In the ever-evolving wireless industry, cell phones are becoming more and more intelligent and jam-packed with cool features. There are more and more apps that hold sensitive information – such as online banking account numbers – and hackers are lurking in the wireless world’s water, seeking their prey.

What is more disconcerting is the fact that the wireless industry is currently faced with even more security challenges, especially now that organizations are demanding more open networks on their devices, applications and content. With that in mind, wireless network carriers are still working hard to protect their consumers. When and if wireless security breaks wide open, it will be totally up to the consumer to protect his/her own data from spam, viruses and other threats.

What spyware does is what the name says; it “spies”. Data can be collected and extracted from text or instant messages, e-mails or contact lists. Software physically embedded on cell phones can be used to eavesdrop and can even be utilized as a GPS tracking tool that can remotely monitor the cell phone owner’s location.

“Although the wireless industry does try hard to protect consumer’s confidential information, it can only go so far,” said Jeff Gasner, owner of CPR – Chicago Cell Phone Repair. “To protect your phone from spyware, make sure you know where your phone is at all times, meaning don’t lend your phone to anyone or leave it unmonitored. This gives someone a chance to tamper with it. Also think about password protecting your phone.”

Other types of malware, on the other hand, are data extraction tools that collect data for unscrupulous companies or persons that use it for identity theft purposes. Viruses can be also be distributed through websites and e-mail attachments.

“If you think your cell phone has a virus, take it to your wireless network service provider or to an independent cell phone repair shop like CPR,” Gasner said.

To learn more visit:  http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

Smart phones are noted more for their sleek design than their durability. That’s why, as most s smart phone users can attest, all it takes is one drop and the thing goes kaput. One way to keep from damaging the smart phone’s sensitive body is instead opt in on purchasing one of those military-certified handset phones that are practically water proof, shock proof, and bypass all the cool apps and features of smart phones.

The BlackBerry smart phones, for instance, have had been noted for trackball issues. The newer BlackBerry models boast new track pads to answer the old trackball malfunctions. However, there have been reports that some of the newer BlackBerry track pad models seem to be very sketchy and flighty. Some users find their own way of dealing with the issues, such as balancing on one foot and applying the right kind of pressure with one finger in order for it work just so.

So, what is a wireless consumer to do when his or her high-tech smart phone decides to go south just when it is needed most? For one, the consumer can take it to the wireless service provider, hope that it came with a good replacement insurance plan, or shell out more money for another phone. There is, however, another option.

“You can simply bring it to us!” said Jeff Gasner, owner of CPR – Chicago Cell Phone Repair. “We are an independent cell phone repair store that can help you with most of your cell phone woes, we can also in most cases, retrieve your lost data for you, even when your phone is non-responsive.”

Chicago Cell Phone Repair can also help with broken BlackBerry trackballs or track pads, broken BlackBerry camera lenses, broken Blackberry screens or keyboards and damaged housing, to name a few.

So before any poor owner of a broken BlackBerry phone chucks it or digs deeper in his or her pocket for a new phone, perform CPR on it – bring it to a qualified CPR – Chicago Cell Phone Repair Specialist, that is—and let them fix it.

To learn more visit:  http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

Morgan Stanley Research estimates that in five years there will be more cell phone web users than desktop web users. Cell phones enable people to take pictures, watch movies, check the news and weather and play games, among many other things. It can be a tool for the masses to get involved in social movements and causes. The American Red Cross used the simple form of texting to help raise money. Donors from all over the country contributed $10 by simply texting the American Red Cross, raising $30 million dollars for the Haiti earthquake victims relief fund.

New cell technology is not only for social causes. With talks of implementing the smart grid technology by 2030, which will upgrade our current existing electric power distribution network, the commercial wireless network will innovate and also support it. This will bring more reliability, new capabilities and extra security for wireless consumers. It is also a chance to take part in the modernized, more effective electricity distribution networks, allowing consumers to save on their electric bills and use 20 percent or more of renewable energy resources.

As for commercial viability, cell phone consumers will be at the pulse of that change, also. It is not surprising to see businesses, even small businesses, coming up with mobile versions of their websites.

You can now download coupons to your cell phone and show the coupon on your cell phone screen to the cashier to get an instant discount. There is no need to clip coupons in certain cases. Mobile devices and web applications are changing customer interaction immensely and boosting businesses’ web traffic simply through their own mobile channel. There is now an estimate of 53 million (and climbing) smart phone users. Just think what mobile coupons could do for the upcoming Christmas season if all the chains and stores participate in this growing market.

Technological ingenuity keeps evolving and grass roots and social movements, renewable energy advocates, businesses and major corporations will find ways to utilize the cell phone to reach their consumers and supporters.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

The wireless bionetwork’s ecosphere has grown exponentially, and at a faster rate than any other part of the world. For example, Americans are consuming wireless products and services, utilizing approximately 824 minutes a month, compared to 160 minutes a month in Europe. What accounts for such a vast difference? Basically, Americans are getting more for their money because the revenue per minute in the U.S. is so much cheaper.

The American wireless industry is now a model for the rest of the wireless world to follow. Other countries are now expanding their calling plans and are trying to revamp their policies on technology requirements to make them more flexible. Since 2008 – two short years since the induction of “apps” – there are now thousands of them available on many different platforms for wireless customers nationwide.

The wireless industry wants to concentrate more on wireless broadband and is lobbying policymakers to help make it affordable and accessible to everyone; therefore making the industry’s race for quality and capability the forerunner for dynamic competition.

What it boils down to is that American consumers can choose from a variety of network providers: national and regional carriers as well as resellers. To add to the list, consumers can also choose a contract or the pay-as-you-go or prepaid option for their network services. Therefore, the wireless consumer has many choices. If consumers don’t like a plan or service, they can opt to go take their money elsewhere.

Wireless technology is providing us with the hottest new products that are selling like crazy. Now, 4G services are expanding nationwide and 3G has practically gone through every nook and cranny. At least 92 percent of American wireless consumers have access to 3G coverage.

Great value, great technologies, and an array of products and services to choose from help the U.S. wireless ecosystem propel its own evolution into the next generation, one wireless customer at a time.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

One of the most common and costly incidents that cell phone owners suffer is water damage. The experience of dropping a phone in water – whether it’s the toilet or pool or some other bizarre location – can break even the most indestructible of phones. Water damage more often than not deems a cell phone inoperable.

There are some things people can do to help revive their cell phones from water damage, but they must be done fast. It helps to immediately turn off the cell phone and remove the battery and SIM card before removing excess water with a towel. Using a hair dryer or any heating element on the cell phone or its battery is a bad idea as it can damage the internal elements. After drying the cell phone off, the cell phone should be set out to dry. This process can take up to three days.

People can save themselves some time by going straight to an independent cell phone repair shop like CPR – Chicago Cell Phone Repair instead of doing it themselves and waiting three long days and praying that it will come back to life. Cell phone repair technicians might have to actually repair the exposed parts, which would be near impossible for consumers to do on their own.

“There are a lot of cell phone repair tips out there to save your cell phone from water damage,” said Jeffrey H. Gassner of CPR – Chicago Cell Phone Repair. “One thing that you have to remember is that they don’t always work. When your cell phone doesn’t respond, you should bring it to us and let our qualified technicians fix it for you and save you the headache.”

To learn more visit:  http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

Consumers are constantly going out with the old and getting on with the new with their cell phones. Many don’t know that they have the option of recycling it.

A new program called “Wireless…The New Recyclable” hopes to change this. It is a voluntary recycling program that the wireless industry established to help assist environmentally sound practices among carriers and manufacturers. The program helps encourage consumers to recycle their wireless devices. Participating members include ALLTEL Wireless, Nokia, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. A much more comprehensive list is available at http://www.recyclewirelessphones.com/. Consumers can recycle old wireless devices and accessories to any of the participating companies to take a proactive stance toward helping the environment.

“Although we are recycling site also, some of these recycling programs help provide recycled phones to domestic violence victims with matching airtime. Not only will you recycle your old phone but you will be helping out a good cause.” Said CPR – Chicago Cell Phone Repair owner Jeffrey H. Gassner.

Gassner from CPR – Chicago Cell Phone Repair is referring to programs such as “Call to Protect” and Verizon Wireless’s “Call2Recycle”. T-Mobile’s program helps children with single parents in need and Motorola has a “Race to Recycle Program” where the proceeds go to raise funds for K-12 schools. Proceeds from the Sprint Project Connect go to “4NetSafety” program, which helps kids be safer on the Internet. Many other programs such as Nokia, BlueGrass Cellular and Kyocera are helping to reduce waste and support global environmental sustainability.

