Step away from the gadget .....

So as you know, I have recently returned from a holiday in Cyprus.

It was all fun, sun, sea and sand (that bit wasn't fun because it was too gritty), and like all my other holidays, it had one thing in common.

Yep, I managed to annihilate one of my plethora of gadgets.

"How the blazes did you manage that?" I hear you cry.

In my defence, it was something that could happen to everyone.

Picture the scene ....... It was early evening. I was in my apartment in Cyprus. The setting sun had bathed the kitchen in a spectrum of deep orangey hues. If you looked carefully, you could see the shimmering outline of a person trying to extricate a baked bean and marmite pitta bread; a pitta that had been accidentally welded onto the inside of a retro Kenwood toaster.

That person, my friend, was me.

After much tussling, and without warning, the pitta bread suddenly came free. With the speed and agility of a beach volleyball player (but without the sexy skids or dribbling audience), I predicted the trajectory of the pitta, and dived to catch it before it hit the tiled floor.

The exact moment I caught the pitta, I felt something pop out of my trouser pocket. With abject horror, I witnessed my shiney, white iPhone tumbling towards the tiles like a greased weasel out of a drainpipe.

It was though it all happened in slow motion. Both of my hands were full of beans and pitta, and I just had to watch as it careered onto the cold, hard tiles. 

Upon initial inspection, the phone looked ok, but after turning it over, I discovered this .......

Pic.No.1 Sacre bleu! I had killed my iPhone ........ my third one

Once I got back to the UK, I did a bit of research, and discovered that Apple would charge $29.00 for a replacement. And because I am tighter than a Olympic athlete's shorts, I decided to have a go at fixing it myself.

Bejesus, I am an engineer after all.

So I bought a dodgy replacement glass back for a fiver ($7.95) off Ebay.

It duly arrived three days later.

Pic.No.2 The shiney new replacement back for my iPhone 4

I stared at the new back, then stared at my iPhone. I took a few deep breaths and limbered up a bit by doing some squat thrusts. Then I tackled the problem with gusto .......

Pic.No.3 First of all, I found some screws on the bottom of the phone. Given that they were the only visible means of access, I deduced that they were to remove the cover. So I unscrewed them

Pic.No.4 Then, I did a bit of jiggling about with the glass back. It wasn't long before I discovered that if I pushed it upwards, it released itself, and could be removed. Look how much of the bleedin' phone is battery! (That big square blob on the right hand side if you aren't a teccie)

Pic.No.5 And finally, I slid the new cover into place and replaced the screws

What I would say to anyone attempting this repair - the screws are VERY small. Do not sneeze when they have been removed from the iPhone. Such a simple schoolboy error could add 17 minutes onto the repair ..... I should imagine.

But huzzar! I now have a lovely shiney iPhone again.

So dahlink, what have you been up to? It seems ages since we last chatted. What's the weather like there? The sun has at last reached little ol' me in the UK.