For as long as I can remember, if I see an old gadget that’s not working, I always want to make it work again. If nothing else, just to see how that old technology looked like. Not really sure why, but blowing into my “non-working” Atari 2600 cartridges since I was a wee lad may have something to do with this old habit of mine.

I remember my mobile phones since the first one I have ever had, because, well, I never had many. In the early 2000s when the tiny Nokia phones were booming around the world and pretty much everyone I knew in my high school had one, I finally got a break in the form of the Nokia 3310 in 2002. Then came the Nokia 5210 in 2003 which I carried throughout my first 3 years at university. The Motorola RAZR came soon after, because in 2005, that was the phone to have. Next was the Nokia E61i in 2006 which was my first smartphone. And then finally I jumped the bandwagon and got myself an iPhone in 2008.

Of all the phones I owned, not one had given me as much trouble as the iPhone, nor did I like anyone of them as much as the iPhone. Thing is, back when the first iPhone was launched, everyone remembers the AT&T exclusivity deal. Which meant that to use it with my Etisalat sim I had to have a jailbroken iPhone. No big deal really, as long as I had a phone which had a touchscreen, could browse the internet, and had cool looking icons; I was all over it (like the rest of the world). It truly was the Jesus-phone.

I had my fair share of fun with Cydia, and suffered with the random crashes and bugs that came with it. Finally, one day I thought I had enough of this life of “piracy” and that I’ll go legit. So I upgraded my iPhone (called the 2G after the launch of iPhone 3 and 3G) from the jailbroken firmware 3.1.2 to the official and newest 3.1.3. It was only after I got the “No SIM card installed” screen that I realized what a big mistake I made.

That was back in mid-2010. I was sort of getting tired of Apple by that time and all the crap I had to go through to get their product to work. I’m a paying customer damnit! I want everything to work! Except that I had paid some other guy who had bought the iPhone from some other grey importer. So like I said, I was having iPhone fatigue and this “Android” stuff was up and coming, so I then got a Google Nexus One in 2010 once my iPhone 2G locked up on me.

Trust me, I tried various jailbreak methods, but none of them worked. Partly because the Power button on the top doesn’t work all the time (entering DFU mode was mostly blind luck), and partly because there was still no effective 3.1.3 jailbreak at the time.

While the Nexus One was a gorgeous phone, I didn’t like the cumbersome feel of Gingerbread and how terrible the app store was at the time. A few months later I got my iPhone 4 and still love it. Over the weekend though, I was clearing out some stuff and saw the old iPhone 2G just lying there, all miserable and broken.

So I thought what the hell, I’ll give it one more try. What I thought was going to be an easy jailbreak and unlock of 5 minutes turned out to be a 5 hour exercise in frustration as I tried multiple jailbreaks (blackra1n, redsn0w, Spirit, etc.) and none of them seemed to work. After a fluke I somehow managed to downgrade to firmware 3.1.2 (by performing a restore) and then got it jailbroken through blackra1n. I must confess that until that moment I had never been happier to see GeoHot’s face.

Sup, bro!

And so my old iPhone 2G is up and running again. The first thing I noticed was how extremely ugly the screen looks! After the retina-display of the iPhone 4 I just cannot go back to low-res screens anymore. Then I also remembered the miniscule, but still irritating, screen bubbles that were a result of manufacturing defect; but I lived with it back then anyways. The phone itself feels slow as molasses when using Safari. Even the occasional microsecond when it takes time to load messages feels too slow compared to the iPhone 4.

iPhone 2G vs 4. My eyes bleed!

So now the iPhone 2G is up and running, and I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want to sell it, coz I won’t get much for it, but I don’t want to use it either because it’s just not good enough. So it’s lying on my table again, out of a coma, but life hasn’t gotten any better for it.

From October 17, customers can pre-book their iPhone online at http://shop.du.ae/iphone, in any du or Axiom shop or at any authorized retail outlet across the UAE.

When Apple announced the iPhone 3GS in June, I saw UAE on the list of countries where the unit was expected to sell in August. So I gave our beloved telco Etisalat the deadline of August 31st to start selling the 3GS locally. August came and went and there was no sign of the 3GS landing on Etisalat. Thus I ordered a factory unlocked version from Hong Kong which I received last week.

I chose the White version this time around as I had the black one previously and the grey one before that. I also opted for the 32GB version as I had utilized almost 10GB on my 16GB iPhone 3G. As you’ve probably read on every other website there is no noticeable difference between the 3G and the 3GS as far as looks and form factor is concerned. Tech Specs state the 3GS as 2 grams heavier but I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference.

The good thing about the white version is that you see less finger prints on the back. Apple has also treated the touch screen on the 3GS with an oleophobic coating which again helps in reducing smudges. While this doesn’t make the screen on the iPhone 3GS totally smudge-free, it helps considerably. I tested this by wiping both the 3G and the 3GS screens clean and then using them for similar amounts of time. The 3GS screen looked a lot cleaner.

The “S” as you have read countless times, stands for Speed on the 3GS and oh boy- you sure can feel that. Below is a video comparing the 3G to the 3GS in terms of speed. You must’ve seen quite a few comparison videos like I did but almost all videos I saw focused on games and intensive applications. This video below is not focused on any of that but instead, I’ve shown everyday apps such as texting, tweeting and browsing.

There you have it- everything feels so much snappier on the 3GS. As you saw, the text messaging application loads much faster- and so do all other programs like Twitellator and BeeJive. Scrolling between lists is a lot more fluid and there is no lag in typing. Web pages also render faster. About the only area where the 3GS lags a bit is the Accelerometer which sometimes can take 2-3 seconds to recognize if the device has been turned. Better than the 5-7 seconds the 3G would take but not fast enough to make it feel snappy.

Besides the speed and storage, there is one more major upgrade on the iPhone 3GS which is the camera. Apple has upped the resolution from 2 mega-pixels to 3 mega-pixels along with adding auto-focus and 30 fps VGA resolution video taking capabilities. Its a good addition, however, I have not come across any camera phone that would make me stop taking my SLR on vacations or elsewhere. Taking videos is a plus but anyone with a jail-broken 3G can have that capability as well. Last but not the least, Apple has also added a digital compass on the 3GS for which I haven’t found a use yet but you never know. The following is a sample photo taken of a VGA PCB from the iPhone 3GS camera

Surprisingly, battery life has not taken a dip even though the hardware has been majorly accelerated. Like my 3G I easily get one full day of usage when I remove it from my charging dock in the morning. In fact, I’ve noticed that I usually have a little bit extra juice left on the 3GS by the end of the day compared to my 3G, but then again, this is only after a week of testing. The battery life will probably dip slightly after a few months.

So- would I recommend getting the 3GS? That depends- if you are already a 3G owner and not a heavy-duty user (which I define as someone having more than three home screens filled with icons), then I don’t think you really need to upgrade. For someone like me who uses their iPhone to text and email a lot along with tweeting, reading feeds on Google Reader, watching music videos and TV shows, playing Monkey Island as well as checking facebook, instant messages and shazzam, its totally worth it.

To put it simply, it breathes a new life into your iPhone and as you saw from the video above, waiting time between switching applications is tremendously reduced, especially with repeated usage. Using my iPhone is not a frustrating experience anymore. I paid 3,200 Dirhams for it, but I’ve also managed to sell my 3G which helped reduce the sticker shock.