Before people turn in phones to any of these companies, there are three things to remember to do. The person must first terminate service. Second, he or she should clear the phone’s memory of all the information such as contacts, pictures, phone numbers, etc. The next step is to remove the SIM card.

People can recycle the phone battery with the phone. They can also recycle accessories including cables, headsets, earpieces, cases, clips and cradles, as well as wireless devices like PDAs.

To learn more visit:  http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

The Wi-Fi consortium has brought its members heads together and is coming up with a new standard – and that standard is called “Wi-Fi Direct”. They say it will allow wireless devices to connect and work together without an access point or Internet connection.

This Wi-Fi Direct standard will allow users to print, synchronize files and share data all on the fly. Compatible wireless devices will include notebooks, netbooks, smart phones and tablets. The new certified products will still be able to connect to a non-Wi-Fi Direct product. What that means is that Wi-Fi Direct certified devices can connect one-to-one or to many, and not all connected products need to be Wi-Fi Direct certified. Therefore, one Wi-Fi Direct enabled device can connect to legacy Wi-Fi certified devices.

“Connecting Wi-Fi Direct-certified devices are easy and simple, in many cases only requiring the push of a button. Moreover, all Wi-Fi Direct connections are protected by WPA2TM, the latest Wi-Fi security technology,” the Wi-Fi Alliance said on its website.

How does this all come together? Like when most technologies get rolled out, other technology industries that collaborate and support each other jump on the bandwagon. Cisco and Netgear will be rolling out new Wi-Fi direct networking devices, and chip and technology companies such as Broadcom, Intel, Ralink, Realtek and Atheros are also supporting Wi-Fi Direct.

Wi-Fi Direct’s embedded “Soft AP” will direct and route network traffic over Bluetooth for a more simplified and seamless connection when necessary. The difference between the old technology and the new is it will have broader range and better connection, just like access points and routers. Due to the widespread adoption of Wi-Fi in smaller devices, the need for working spur-of-the-moment networking has grown. Wi-Fi Direct will enable wireless devices to share resources, and it is now possible to find printers, cameras, scanners and many other common devices with Wi-Fi, like USB.

The Wi-Fi consortium came together because the process of adding Wi-Fi to smaller devices has accelerated and they wanted a universal capability to address the increasing need.

Even more exciting news is that this new technology may be available by this holiday season.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

Cisco, the networking conglomerate, conducted a global study called the Cisco Connected World Report which found that 66 percent of the world’s population is prepared to work for less if given the time and flexibility of working at home, as opposed to the stringent grid of having to report and spend working hours in an office building.

There is now evidence that businesses can benefit from letting employees work from home. For one, their employees’ productivity will increase because workers tend to put in a few more hours than people who commute. But the biggest payoff is that computer networks are gaining more strength and speed to help support telecommuters, and are increasingly more secure.

There are also many apps on a variety of cell phones that increase productivity. There are iPhone applications called “Apps for Work”, which is a series of apps to suit a person’s business needs. The Bento app is a personal and business tool to help keep a person’s life in order with to-do lists, logs, event planning and business contacts. There is also FedEx Mobile, which helps keep track of your shipments. The app iTimesheet creates invoices and activity reports that can be exported into an Excel spreadsheet.

Then there’s Motorola’s Droid smart phone, geared up with the most insane applications a person could ever think of. The Work Clock is a handy tool for telecommuters and freelancers. It tells you how much longer you plan on working and it does the math for you. Another cool Droid app is Note Everything. It lets you create text and voice notes that you can share with others and you can import into MS Outlook, Droid Calendar and Google Calendar.

In the long run, workers can stay connected virtually anywhere – keeping abreast on various things and staying organized with work and data – with the help of the new cell-phone and Smartphone apps and the four major platforms such as Microsoft Windows 7. Overall, it is not only the employees who desire to work from home, but also the changing economics, which is solidifying the possibility of more and more workers transitioning to a telecommuting, work-from-home position.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

Our online stores are here. CPR Cell Phone Repair is proud to announce the most ambitiously omnipresent aspect of its sales and marketing persona. Now you can switch on your personal computer and do more than Google the local zoo, no matter how much you enjoy giraffes, pink flamingos and the occasional odd roaming wildebeest. The day has arrived where CPR Cell Phone Repair is able to offer you the same excellent service found in our retail outlets, but online.

“We knew it would happen someday,” said Ralph, a certified technical support employee in one of CPR’s busy retail shops. “We just knew.”

Ralph grew up as a geek in a remote part of Chicagoland, tinkering to his heart’s content. He’s still tinkering, but now his expertise is available in the ether of cyberspace.

Ralph finds himself almost giddy with the possibilities. “Our online store stocks hundreds of cell phone parts from the most popular manufacturers,” he said. “We also carry name brand covers, chargers, batteries and even the occasional wildebeest-themed cellphone. If it’s cell phone-related, you will find it here.”

Ralph rattled off a few of the menagerie of items available online. “We have in stock, right at this moment, don’t know about a moment from now as they’re going fast – the LG VU CU920 Digitizer touchscreen, a whole bin full of battery covers for the very popular iPhone 3G, a pride of iPhone 4GB & 8GB LCD screens with touchscreen digitizers, a flock of Naztech edge Blackberry bold (9000) rubberized gel skin, and a herd of Blackberry 8300 Series silicone covers and that’s not all,” he said.

Ralph was no doubt referring to a family of smartphones, including cell phones (all phones and PDAs blessed with 6-month extended manufacturer’s warranties), a nifty selection of refurbished and used game systems and games for less, and last but not least, accessories. “Why not accessorize your electronics at CPR, receive our lifetime warranty, and do it with the convenience of being online?” asked Ralph.

Agreed, why not?

To learn more visit:  http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

CPR franchises have been selling like cell phones, with more than 10 dozen already sold. “CPR has reached over 120 stores sold as a franchise, and we’re just getting started,” said Jeff Gasner, entrepreneur and CPR co-owner.

Why would someone want to invest in a franchise opportunity? The answers may surprise you, especially while other economic sectors continue to struggle.

“To begin with, CPR has name recognition,” Gasner said. “Our name, which is a registered trademark, is the oldest, most firmly established, widely-known and respected brand name in the cell phone repair industry.”

Nearly everyone owns a cell phone in today’s society, and nearly everyone breaks one at one time or another. The cell phone repair industry is here to stay and there is no better way to tap into this highly lucrative market than with a CPR franchise.

Just as the auto repair industry grew rapidly in proportion to the number of cars being manufactured, the growth rate of cell phones and the cellular repair industry is following the same pattern. The market for cell phone repairs is still in the early growth stages, and it will take many years for the expansion of this market to approach saturation. Owning a CPR franchise is still a ground-floor business opportunity in terms of startup cost and earnings potential.

As a franchisee, according to Gasner, investors can become a member of a real helping profession. “You’ll be able to offer a full range of cellular repair services to your customers with a brand name they’ve come to trust and respect,” Gasner said. “If that’s not helping, I don’t know what is.”

But there’s more. Potential investors won’t have to go it alone. “Best of all, you’ll get the full support of the CPR team – a group that is committed to providing you with the training, equipment and resources you need to make your CPR store a successful, well-established business.

“Recession? What recession? Is there a recession?” asked Gasner, only partly in jest. “When you own a CPR franchise, current economic conditions might even improve your business.”

In addition to “old-fashioned” cell phones, CPR stores specialize in repairing smartphones, iPods, gaming systems, computers, GPS units and a lot more.

To learn more visit:  http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

The EVO 4G’s Android foundation has only been around some two-odd years. The short list includes the G1, the Nexus One, the Motorola Cliq and the Droid. This little black slab of pure engineering and marketing has an impressive spec sheet. A 1GHz Snapdragon process, 4.3-inch WVGA display, 8 megapixel camera with 720p High Def recording, HDMI-out(for viewing those HD videos on your TV) and WiMax compatibility.

Even the packaging the phone comes in has evolved significantly in the past few years. It appears that cell phone manufacturers have noticed that consumers do, in fact, care about the environment and are tired of seeing phones that weigh only 4 ounces in a box that’s large enough for a laptop. As we’ve seen the boxes get smaller, we haven’t seen them get weird, until now.

