone: the glass looks perfect, no scratches or anything, and the months and months of fingerprint buildup can be easily removed with a wet microfiber cloth (make sure you turn the phone off first, dear god). Not only that, but I have in fact dropped my iPhone a few times: I dropped it at least twice onto tile flooring in the bathroom, and once, in the early morning after just waking up, I dropped it down the stairs, and it bounced. It would've been hilarious if I wasn't so terrified, but when I got to the bottom of the stairs and picked the phone up, not a scratch. The only sign that a drop had even occurred was the fact that the mute switch was flipped for some reason.

So, all in all, I've had a good experience with my aging iPhone, right? Well, actually, there is one thing that I have had a problem with regarding my iPhone: the camera. Like Shawn, I have vehemently refused to put any sort of case on my phone---not even the free bumper Apple gave me---because I have a passionate belief that Apple products are too beautiful to ruin with an ugly case. I've seen it happen too many times. Seriously, friends and family who use Apple products with cases on them, you know I'm talking to you. :P Anyway, my phone never has a case on it, and I often set it down on a table or something when I'm not using it. Normal usage of a phone, right? Well, it turns out that however normally I was using the phone, I must've been a little too careless at some point because before I knew it, my camera was useless.

<!--more-->I first noticed my iPhone's camera was getting a bit blurry sometime early July. I mean, it definitely worked fine in June---I'm telling you, it worked fine in June. When I was at camp, I took a few photos and looking over them later, I noticed that they looked a bit grainy and washed out, but I assumed it was just the lighting or something. I'm a sucky photographer, so sue me. Well, it kind of turned out that it wasn't the lighting, as the quality of my camera degraded more and more, and more and more memorial photographs were ruined. It was very upsetting to me because I have a form of visual processing disorder that makes it difficult to remember what things look like and to make up for this, I often try to take pictures of things I want to remember. Okay, sure, I'm relying on a camera phone to retain visual memories, but seriously, there's little better you can do than a camera phone without looking weird/creepy. Honestly, though, look at how bad the camera quality was by September:

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There's a very clear difference between those two photos, no? Anyway, I eventually noticed that the lens on the camera was extremely scratched up. It was quite shocking. The photo at the top of this article is of that camera lens, though the damage is probably not discernable in the image. Needless to say, I was upset and I became determined to fix this problem. And you know how I did it? I bought a replacement back plate for my iPhone. Did you know you could just replace that thing? It's pretty awesome. The camera lens is part of the phone's back plate, and so if you replace the back plate with a new one, you get a new camera lens too. So, I ordered a new black back plate for my phone, and I was very excited to get it, but when I did, I found that I was a little disappointed in the quality of the camera. It really wasn't much better, and, looking at the camera lens, I found that the new back plate also had scratches on it! This was very dismaying. However, I did not give up, and decided to buy another back plate, this one a bit different and a bit more interesting. That's right, I bought a red back plate for my phone, because the color red [REDACTED]. Guess what: it arrived, I swapped it onto my phone, it works and it's awesome. Just look at its awesomeness:

[caption id="attachment3723" align="aligncenter" width="234" caption="I apologize for how awful this photo is. I actually had to take it using a bathroom mirror, lacking any other useful camera."]<a href="http://www.fourisland.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG0368.jpg">[/caption]

Anyway, to wrap things up, yes, Shawn, I agree that the iPhone 4 is a very durable device that certainly has the ability to withstand the test of time. However, a product is only as strong as its weakest point and the camera, especially for me, is detracting from the phone's overall long-term usability. I've been very paranoid recently regarding my phone because I don't want to damage the camera. Based on the fact that my iPhone usage is basically split into three categories (listening to music, retaining visual memories, and everything else), shouldn't it matter that the camera could die on me without warning again? The iPhone 4S is supposed to have a much better camera than the iPhone 4. Too bad I'm locked into an AT&T contract. :P