It happens to thousands of people everyday. They drop their phone thinking the case will protect it, however imagine their horror when they pick it up to find the screen smashed to pieces.

We take a look at the cheapest ways to repair the iphone 3G and iphone 4.

It’s important to be aware that the ‘iPhone Screen’ is actually 3 layers; the LCD which is covered with a digitizer and then glass over the top of that. As long as you have only broken the glass then this article is for you.

Replacing glass on iPhone 3G or 3GS

If you own an iPhone 3g or 3GS you can get a kit from Amazon for around $13 and DIY, or find a local repairman to do it for you. Taking it to an official apple repair service outlet although ideal, will cost you a fortune.

Here is the instructional video if you do buy the 3G or 3GS kit

Repairing glass on iPhone 4

Again if you are handy with small electronics you can buy a kit from amazon and go the DIY route.

Replacing the iPhone 4 screen is much more complicated than replacing an iPhone 3G or 3GS screen as you need to remove the entire motherboard. So this is not for the faint hearted!

You can however follow the step by step instructions below which explains things quite clearly.

Facetime functionality came with the iPhone 4 which has 2 cameras. One on the front and one on the back, both of which can be used by Facetime.

Facetime for iPhone is personal video calling. It actually feels comfortable to use even with other people around due to the personal nature of it. Perhaps it’s the head shot view or the fact that you hold the iPhone 6 inches or so from your face. First up though, you need to setup Facetime

How to Setup Facetime
1. Check that you have turned FaceTime on under Settings
2. Add your Apple ID EMail Address
3. Add your Email address on where you can be reached for video calls.

It’s as simple as that! Now you are ready to make your first Facetime call!

How to Facetime
1. Select the Phone Icon (or Contacts)
2. Choose the person you wish to call and then select the Facetime icon which has a small video camera on it)
3. Wait for your recipient to answer your call!

Note there is no Facetime App for the iPhone 4, although there is one for the iPad 2 and iPod Touch.

You can switch between cameras while you are on your Facetime call by tapping the camera icon.

Troubleshooting Facetime
If you cannot make a Facetime call check the following:

1. Facetime only works on wifi connections. It does not work on 3G connections at present.

2. Make sure your recipient has registered their Apple ID email address through Facetime settings.

3. Make sure you have the correct phone number and email address of course!

iOS 5.1 is now available for download. Interesting that my iPhone did not show there was an update, even though it notified me last time. Hit me back with what’s wrong with my configuration setting if you can!

Thanks to Apple, here are the Release Notes

iOS 5.1

This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Japanese language support for Siri (availability may be limited during initial rollout)
• Photos can now be deleted from Photo Stream (yay!!!)
• Camera shortcut now always visible on Lock Screen for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch (4th generation)
•  Camera face detection now highlights all detected faces
• Redesigned Camera app for iPad
• Genius Mixes and Genius playlists for iTunes Match subscribers
• Audio for TV shows and movies on iPad optimized to sound louder and clearer
• Podcast controls for playback speed and a 30 second rewind for iPad
• Updated AT&T network indicator
• Addresses bugs affecting battery life
• Fixes an issue that occasionally caused audio to drop for outgoing calls

Do let us know what this update does for you, particularly around battery life.  I long for the days when a once  a week charge of the phone would be sufficient.  As phones have got smarter, they have also got a lot more demanding.

My iPhone died today. It left me feeling sick to my stomach. I hadn’t backed it up for a long time, I only had some of my photos and videos in the iCloud and I had a number of notes that I hadn’t recorded elsewhere.

I tried the iPhone hard reset a number of times, which is when you hold the home key and the off switch together for about 8 seconds. I did this multiple times, with no success.

I thought perhaps the power was completely flat, even though it had been at 100% full charge a couple of hours earlier. I plugged it into several power sources with no success.

By this time the prospect of having a dead iPhone overnight was becoming a reality and I really was starting to panic.

Then by chance I plugged some earphones in, unplugged them and then plugged them back in again. All of a sudden my iPhone sprang to life! Why? What happened here?

and yes, I have just backed it up!

The iPhone has a viewer which will display a number of known formats when you open an attachment. If it doesn’t recognise the format, then then you will just see the name of the file, but you won’t be able to download it.

The formats that are supported by iOS5 are:

Microsoft Office – *.doc; *.docx; *.ppt; *.pptx; *.xls; *.xlsx; *.vcf
Adobe Reader *.pdf
Text Files – *.txt; *.rtf
Web Pages – *.html; *.htm

Are there other formats you have found are supported?

I cannot believe I didn’t know about this cool iPhone Weather Tip! Is it new in iOS5 or have I been living under a rock for 3 years?