The packaging looks like a microwave meal. But don’t worry about opening it, there isn’t any steam that could burn you. Under the recycled flip top you find just the bare essentials: the usual manuals and documents, a micro USB cable, a USB wall charger, a 1500mAh battery, an 8 GB microSD card, the EVO device and last but not least, an envelope for recycling your old phone.

The EVO 4G exemplifies the philosophy of “content, not chrome” that Microsoft has claimed as its mantra for the design of Windows Phone 7. Every square millimeter of the EVO seems to serve a purpose, with no fluff thrown in simply for the sake of the design. This phone will get noticed by passersby whether it is against your face or set on a table. The no-frills simplicity goes well with the sheer magnitude of its specifications.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. What happens when the EVO 4G falls out of your pocket while you’re running inside to keep the EVO 4G from getting wet and pockmarked during a hailstorm? The screen gets damaged and even worse, the dreaded warranty buster – water damage. What makes the best sense is to pick up your EVO out of that icy puddle and bring it to a local independent repair shop.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

The Motorola Cliq is an Android smartphone with a full QWERTY sliding keyboard. Even more important is the keyboard’s association as an incorporated part of MotoBlur – a combination of software and Web services designed to unify all of your communications into a single, user-friendly medium.

The Motorola Cliq may remind you of an iPhone. It has similar round corners with a metallic frame. The “home” button is placed in almost the same spot, in the phone’s lower center. But any comparisons end there.

The Cliq has a true physical keyboard. Apple has not exercised this option onto its iPhone in a move to save space. The Cliq might be thicker, but it feels good and solid, not to mention that it is generally easier, faster and nicer to type on an actual keyboard. If you prefer the virtual keyboard, the Cliq also comes with it.

MotoBlur is one of the most unique parts of the Cliq. What’s not to like about a Web service with a client software on the phone that can help you import contacts from popular e-mail and social networking services, locate your phone on a map, perform a remote wipe to delete all data on your phone in case of corporate espionage and access help and tutorial files from your phone? Depending on your e-mail setup, you may be able to initiate this from your phone. All you have to do is provide a login for all the services you wish MotoBlur to access.

So yes, the Cliq is no clack. But accidents can still happen, and the manufacturers’ warranty won’t last forever.

You might be walking down the street, checking out your friend’s Facebook status updates, minding your own business, and suddenly it happens – someone jealously swats your Cliq right out of your hands and its screen breaks on the pavement. You realize that your warranty just expired yesterday and a new phone is just going to cost too much right now. Your best hope is to take it to an authorized local repair shop. Cliq – clack – Cliq – if you do that, now you’d be clicking.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

Consumers are beginning to discover the dark side of iPads. More and more owners of the popular gadgets are exploiting their iPads in sensation-crazed ways that would nauseate anyone with a conscience. Paul G. Pontificate, a certified CPR service technician, pontificates thusly, “I have an acquaintance who recently admitted to me that he loves to watch crashes on his iPad. It doesn’t matter what – trains smashing into cars, helicopters flailing like gyroscopes with its passengers screaming on a digitized recording, little boats getting smacked by ocean liners, or something even more atrocious pulled from YouTube. He should be ashamed.” Such people also like to tell racist jokes and the gorier the better.

Sometimes the dark side of iPad leads to extremes. Consumers drop them. Desensitizing images might make them careless toward their own device. In addition, these same desensitized consumers lose respect for their iPads and begin to nitpick about its flaws – “I hate my iPad, it can’t multi-task; my freaking iPad doesn’t have a camera or flash; my iPad is too big to flush down the toilet.”

As a consequence of such attitudes, expert service technicians at CPR are beginning to see a lot of damaged iPads. “People damage their iPads in incredible ways,” asserts CPR’s Pontificate, “They drop them and smash them – perhaps emulating some of the desensitizing images they’ve been watching for weeks and weeks. But the good news is that we can usually fix them.”

After their nurturing and positive experience at their nearest CPR, a typical consumer is more contrite. “Once their iPad is fixed, they tend to become all smiley and nice and less likely to head immediately for the dark, visually pornographic apps,” Pontificate blithely pontificates, “I’ve even seem them asking about religious apps and nature scene apps and pleasant tune apps and wondering where to find them.

Pontificate is often asked about his unusual name. “It’s Italian and pronounced ‘Pont-i-fi-ca-tay” he says proudly, pointing to his heritage. “I think that one of the Popes had the same surname if I’m not mistaken.” Unfortunately, he is mistaken – but not about CPR’s proven expertise when it comes to fixing iPads.

To learn more visit: http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

Before they’d been off the shelves for an entire day, reports of iPads being damaged by consumers started to pour in. “I’m not sure what it is. Are people just being careless or are they real klutzes that should have ‘I’m stupid’ branded as painfully as possible into their foreheads?” said iPad chief pundit Kid L. Vicious. Vicious reported that most of the damaged iPads had been dropped, some from great heights. “One was dropped from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon by a consumer who was moonlighting as a tourist,” Vicious explained, “People who climb around precipices while holding an iPad just sicken me,” he said, in his characteristic raspy voice well-known to residents of Bayonne, New Jersey, where Vicious was born and raised. “Right behind one of the big oil tanks,” he remembers fondly, “We used to play in our kid street gangs on top of the things and hope one of us wasn’t pushed off.”

Typically when an iPad is dropped, the glass digitizer panel gets cracked. “Some of these consumers are so stupid they can get cut with the broken glass shards,” Vicious explains, “One guy I know got his cornea scratched that way, and he was howling in pain. It was sort of funny.”

The lack of human decency and compassion displayed by Kid L. Vicious notwithstanding, reports of dropped iPads are increasing. Other common repair problems occurring with the iPads involve the port at the bottom. Some consumers have reported issues when plugging their iPads into a computer application such as Windows 7, getting messages such as “device wasn’t recognized” or were simply unable to connect their iPads to a computer. Some consumers were unable to get their iPads charged. They’d plug it into a socket and nothing would happen.

Although Kid L. Vicious would probably recommend something less helpful or even something unprintable, a more prudent course of action is simply to go to your nearest independent repair shop – but please remember to take your broken iPad with you. If you don’t bring it, it can’t be repaired. At the independent repair shop, a certified service technician will be eager to help.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.comThe post Broken iPads Becoming Common first appeared on SEONewsWire.net.]]> http://www.seonewswire.net/2010/08/the-iphone4-has-a-curious-flaw/ Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:20:14 +0000 http://www.seonewswire.net/?p=4188 Now that consumers have learned to their chagrin that simply holding their iPhone4 wonder toys can lead to dropped calls, they may wish to really drop them – if only for a fateful second. If that should happen, it’s nice…

It will seemingly be able to do it all. It will be able to record in high-definition video at 720 pixels for 30 frames per second. It will come standard with a front-facing camera that will be a “must-have” for video chats, especially considering the recently upgraded Skype app along with Apple’s new Face Time feature, even though it won’t be until December at the earliest when Face Time will function between two iPhone4’s and even then only over Wi-Fi. In addition to the front-facing camera, the iPhone4 will come standard with a 5-megapixel camera on the back – complete with a LED flash. Images will be able to be focused by tap, while photos and videos will be geotagged, in other words, digital data arriving with the image will include the location of where the image or video was taken. They’ll also be an iMovie app for the phone — a mobile editing tool which will be just the thing for aspiring filmmakers, even kids quick on the uptake.

It will be Apple’s newest smartphone, Steve Job’s iPhone4 that will set up with almost anything. In fact, the one feature that wasn’t included was a deal with a new wireless carrier. The deal wasn’t landed because there are already dozens of Android phones already out. That said, the new iPhone4 will be engineered with aluminosilicate glass, the same stuff used in high speed trains and helicopters, designed to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times stronger than plastic. So this new iPhone will have incredible curb appeal, right? With a diameter of just 0.47 inches it will also be thinner than any smart phone already on the market, and that means, breakable. Who will fix it if your iPhone4 should break? Your friendly geeks at your nearest independent repair shop will know exactly what to do. They aren’t certified service technicians for their looks, at least not usually. (Ladies, a guy’s handsomeness is subjective, especially when they are very smart, and can fix your smart phone.)

