Recovering the iPhone 3G from the White Apple Logo of Death
The other night I was playing with my iPhone 3G and decided to see if there were any new applications worth downloading from the App Store.
I launched the App Store and was immediately notified that there were 18 updates waiting for my installed applications. I’ve learned my lesson before about updating too many at a time–it takes too long and also crashes sometimes–so I chose to just update the Tetris one. The process was straight forward and did its usual asking me for my password, etc. and then it started the download. After the download was complete it started installing the Tetris application. After about two minutes I glanced over to see if it was complete and noticed that it was still in the installing mode. Before I could do anything the iPhone rebooted and then showed me the white Apple logo.
After about five minutes of waiting for it to go beyond the Apple logo, I started to get a bit concerned. I had encountered this in the past and normally a reboot or two and worst case connecting it to my Mac brings the iPhone back to life. So, I did a couple of reboots and it still hung on the white Apple. I then hooked it to my Mac and it launched iTunes and then hung iTunes–uh oh.
I got WALD
Some Googling later and I came to find out that there’s a name for the behavior that my iPhone 3G was exhibiting: “WALD”, or White Apple Logo of Death.
Thankfully, a few searches on Google led me to this page which basically told me to put the iPhone into DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode and perform a Restore. As for putting the iPhone in DFU mode, with the iPhone off, connect it to your computer and hold down the power and home buttons at the same time. When the Apple logo appears, release the power button but continue holding the home button down.
Restored … almost
I did as instructed and then clicked Restore when my iPhone was recognized by iTunes. Then about 10 minutes later the iPhone finally restored and rebooted.
Re-activate?
I forgot that the new iPhone requires a SIM to be installed to activate it. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the SIM installed so the iPhone went into Emergency Mode. I figured I still had nothing to lose so I unplugged the iPhone from my Mac, powered it down, and then popped the SIM in. Then I hooked the iPhone back up to the Mac and iTunes activated it and then prompted me to set it up as a new iPhone or restore from a previous backup. I had made a backup at 3pm the day before so I chose the restore option.
Might as well go to sleep
Let’s recap for a minute. The iPhone was now fully functional again, after performing a factory Restore, but it didn’t have any of my information on it. So far the process had taken about 10 minutes. Next up, though, was the process of restoring from a backup. If you haven’t done this before, since Apple released Apps on the App Store, restoring and backing up the iPhone takes FOREVER. In my case, I chose the restore option and then watched as iTunes said that it was “Restoring iPhone from backup”.
This process required a lot of patience since iTunes says it’s restoring but the iPhone doesn’t, then the iPhone finally says “restore in progress” and iTunes has a very long progress meter that INCHES along.
As you can see from the screenshots below, this restore from backup took a VERY LONG time.
As of 9:37pm
11:35pm–restore finished a minute later
About 2.5 hours in and my iPhone was finally restored. I haven’t had the guts to try to install the Tetris update again but for now the iPhone 3G is fully functional.
Another thing this iPhone experience has taught me is to really re-think my iPhone usage. I find that the majority of what I do is data and Apps, so an iPod Touch, without a monthly plan, is probably more than enough.
While my iPhone 3G was down for the count I used the BlackJack II with Windows Mobile 6.1. I find myself appreciating the phone experience on the BlackJack II so much more that I still haven’t switched back to the iPhone 3G. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Review: Nokia E71
A lot of business people carry two mobile phones at all times. The reason? To keep business and personal separate. While there are a number of ways that you can do that on one mobile device, it’s still too easy to get sucked back into work mode when you’re on your personal time. Enter the E71.
The Nokia E71 is a smartphone that lets you perform just about any task you can think of but all from your mobile device. In addition, it offers a unique dual home screen which lets you leave the office in peace by customizing what you want to see in each of your home screens. For example, in my tests I had one home screen pulling my e-mail from Exchange while on the other home screen I had my Gmail account. It’s really a great feature, and one I hope to see on other devices in the future.
Look and Feel
The first thing you’ll notice about the E71 is how big the battery is. It’s actually nicely contained so that the phone itself is still easy to hold and navigate.