Anyway, you can actually view hour by hour for the current day, simply by tapping on the actual day and it will give you the expected temperature and forecast for the hour.

Unless you have a jailbroken iPhone you cannot automatically add a signature to your SMS/TXT Messages when sending from an iPhone.

However, there is a nice workaround for this in iOS5 using Shortcuts.

To insert a Signature to your iPhone SMS or TXT messages go to:

General
Keyboard
Add New Shortcut

Enter the text you want to appear as your Signature – Such as Sent from my iPhone, then enter the Shortcut you wish to use, such as ‘Sig’ (without the quotes)

Now whenever you enter the letters Sig your phrase will appear. Cool huh?!

Have you found that sometimes your iPhone Calendar does not appear to be synching with your Outlook Exchange Calendar? Some items are in sync and others may not be.

We have found with Exchange 2007 SP1 some iPhone Calendars get out of Synch. We aren’t sure why! We have noticed the frequency is higher if you have multiple Apple devices synching to the same Exchange Mailbox.

The quickest way to troubleshoot iPhone Calendar Sync’ing is not to bother troubleshooting, but simply reinitiate a synch. Do this by:

1. Go int your Mail, Contact, Calendar option in iPhone Settings
2. Select the Exchange Account
3. Turn Calendar Synchronization off and select Delete from my iPhone
4. Turn Calendar Synchornization on again.

Sometimes it just isn’t worth Troubleshooting when it’s so easy to set up Calendar Synching again!

With iOS5 came a wonderful feature of iCloud called Photo Stream. Photo Stream for the iPhone will let you take a photo on an iOS device and then wirelessly synchronize it to other iOS devices.

This means you can take a photo on your iPhone and have it appear on your iPad.

To setup Photo Stream:

1. Make sure your devices are running iOS5.
2. When you first upgraded to iOS5 you were prompted to setup iCloud. If you skipped this step, then click Settings and go to iCloud
3. Tap the on/off switches to enable the individual Cloud Services such as Photo Stream.

iCloud will store you photos for 30 days, so you have plenty of time to download your photos from the cloud.

For Windows users to sync photos you must install the iCloud Control Panel.

Troubleshooting Photo Stream for iPhone

If you have trouble uploading Photos to iCloud

1. Check that Photo Stream has been turned on under Settings, iCloud
2. Ensure you have an active iCloud account
3. Ensure your Wireless is turned on
4. Your iDevices have iOS5 installed
5. Your Photo Stream will only work for photos taken after Photo Stream was enabled.

Last week Apple released iOS5 packed with over 200 new features. What do we love the most?!

There is a lot to choose from, but our 5 favorite iOS5 features are:

The Notification Center – The Notification Centeris a new app where you can customize which applications you want to provide notifications for. It also lets you customize the type of alert style for some of the applications. This is a nice touch as it puts you in charge of deciding whether you want to be rudely interrupted or discreetly notified. But wait there’s more! You can also choose which apps you want to see alerts for in the Lock Screen too
With a downward finger swipe in the Home Screen, you can also view your key notifications, and then flick them easily away again. Loving the stock screen ticker as well!

Wireless Syncing – Another one of the great iOS 5 features is Wireless Syncing which let’s you sync your apps, media content, photos etc without tethering your iDevice to your PC or Mac. Your iPhone must be plugged into the power and connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your computer. Additionally, you can only do this with iOS5 and iTunes 10.5.10.5. Be sure to check Sync over Wi-Fi in the Summary screen in iTunes first.

Twitter Integration – Twitter integration with iOS shows the impact Twitter has had in social networking. Additionally, and as you would expect, Twitter is also included in the Notifications Center to keep you completely up to date.

iCloud – iCloud will store your photos, mail, calendars, reminders, Documents and Data in the cloud and wirelessly sync these back to your other devices. And it’s free! Well, 5 gig is. We are loving the Photostream which means you can take a photo on one device and it just appears on the other! It just works and it’s beautiful thing.

Mail Improvements – If you are a heavy mail user, then you will notice some great improvements to the Mail App including some rich text formatting such as bold, italic and underline as well as indenting and flagging those important messages you need to attend to later.

Let us know what your favourite features are!

Dropped your iPhone in water? Or into the basin and found it’s dead on retrieval?

Then try this rice trick to bring your iPhone back to life.

Firstly, do not try to power it on when wet as this is how you could fry it’s little chips sky high.

1. Remove sim card
2. Try to carefully dry with a hairdryer on a low temperature however be careful not to fry it.
3. Put the iPhone in a bag of rice for 2 – 3 days, which will absorb all the left over moisture. If your iPhone was in water longer than a minute or two, leave it for at least a week in rice.
4. Woohoo as good as new!