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

The new iPhone 4 contains features that surpass the DROID Incredible, if only by virtue of the proprietary Apple software and hardware involved. That said, think ditto in reverse for the DROID Incredible. If you want to compare both with the HTC EVO 4G don’t even go there. But if it’s Apple’s and a DROID that float your boat, know that the iPhone4 will be sold with a stainless steel band that will be almost X-rated while coupling; this band will be 4 times stronger than steel and allow for the iPhone4’s extra thin and rigid design. Both the front and the back of the newest iPhone will be made with engineered aluminosilicate glass which is the same thing that’s used in high speed trains and helicopters. The stuff is 20 times stiffer and 30 times stronger than plastic. Very durable indeed, you say. The DROID incredible is incredibly made out of plastic. So Apple is already bragging about the iPhone4’s “curb appeal.” Will that mean it will be indestructible? Think about it. The gizmo will weigh a mere 4.8 ounces (137 grams), be only 4.5 inches tall, 2.31 inches wide, and 0.37 inches in diameter. What respectable human monster couldn’t break something that size, no matter what it’s made of? The DROID Incredible weighs 4.59 ounces (130 grams), measures 4.63 inches tall by 2.3 inches wide by 0.47 inches in diameter. How breakable is that? It’s made of freaking plastic, you figure it out. One reason why the supposedly indestructible iPhone4 is so very breakable might have to do with its depth: The iPhone4 is considerably thinner than the DROID Incredible.

Before it’s inevitably broken, the iPhone4 will offer a stultifying 7 hours of talk time on 3G and 14 hours on 2G with standby time of up to 300 hours. The Droid Incredible offers a semblance of Apple’s yak-yak prowess, but only a semblance.
Okay, now let’s assume the worst. Your iPhone4 and your DROID Incredible are both broken simultaneously. For a host of reasons, and you’re not a parasite, taking either back to the manufacturer is not an option. You’re out dollars. What to do? Don’t panic, take one or both phones to your nearest independent repair shop. Certified service technicians there – in a word, resident geeks, should be able to get either gizmo going again.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

Gorfna Papufna, a 76-year-old retired teacher, has never been especially enamored with every new tech gadget that comes along. But there the ugly old woman was at the Apple store, a forbidding presence in her own right, looking rather incongruous, although she’d just been playing with her grandson’s iPad and suddenly she wanted one. “I want your iPad Tommy,” she said, “Give it to me.” The boy, a nerdy 14-year-old, felt a flush of horror. “No,” he said simply. He didn’t really like his grandma much. She was from the old country and he wasn’t even sure what country that was.

But Grandma Gorfna was not to be denied. She began thrashing with the teenager, and surprised him enough that he released his hold on the precious iPad and Grandma Possession became nine-tenths of the law. Her hand was like a claw from one of those monster movies. He glared at his grandma, showing disrespect.

Over the next several days, Grandma returned home with Tommy’s family, an arrangement made in Hell, and to her small apartment in the basement. Grandma Gorfna went everywhere in their house with “her” iPad. But one day she wasn’t careful enough, and dropped it, and broke it. The LCD screen was cracked. “It can’t be fixed,” the old embittered woman declared. She was filled with a kind of woe which reminded her of rabid dogs fighting for scraps in the old country – wherever that was.

But Tommy knew what could be done. He was a streetwise kid and knew the score. He knew the secret. He knew that he could take the iPad to CPR. They’d fix it for sure. He was just waiting her out.

Finally one day, he took the iPad that had once been his to the CPR shop. The boy knew about the in-house geeks – expert service technicians proficient in the repair of iPads. Those canny geeks fixed the boy’s device while he waited. He brought it home. When Grandma Gorfna saw it again, she thought it was magic when she noticed Tommy playing with it. Being too superstitious for her own good, she snatched it from her very surprised grandson once again. Raised it above her head, and smashed it on the cement floor. “It was broken,” she said, “and now it works again. It has to be a demon’s spell.”

“Grandma,” said Tommy, “It wasn’t a demon. I took it to CPR and they fixed it.”

So the old woman learned the secret too.

To learn more visit: http://www.chicagocellrepair.com

The post IPad Is Attractive to Seniors first appeared on SEONewsWire.net.]]> http://www.seonewswire.net/2010/06/cpr-will-repair-cannibalized-apple-ipads/ Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:45:53 +0000 http://www.seonewswire.net/?p=3787 It is in the realm of possibility for iPads to cannibalize iPod Touch devices, but what do you do if your iPad is cannibalized? If it is still intact enough to be repaired, take it to your nearest CPR. I…

Starting May 28, 2010, Apple has announced that its amazingly popular iPad will be available in nine international markets, with preordering beginning on May 10. In July, additional launches will bring the iPad to countries like Belgium and Hong Kong. More than a million iPads have been sold since the gadget first came out on April 3.

As of May 28, iPads will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. Earlier, the iPad had sold in amazing fashion in the United States, a place where only centenarians are snapping them up at a slightly slower pace. July will take the iPad market to more countries, including Austria (birthplace of Adolf Hitler), Belgium, Hong Kong (not the birthplace of King Kong), Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore. Release dates for an additional nine countries beyond those are currently in the works. Who knows? Maybe Togo and Andorra are on that list. Apple is looking to make $62.6 billion in profit by the end of May – almost like Exxon.

But what happens when someone in some far-off place brings back their tattered, broken iPad into a friendly country – such as the United States – and suddenly wishes to see their device become whole again? Hello. Does an iPad get fixed when you want to use it again? Manufacturer’s warranties with distributors are often not available – like they were with the first Smartphones. Where do you take one of these things to be repaired, once you’ve dropped it into the swimming pool or off your sun roof? Who is able to fix your iPad that you figured was tatered? The answer may be staring you in the face, depending upon where you are of course. Think Indy, as in independent repair shop. At places like that, where they used to just fix cell phones, their in-house geeks, expert service technicians all, can repair your iPad good as new – even if it originally came from Andorra, as in the very near future – it very well might.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s been reported that many iPad owners have been experiencing issues with the gadget’s wireless connection – typically bad reception and slow speeds. According to one disgruntled iPad owner, “I would have done better with a pencil and a napkin.” Since the first week of April, no fooling, Apple has been offering troubleshooting tips to help owners who have moved beyond exasperation to find a tiny bit of solace.

There’s a Knowledge Base article for general iPad wireless issues that’s been circulating for awhile, but now Apple has generated a piece from their in-house geeks that is geared to problems, specifically that the device is not reconnecting to wireless networks.  At least that single issue has received some attention, albeit scant. Praise the Apple, kneel and praise the Apple.

If your iPad isn’t reconnecting to your network, and you’re using a dual-band router, Apple wants you to rename your wireless networks. I can help there. If your wireless network is nicknamed “Bill,” instead you can call it Tom, or even Pat, especially if you don’t mind risking gender confusion.  Actually, Apple’s suggestions are a lot more helpful, and these problems can at least be more easily resolved than they could, say – back in March.

But what if your iPad really breaks? You just dropped it on the concrete, or into the crapper, or some unknown household pet has been chewing it. Where will Apple be then? In fact, if you can’t depend on Apple for the real repairs, especially if you don’t want to be without your iPad for like – months – your next destination should be an independent repair shop – for instance, the one nearest you.  Places like this have their own geeks, expert service technicians, who know how to repair iPads, even yours. They don’t particularly care if your pet happens to be a rambunctious something or other with very sharp teeth, even fangs, as long as you don’t bring your pet into the shop when you’re getting the broken iPad repaired. While devices like iPads perhaps used to be a mystery to such folks, nowadays …

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit http://www.chicagocellrepair.com.

There’s a teaser video about the Slate that shows you what you’d be getting. It’s going to give the iPad a run for its money, which is figurative when you’re talking tablets. HP has stepped up to the plate, and R & D means something again. The Slate’s built-in camera has a 3MP lens in back and a front-facing VGA camera for video conferencing. There’s a single USB 2.0 port, an SD card reader, a “conventional” SIM tray for 3G networking, and HDMI-out video capabilities and 1080p playback via the Slate’s proprietary dock connector.The pixel display is state-of-the-art (although it’s slightly smaller and lower res than the iPad), and its 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor is something your grandfather didn’t find under his hood. The Slate is a tad taller, narrower, and thicker than the iPad, and also a tad lighter – it weighs only 1.49 pounds instead of 1.5 pounds. Its Windows 7 is a full-on, multitasking, desktop-caliber OS, and if it comes with a SIM tray the Slate will be about $80 cheaper – at $549.