What the big battery does, however, is provide excellent battery life, even with 3G connectivity and constant web browsing–something most phones struggle with. There’s also a very comfortable keyboard, with ridged keys where the numbers are. For instant navigation there are four main buttons that bring you to your home screen, calendar, contacts or e-mail and for overall navigation there’s a Navi Key, which also has a light that pulses based on certain notifications.
I should also mention that the OS features a lot of auto-completion and error correction pieces built-in, which make it very easy to navigate the E71 using just one hand. As for the look, you can see in the pictures that it’s a very polished device. It initially screamed corporate to me but when I started playing I immediately saw its consumer appeal.
Features
The Nokia E71 is loaded with features. For starters, you can make calls, but when you dial you don’t actually leave your home screen. Instead, a window pops up over the main screen and shows that you’re making a call. These types of innovations are peppered throughout the E71 and give the overall phone’s interface a web 2.0 feel.
Mail and Exchange
There’s a built-in Mail application, which unfortunately doesn’t perform an auto-complete from your contacts. It does work perfectly with Exchange, though, which can be accessed by installing a free Mail for Exchange application. Speaking of which, it’s one of the best implementations I’ve seen for Exchange. After installing the application and providing the necessary settings, my calendar, contacts, e-mail and tasks came streaming in. I really like the calendar implementation in particular on the E71, especially the way it automatically creates a fake entry in your calendar for the day that shows you how many tasks you have to complete. Clicking on the entry brings up the Tasks application–it’s pretty seamless.
Podcasts and music playback
I didn’t think I was a big podcast fan until I started playing with the E71. Granted, I download a bunch of podcasts on a regular basis on my iPhone but the E71 lets you subscribe to and download podcasts directly from the device, without being tethered. Since I tend not to tether my iPhone because I do over-the-air Exchange syncing, the ability to pull down podcasts untethered led me to listen to some podcasts while sending and receiving e-mail. I also downloaded a video podcast while taking notes for this review. When the download was complete it launched the built-in Real Player–no intervention required.
I also was amazed at how loud the speaker is on the E71. This is one of the first devices that I didn’t have to maximize the volume level on playback to hear the podcast properly–I actually had to listen at almost half of the volume.
The Gmail test
One of the main tests I always perform on a new mobile phone is sending and receiving from Gmail. The E71 was recognized by Gmail and a Java client was downloaded. It’s actually the best implementation I’ve seen, and I found myself wanting the E71 just for that functionality alone. I honestly didn’t know Gmail could work that smoothly on a mobile and it has me very excited to see what Android will offer, since it’s going to be very tightly tied with all of Google’s offerings.
Office, Voice Aid, and more
The Nokia E71 comes loaded with versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint and you can even compose a Powerpoint deck directly from the mobile phone if you desire. It also features an application called Voice Aid which will read aloud pretty much anything it sees on the screen to you. There’s also a Barcode Reader application, but I couldn’t get it to read any bar codes in my tests, and of course an included camera, GPS and web browser. The browser itself is worth mentioning in that it rendered Google’s iPhone-friendly pages exactly as it does on the iPhone. It was a welcome change being able to navigate iPhone-friendly pages with actual up and down buttons, instead of relying on a touch screen.
One thing I normally don’t comment on with a phone is the ringtones but the combination of loud speaker volume and crisp ringtones forced me to comment. You can also set video ringtones which will play a video when a call comes in.
Multitasking
I mentioned above how I was able to perform other tasks while downloading and listening to podcasts. This multitasking holds true throughout the phone. I also was impressed with how fast I could switch from one application to another and how quickly an application would launch.
In summary, there’s very little that I didn’t like about the E71. It’s definitely one of the more powerful smartphones I’ve used, and once you get used to the Series 60 way of navigating the device (it took me an hour or so), it’s easy to customize and find just about anything you’re looking for. I could easily see the E71 replacing just about any phone I tend to carry.
Read more about the E71 or purchase the U.S. version for $483 unlocked at Nokia.com.