You are really going to love this device, so when it’s available, go out and buy one. You have my permission. You’re really going to love your new toy, utterly and completely. Look at everything it can do – until suddenly it can’t. You’ve accidently dropped it into the toilet bowl when Herbie, your 8-year-old’s no longer beloved parakeet started singing – and you were so angry you strangled it – there was a startled parrot squawk in miniature, a last one, a dénouement. Your 8-year-old shrieked when she saw what you did, to the parakeet and to the Slate, and you gave her the dead little bird, promising to bury it in the backyard, as you ran out of the house with the Slate in hand, wet, and no longer functioning. Your destination was CPR, the nearest one, as this was an emergency, and you garbled something about murdering your daughter’s beloved pet, and not meaning to, although you did mean to, and the expert service technician examined your Slate, and uttered the magic words, “Calm down sir … We can fix this. Yes we can. You’re at CPR.”

To learn more visit: Chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s coming. Hewlett Packard’s much anticipated Slate, a potential iPad killer in the marketplace, a tablet powered by Windows 7 that made its sneak peak back in January 2010 at Microsoft’s CES keynote when your cockroach was just a baby. Now, it’s April, the reappearance of Tiger Woods has come and gone, there’s a leaked teaser on Engadget and Slate has features that the iPad doesn’t, like a built-in camera, a genuine USB port, not a mere adapter, and an SD card slot. The Slate will be keen for video conferencing and the pixel display (8.9 inch, 1024-by-600 pixel display), a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor under the hood, up to 64 GB of built-in flash storage that’s expandable via its card slot and Windows 7. So let the tablet wars commence, and when they do, perhaps a million Slates will fly through the air beholden only to Sir Gravity, and his pull, quite compelling I’m told, are sure to smash a few so that CPR might have to fix them; as is usual, CPR will be the independent repair shop to take them. What will our expert service technicians hear from frustrated or disheartened consumers who have inexplicably wrecked their new Slates? To be honest, they are liable to hear a multitude of expressions, some of them quaint or archaic, which don’t happen to be printable. But that’s not what this article is about. It’s about service and about loyalty to our customers, and to consumers who may be trying out CPR for the first time ever.

My cat ate my Slate, it’s made by HP, and burped it up, she thought it was a chirping bird because of the app that was playing, I don’t blame Little Hellfire, my tabby, but now nothing works on the thing … there are strange blips on the audio and it smells worse than cat food, can you fix it? Consumers who own their damaged slates are liable to say things that they wish they could take back, but our expert service technicians at CPR have heard it all before. Can you fix it? Can you fix my Slate?

To learn more visit: Chicagocellrepair.com

Back in 2000, when your thirteen-year-old was just a baby, there was a great commotion about the Samsung Uproar. The first MP3 phone; it was the rage. Its storage capacity was a whopping 64 MB, you could talk on the thing for more than two hours (its battery life allowed 130 minutes of talk time), although it didn’t have a camera, or WiFi, or GPS, and you had to dial in your voice commands, had no apps stored or available and cost $399, you didn’t care. You wanted one, because in 2000, 1 out of 10 people in the world, including some of those you knew and envied, owned one.

Fast forward to the year 2009, why don’t you? Your 13-year-old is now 12, as it’s last year. You just bought an Apple IPhone 3GS for Nimrod, your greedy not-so-little one. Nimrod’s toy has a storage capacity of 16 GB, which is a lot more than 64 MB. The IPhone’s battery life allows Nimrod to talk to his friend for 5 hours straight, a privilege that your loquacious 12-year-old is more than capable of, primarily due to his lung capacity, which is decent because your son doesn’t smoke, like you used to. His phone does have a camera, 3.0 megapixel, with full video recording and editing capabilities, it does WiFi, it has turn by turn GPS and digital compass; Nimrod can do voice commands with full voice control, yes he can talk Obama, and he merrily accesses the iTunes app store and can easily get 100,000+ apps, yes he can. You purchased this device last year for only $199.00. Last year, when you bought it, the thing worked, now, Nimrod managed to break it: Dad, I got to have my IPhone back, 6 out of 10 people in the world have one, please dad, pretty please with peanut butter on top?

Thank God you know of an independent repair shop down the street where expert service technicians are behind the counter ready to serve you … and especially young Nimrod. Time waits for no one; he’s a teenager now, no longer a tweener.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Mobile phones come in all shapes, sizes and colors, even pink. If Microsoft was going to launch a truly pink smartphone for the marketplace, it would target women over men, and probably gay over straight, although a lot of people probably are fond of pink that don’t fit a particular demographic or stereotype. Such strategies can be left to the marketing gurus. Since Microsoft’s new line of mobile phones will only be code-named ‘Pink,’ and are not actually pink, the point is moot. In fact, these new ‘Pink’ phones will be available to everyone when they appear in the U.S., and will be targeted to younger people due to their social-networking capabilities.

There are so many smartphones these days. Will this new smartphone be the envy of those consumers sporting iPhones or a nifty Google Nexus or perhaps a Motorola Droid that happens to be pink? Who could say, except for the Great Oz who once saw Dorothy’s Droid close up and lived to tell about it? Answers to such questions are known only by the likes of Esmeralda the Great Squirrel, a being comparable to the ancient Greek oracles on the island of Delphi before they had WiFi.

The only certainty in this world, an equalizer common to any of these devices, including the Microsoft ‘Pinkie,’ is that they are going one day to be placed in the careless hands of clueless consumers one of these days – and when that happens, the device will surely break. It could be dropped or crash against a concrete wall, or it might get wet. It might be eaten by a whale like Jonah was and regurgitated smooth as sheep intestines in the manner of bat puke. It might go hurtling under the embrace of gravity when Grandma trips on a crack in the cement when she’s not paying attention. Lots of bad things can happen to a smartphone when the person holding it isn’t very smart, at least for an instant when an accident happens. If THE smartphone that you care about most in the world should suffer an untimely mishap, you should scurry like Esmeralda would to the nearest independent repair shop where expert technicians can help. Go to the shop now, go with your Pink code smartphone.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod Repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. Visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s happening. The big names and the not-so-big names are riding Apple’s wake with tablet devices of their own. Who would have thunk it: Perhaps Moses or someone Biblical-sounding. “There will come hither and thither a swarm of tablets, not with the nine commandments chiseled into their LCD screens, but all will feature mobile microprocessors, and the devices will be smart, and have apps, and allow you to take more naps.” Will they be spotted in the red sky at dawn, along with a cloud of locusts? No, these apparitions that the prophets failed to envision will be seen at electronics trade shows, and such Expos, a veritable swarm of novel devices that the deity has blessed, until they break.

These tablets, and e-readers, and mini-laptops, and whatnots will first be handed to you, perhaps by a salesperson who has not died, different versions of androids and smartphones and yes, the gadgets of whatnot, with names like Ubiquitous and Armadillo but not necessarily, and the dumb phones will become extinct, or at least consumers won’t buy them as much because they won’t be trendy, and it won’t be long before they’ll be in the hands of millions of U.S. consumers.

Magical machines, these, blessed with apps, and with a kind of functionality that is bordering on scary – until that moment – that calamitous moment – when all the correct and intelligent design in the world won’t be able to save them simply because they’ll be in the hands of … the careless consumers of which there are always bound to be a surprising number, who will crack their devices like eggs, who will drop them onto a rock or a hard place, who will accidentally flush them prior to a hasty retrieval.

When this should occur, it will be CPR time, device savings time, and the hands of an expert CPR service technician is not only going to be infinitely safer, but the fixing is upon you, the fixing is upon you – no matter what you have – or what have you – in the manner of iPad device – albeit part of a tablet swarm. Who would have thunk it? That CPR would be ready.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Everybody, when you’re talking ‘bout corporate has had their own droid, except for AT&T. While the iPhone is practically ancient (since 2007), AT&T’s spectrum of mobile devices – feature phones, BlackBerry devices, and smartphones have all primarily relied on the Windows Mobile platform, and that’s been iPhone turf. Even Verizon has come to promote the Motorola Droid – while not so subtly lambasting the iPhone’s shortcomings. But now via the Motorola Backflip, AT&T will have its own Droid. CPR is waiting in the wings.
The iPhones fail. They break, are thrown into swimming pools or land on cement walkways, and the truth is, no matter how smart your phone is, and how many apps it eats, or in the case of AT&T’s newest Android – how many revolutions it can make in the air when it’s doing a backflip – gravity sets in and when these devices break – they inevitably fail.

A day can be envisioned when CPR’s expert service technicians will be waiting for AT&T’s new Android to come damaged into their repair shop – it will need to have all of its apps restored to functionality, and they will fix it, yes they will. Will a CPR expert service technician dare to perform a backflip in exultation when the first AT&T Android is successfully repaired? Probably this won’t happen. Even so, it’s a smartphone, isn’t it? We already know the answer to that one. Yes it is. Why should a Backflip be much different than a Droid? CPR has been fixing smartphones for years now, and the number of smartphones repaired is an astounding number, said by the Wise CPR guru to exceed a gazillion. These broken smartphones, including Androids, have been made whole again, after being broken in numerous and sundry ways. It’s nice that the iPhone will have a little brother brought to you by AT&T, and even if you want to do a backflip with a Backflip – you should know that it can be fixed. If you take it to your nearest CPR, it will be fixed.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Something I could not say fifty years ago, “The iPads for Wi-Fi will be available in the United States.” These particular iPads will be available on April 3, 2010, and other models equipped for Wi-Fi plus 3G will become available perhaps by the ides of April – if there is such an ides. As a small child, I was iPad-deprived. Yes, I’m going to admit it. It’s not easy to confess to such a thing, not once you’re past fifty. But even for geezers like me – I resemble a well-preserved centenarian – these Wi-Fi iPads – oh my – will include a pricey (~ $500) 16GB model, a pricier (~$600) 32GB device and a priciest (~$700) model with 64GB. The iPads (all of them) weigh 1.5 pounds and are ½ inch thick. Retail stores have just added 12 new applications (some people call them “apps”) and the “tablets” will run most, if not all, of the estimated 150,000 apps that exist in the Apps Universe. Which apps aren’t supported? I don’t know. Remember, I resemble a well-preserved centenarian.For those who like to do their reading via apps, according to Apple, the new iBooks app for iPad, including the iBookstore, will be available as a free download from the Apps store on April 3. I couldn’t say any of that as a child either – oh, maybe I could have, but no one would have known what I was talking about. We live in marvelous times, full of techno-wizardry and apps. Apps are everywhere. There are probably as many apps as there are squirrels. That said, squirrels don’t break – although they do die except for Immortal Squirrel – but iPads do. What should you do if you lose all your apps because you dropped your iPad and became very iSad?

Don’t fret, unless you’re a musician adept at stringed instruments too. Even this well-preserved centenarian knows that if you take your injured device to the nearest independent repair shop, that their expert service technicians will be able to make you iGlad in a nifty jiffy and you won’t have to wait fifty – years that is.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The R & D wing of Sony Corp. has been busy as Claus elves the past several months. Informed speculation has it that a new lineup of handheld products are on the way, including a smart phone approaching genius levels: The thing will supposedly be able to download and play video games – which is about the only thing that smart phones haven’t had an app for, until now.

That’s not all. The Japanese electronics giant has almost at-the-ready a portable gadget that will be a close kin to netbooks – nearly incestuous in fact – not to mention electronic book readers and handheld game machines. If this thing comes to be, it could be an excellent strategic counterpart to such devices as Apple’s iPad tablet – which is also close to coming off the drawing board, so Sony is trying to stay competitive.

The new products are the vanguard for Sony’s new online media platform – an answer to Apple’s iTunes that the Nipponese hope will be a declarative statement. Sony’s new platform will offer many of the same movies, television shows, and songs that iTunes has already made available to consumers. While sales of Sony’s PSP – once hailed as the “Walkman for the 21st century” are slipping badly, Sony is likely to make a better showing with their new platform and associated lineup.

The smart phone promises to be the centerpiece. Imagine – a device actually able to download and play video games.

But what will it mean to play video games merrily and excitedly, to become immersed in imaginative worlds 24-7, and to suddenly have the techno-symbolic umbilical cord severed, to lose contact with those video game realms, because your toy is … broken?

The multifunction device will be working online with Sony’s new online multimedia platform and then, suddenly – it breaks – what then?

Wait, don’t despair. The solution is at hand. You will be able to take these devices to your nearest independent repair shop, and know the truth of the matter in your heart of hearts … that even your Sony newfangled things can be fixed.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Motorola had been developing its new Devour for awhile, as a marketplace competitor to Google’s Nexus. Before the Ides of March, yea Brutus, it will be out. While nobody knows what the little beast will cost, it will have a touchscreen and slide-out keyboard; facilitate Facebook and Twitter exchanges, and stream content to the phone in real time. It’s way more advanced than Motorola’s Cliq, distributed through T-Mobile, which came out last year.

Motorola isn’t resting on their laurels, either. The company will be launching 20 Android smart phones in 2010, perhaps even a model called the “Sarah Palin” for those who have visited the state of Alaska and can prove it. But for now, it is just the Droid, and the Devour.

It’s all in a name sometimes. Droid is not much of a mystery, it’s just a brevity for Android, enough said. But why Devour? Because Americans eat, that’s why, and they eat quite a lot. There’s even an obesity epidemic, certainly among children, which is tragic enough, but perhaps even among centenarians, which would be infinitely more tragic for reasons as yet unexplained. That said, imagine the potential for accidents when American consumers, coincidentally while consuming food, perhaps even devouring food if they’re ravenously hungry, bring a cute little Devour smarty party phone into a restaurant where meatballs are on the menu. Imagine a tiny crack in the Devour’s touchscreen resulting when the consumer accidentally drops the Motorola device somewhere nasty. Imagine a little smidge of meatball lodged into the crevice created, I know, this is gross, but bear with me. Will Facebook still Twitter? Will content stream or scream? Will the keyboard slide out properly?

Maybe ‘no’ to all these pertinent queries. Enter CPR. At some point when such a catastrophe occurs, and your Devour has become a picky eater, so to speak, and won’t work, CPR’s expert service technicians will be there for you. Asserts the service-technician-without-a-name, let’s call him “Pete,” who has recently joined CPR’s stellar team, “Bring your Devour into us so that I can fix it for Pete’s sake. I know I can get that meatball out from inside its touchscreen.”

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It will be Sprint’s first WiMax-enabled smartphone, an Android named Supersonic, although that’s a code-name. It will have a 4.3 inch touchscreen, an FM radio (what, no satellite radio?) and should include HTC’s Sense user interface atop an Android operating system. The Supersonic will boast a Snapdragon processor running at 1GHz like a Google Nexus One, which is also an HTC innovation. Although the Snapdragon doesn’t really function with WiMax, it will someday. Sprint’s WiMax network is rapid tech at 3 and 6 Mbit/sec, and it will soon be accommodating 4G.

The Android operating system, especially smartphones using it, is becoming a trend. Google’s Android phones now command a 5.2% share of the U.S. market – and climbing. Android is not yet synonymous with RIM’s Blackberry platform (41.6% U.S. market share) but Google’s Android Nexus is gaining, and Google is a relative neophyte in the smartphone marketplace. Palm and Microsoft have been sliding, while Nokia still claims 40% of the global smartphone market, it’s numbers impressively Blackberry-like.

An estimated 234 million people age 13 and older were using mobile devices in the United States as of December 2009, with Motorola the premier OEM with 23.5% of U.S. mobile devices. But statistics aside, there is something more phenomenal going on. As more Americans dance to whatever drumbeat they’re hearing with smartphones in hand, the likelihood for accidents is also increasing. People drop them and they break. They spill an amazing variety of substances upon their delicate and relatively fragile “private parts.” Even the Supersonic is not going to be immune from getting wet. If it falls into a swimming pool, the device will fail to function and be in need of repair.

That’s when CPR gets into the act. CPR’s expert service technicians will know how to fix the Supersonic, just as they already have repaired thousands of Palm Pre, Blackberry, Nokia, Google, and every cell phone and smartphone and a myriad of devices sold. “We don’t care that much what is,” said Anon, a CPR expert service technician who didn’t want to give his name due to his modesty and other superlative qualities. “We just fix it.”

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The buzz was in Barcelona because the Androids were coming. Not in the sense of humanoid robots set to conquer the Spanish city – but instead like high-tech Conquistadors in reverse. This incarnation is the newest techno-rage – a blitz of Android phones, appliances, and applications at the ready to invade world consumer markets. Stars were featured, things yes, but akin to human celebrities being showcased at the Golden Globe awards. Chipsets such as the BCM4760 for personal navigation or perhaps Broadcom’s BCM4329 chip that is integral to Google’s Nexus One. Think of Android handsets from Huawei, or Motorola’s new Droid smartphone.

Android means new features for smartphones and smart feature phones. Despite occasional malware that is able to sneak in to the open architecture like the proverbial Trojan horse, new vistas are being conquered and you don’t even have to peer through Windows to find them.

Smartphones and their cousins will continue to make a splash in market share pools, and the Android architecture is only making them more ubiquitous. But what happens when your expensive Android smartphone or smart feature phone makes a real splash in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and there’s not a Trojan to be seen? What happens when it lands and cracks on a cement walkway (and there are several of these in the world now that cement is no longer a novelty)? While its open architecture won’t help it, an independent repair shop very well might.

At independent repair shops, the Conquistadors are expert service techs trained in the functioning of cellphone innards, ready to fix anything – even an Android smartphone – that is walked into the convenient shop by its owner, usually a consumer. What tale of woe that is related by the human, or perhaps by the telltale Android if it’s sophisticated enough – is of little consequence. “My pet crocodile crunched my phone,” a customer might assert. Without judgment regarding the wisdom of keeping such exotic pets, a canny service tech will know how to fix your broken gizmo – assuming that magic or an act of God is not the downlow. Such service techs can be found at independent repair shops – you bet they can.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

New solar cells can convert sunlight to energy, in much the same way that leaves use chlorophyll to begin photosynthesis. The key is a photosensitive dye expressed by miniature solar panels that can assume as many shapes as the humanoid “shape shifters,” a species of extraterrestrial alien once featured on a Star Trek spinoff television series. E-book readers will stitch the thin, flexible panels into the reader’s cover. New lines of backpacks and sports bags already have the solar cells housed inside their fabric to recharge cell phones and music players.

The only prerequisite is light, either full direct sunshine for best results, or dappled and ambient light, such as fluorescent bulbs used indoors, for acceptable results.

The newest technological twist is the dye. Until this innovation, photovoltaic cells consisted of silicon or related inorganic materials, not dyes.

The dye-sensitized cells have become increasingly efficient at converting sunlight and other ambient light into electricity. It works like this: Within the solar cell, the dye is painted in a thin layer on a porous titanium dioxide scaffold to collect light, and in a series of steps, to create power.

All well and good, but fast forward a year or two, when solar cells have become commonplace to charge waning cell phones. The very employment of this technology is likely to mean less dependence on cell phone manufacturers as conventional chargers become passé.

Manufacturer warranties will also become increasingly passé as consumer independence becomes the rule, instead of the exception. Cell phones, even smartphones, which will by then no doubt approach genius level, will no longer need battery chargers. But humans being what they are, these devices will still be subject to human error, and BREAK. With all this extra autonomy for consumers, what then? What options for repair will still exist? Not to fret, not yet. Independent repair shops are likely to be more prevalent in this brave new solar-charged world, not less.

Cell phones and their cousins are likely to be cracked and smashed, or damaged by water, or even get infiltrated into their delicate mechanisms by such prosaic invaders such as a dash of eggnog. But skilled service technicians will know what to do then, just as they do now.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The iPhone has become ubiquitous around the world. More than four billion of “them Apples” have been distributed to eager consumers. Penrod L. Pennywise finally bought one, and became the hundred millionth person to do so in 2009. Distantly related to Mr. Scrooge and The Grinch, they each had purchased several by the ides of January in 2010. “Everybody has one by now,” reported The Gabby iPhone, a newsletter that would be widely circulated if it wasn’t also fictitious.

In England, iPhones are sometimes accessed with tea and crumpets. In Scotland, iPhones are worn as an accessory with bagpipes and kilts. Perhaps, according to The Gabby iPhone, Vodafone is to blame for such innovations on the other side of the pond.

Wither what may; the ubiquitous iPhone may break in a myriad of ways. A tale is told about an iPhone in Yemen that was hurled like a bomb from a passing car window and actually exploded. This particular device, according to The Gabby iPhone, was sent by postal mail to a CPR shop not far from Cicero, and was somehow able to be pieced together. Another tale from Tiberia involved a frozen iPhone that made its way to be thawed in a CPR shop after arriving Siberia. Another iPhone, according to the same never reliable source, had been mauled by an Angora from Andorra. The bottom line is that any iPhone is accepted no matter their nation of origin – if the device can be fixed at all, CPR’s expert service technicians will “give it a go” as sometimes is said by United Kingdomers visiting our side of the pond.

Where can an iPhone come from? The answer is often a function of air travel as much as “how the crow flies.” Returning to that certain source again for information about lost and found iPhones, in the sense of their being repaired, is the legend about an iPhone that was dropped by a crow from a height of a three-story building – a perfect gravity-induced travel – right onto a CPR customer counter. That particular iPhone, according to the rumor, was hardly even broken.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

2010 is not the start of a new decade. We’ll have to wait another year for that. But as the last year of the 21st Century’s first decade, one of a smartphone consumer’s biggest worries is security. There are a whole lot of threats out there. So many viral worms now exist, that they now have their own condo community with its singular zip code starting with 666. Cloud breaches no longer pertain to hailstones falling through a cumulonimbus. We’ve recently seen Heartland Payment Systems’ ugly invasion and been confounded by the Conficker worm – which renowned journalist Tom Wicker had nothing to do with. In fact, the saying “There’s nothing sicker than Conficker” may soon be surpassed by the next botnet, phishing scam, or fake anti-virus software to sleaze along. What’s especially ominous to some consumers is that smartphones like the Apple iPhone and Google’s Nexus One are already within the sights of bad people who do bad things to good smartphones, increasingly the way PC desktops were just a few years ago.

The newest threat may be malware attacks against “jailbroken” iPhones – iPhones whose owners have deliberately disabled Apple controls so that they can free themselves from an onerous carrier or migrate on their own to a different operating system. With low-level access thus sabotaged by the consumer, the manufacturer is in effect, “locked out” of providing software anti-viral remedies that can be anywhere close to current.

An increasingly popular option for protecting smartphones from being hacked is to take your apps-loaded little phone machine to your nearest CPR. Here in this hacker-whacker environment, the possibility for your phone to remain compromised by some malignant force drops practically to zero within hours, or a day or two in the shop at most. While creating a jailbroken iPhone may not have been the most prudent idea to begin with – it doesn’t have to mean a trip to a smartphone morgue. You should still shy away with any zip code starting with 666 and phishing is pronounced “fishing,” when you bring a pole, and if you swallow a botnet you should spit it out immediately – but everything gets better even for slackers if not hackers if you simply be smart and take your phone to CPR.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Kids in this day and age have easier access to technology, gadgets, games and information than ever before. Many kids believe this is the greatest benefit to growing up in this century, while parents and authority figures have argued that with the rapid rate of evolution, kids don’t even have to leave home for danger to find them.

Sprint has entered into a partnership with a group of leading child-education and protection organizations to create a security system called 4NetSafety.This will ensure that all phones, computers and even video game systems that can access the Internet will have every conceivable safety precaution on-board before they are used by kids. The best news about this partnership: It’s free to use.

4NetSafety teaches parents and kids about how to protect you and your family while surfing the web. Some features include animated videos, safety tips such as selecting gender-neutral screen names, not putting any personal information in e-mail addresses or online profiles, and what could be the most important tip: Never meet in person someone you first met online.
Now that your kids are safe from online predation, what can you do to make your technology safe from them? Supervision is usually a good start to protecting fragile electronics but you can’t always keep your eye on both your kids and your gadgets. What if you happen to leave your iPhone in the bathroom and your 3-year-old has to go potty. You think she is big enough to go by herself. She does but didn’t get her pants off in time and knocked your phone on the floor right into the puddle of piddle. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the screen hadn’t also cracked upon impact.

What do you do when situations like this occur? A savvy consumer would start by cleaning up the puddle and the kid. The next step is almost a no-brainer in the sense that a kid could have thought of it: Head for the nearest independent repair shop. If they have expert service technicians on-site, they can dry out your phone, replace your screen, and fix whatever else needs fixing. But still, to make your gadgets truly safe from your kids, you might need an assist from God, or at least some extraterrestrial in authority.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Google is getting greedy. They weren’t satisfied to have a proprietary Android mobile operating system in the forefront of gadget-tech. Its new smartphone means an aggressive juggernaut for Androids everywhere and we’re not talking about Data, the now ancient android from a defunct TV show that once saturated TV land literally – not the cable channel. Google’s Nexus isn’t alone, it has a cousin that’s a Motorola Droid and available on Verizon’s network, but it is now smartly in the smartphone game.

Already, the Nexus has advantages over the competing Droid. It’s not trapped in a shortsighted exclusivity deal and will be available not only from Verizon, but from AT & T, Sprint, and T-Mobile or any other wireless carrier preferred by consumers. Google once envisioned an open source mobile platform which would theoretically allow a so-called “free” cell phone that would not be bound fast to any particular carrier. Such a carrier-agnostic product line would also free carriers “once and for all” from ongoing maintenance concerns if the thing were to break. While technical issues such as CDMA-network related concerns might prove problematic in this regard, at least in the short term, Google’s smartphone is bound to make an impact, even if the marketplace is already glutted to the point of ubiquitous saturation.

But if it’s assumed that carrier-agnostic is a “go” and the Google experiment doesn’t end up as a monstrous Goofle, what will be the best options for consumers if the Nexus One breaks? If its LCD screen cracks; if its apps morph into gaps; if it suddenly won’t perform cherished functions; if it suddenly refused to help rescue your grandfather from a dial-up connection; if, as Rudyard Kipling once titled his famous poem, your Nexus loses its nexus, so to speak, what can a savvy consumer do?

The only option that will be preferred by consumers who might be atheists, agnostics, or even devout, will be to run, not walk, preferably after suitable transportation has been arranged, to your nearest independent repair shop populated by Nexus-savvy service technicians.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

If you’ve ever seen a bushel of blackberries smashed on a sidewalk, or even blueberries or raspberries for that matter, you probably know enough that salvaging such a fruity mess is a lost cause. You might be able to eat a few, or bake a sorry pie, but any grand plans you might have had for your berries is probably past-tense. Before you’d heard of CPR repair shops, you might have despaired of any repair even for your BlackBerries, including the BlackBerry Curve 8520. But let’s get one thing straight from the get go – you can take your BlackBerry, even your Curve 8520, into your nearest CPR repair shop, and if it’s not a real berry, our expert service technicians are going to be able to fix it – if it’s repairable.

Please ignore those reports of BlackBerries not being smartphones at all – but genuine berries. Yes, you might have “picked” your BlackBerry, but think back. Did it come off a bush? Chances are that it didn’t. Did you try to eat it after sprinkling bits of broken BlackBerry all over your breakfast cereal? Let’s hope you didn’t, or you’ll need your stomach pumped out mighty fast, cheerio!

In fact, the BlackBerry smartphones should never be placed atop your cereal, it says so right in the warranty if you still happen to have one. These smartphones are not edible. Eating them is seldom, if ever, advisable. If someone has taken a bite out of yours, believing erroneously the rumors that have been circulating, it’s your patriotic duty to take it to be fixed, or else restored to a relatively pristine condition, and if that warranty has expired or else can’t be found, your destination should be to your nearest CPR shop where one of our expert service technicians is waiting to serve you.

A smartphone with a piece of its LCD screen bitten off can be dealt with. Don’t get hysterical. Control yourself. The crime dog was talking about taking a bite out of crime in that radio spot, not a bite out of your BlackBerry. Isn’t it a crime that your device has been bitten? It may well be. But these things happen. It’s time to move on, and at CPR you can make your BlackBerry Curve 8520 whole again.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Palm invented not only the Seuss-ish Pre, which rhymes with the Japanese sushi, but also conceived and delivered as in prenatal an entire category of Web-surfing pocket-computer phones when Treo burst onto the scene in 2002. But Palm’s rivals attacked real-world market complexities and the Pre, in a post-Pre world, has become something of an anomaly. While Sprint’s network still features the Pre, Palm has also moved on to the less expensive Pixi, which appears to be a genuine Palm post-Pre reaction.

While the Pre and the Pixi are easy to use and great for Internet surfing, both can break – even when they’re not accidently smashed with a mallet or vanish down a rabbit hole, only to reappear broken with a sad-eyed Dr. Seuss looking like his famous cat in a hat, or eating an odious chunk of leftover green eggs and ham.
Owners of damaged Pre or Pixi smartphones should not despair. CPR’s expert technicians DO speak webOS, which is the favorite tongue of Lord Palm, who is by the way, the Lord of the Things.

The Pixi is becoming more common because it costs less than most Android phones, and because people own it, just like those ancient Pre devices, they are breaking in many ways – but if you head down to your nearest CPR independent repair shop, clop and clip, clip and clop, our expert technicians will repair your Pre without odious preconditions, or fix that Pixi – without whistling Dixie. Unless such a nonsensical whistle is pre-requested, after first being suggested, we just won’t whistle. We don’t need to – ask Dr. Seuss.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Hong Kong’s ZTE is getting into the act. Everybody’s making smartphones these days. The new ZTE phone, as of yet remaining nameless, might as well be called the Bingo. ZTE is hoping that whatever the thing is called, it might add an incredible 50 million handsets to its overall shipping inventory of 60 million handsets and mobile broadband data cards if its newest Google-based unit saturates the mobile phone segment with worldwide distribution. Distributors are already lining up, with the Bingo’s potential suitors including such industry heavyweights as Vodaphone Group PLC, Verizon Wireless, France Telecom SA’s Orange, and T-Mobile vowing to supply ZTE’s smartphones to every corner of the known Earth, including wherever possible in the midst of the great oceans. Smartphones are flexible, ZTE’s spokespersons say, allowing consumers to send e-mails and conduct a myriad of multimedia applications — once the exclusive domain of personal computers. ZTE used to be content to be a vendor of low-cost telecom equipment, and that stuff seldom made it out of Asia, but in those not-so-long ago days, smartphones weren’t so smart – or so commonplace. One can’t really blame ZTE. The company just wants to pad its gross margin with a slice of the pie.

But it’s becoming like that ancient Star Trek episode featuring a guy named Mudd. If the show was still going, this one might be called “The Trouble with Smartphones.” Although they don’t multiply in the same manner as rabbits, hamsters, or tribbles, they might as well.

Still, consumers are coming to depend upon these contraptions a little more each year. There’s a contest for units capable of accessing the most applications, often referred to these days as “apps,” and they are already beginning to break in a multitude of ways as consumers are becoming increasingly careless … and some of the latest smartphone warranties aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. What’s a consumer to do?

The answer is right there, as plain to see as … the simplest app. Independent repair shops for smartphones and their cousins are popping up like oases in the tech-laden deserts. They’ll fix ‘em for you.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Some thought the day would never come. But ring around the Dell – is finally entering the smartphone market. China has already seen their first Dell units, but so far their availability in that country has yet to experience worldwide scrutiny. Before 2009 runs its course, Brazil will be added to the availability mix. But what the traditional personal computer brand has revealed about features to Western consumers, including Americans, has been sketchy indeed.

It has received a name, presumably for marketing purposes. Akin to “Mini-me,” the famous character in a medley of Mike Myers’ flicks, Dell’s new gadget is the Mini 3.

In a smartphone market dominated by the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, it’s not likely to make much of an immediate impression, but let’s not be afraid to fantasize. Since we don’t really know the features of the new Mini 3, let’s assume that it’s round, tiny, not much larger than a dime, and comes with more bells and whistles than anything so far conceived. Perhaps it’s programmed to communicate with immediate voice translations– for instance, Urdu to Mandarin to English in less than a second. It might be able to scan your Bible for references to Gomorrah instantaneously – akin to some kind of warped Kindle. The fact is, whatever this new thing might be able to do, it will break. It will inevitably shatter its LCD screen when you drop it on a cement road surface, like a sidewalk. Sidewalks exist even in Brazil or China, but when the Mini 3 appears someday in Peoria or Dallas or Chicago, sidewalks are not likely to be less ubiquitous. What if the very tiny keyboard button on your Dell is worn down by constant use, but you never knew it because you can’t even see it, what then?

If such eventualities should occur, and your Mini 3 warranty has expired or somehow vanished too, your only possible option might well be to run, not walk, to your nearest independent repair shop, and please, watch where you’re going, for if you should trip …

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Many Americans aren’t really aware that Nokia phones are manufactured in Finland, or that Nokia introduced its initial flip phones more than five years ago. Time flies, especially when it comes to flip phones. Once a trendsetter in cellular handsets, this strategic move had allowed Nokia, the telecom pride of Scandinavia — to avert a nasty finish that had seemed all but inevitable. Clamshell models, Nokia’s bread and butter, had become less nifty. Nokia did regain a large chunk of market share, but more than five years later, many of these surviving flips are now in dire need of repair.

The models being introduced were quite exciting, beginning with their own third generation phone, their 6630, billed as the world’s smallest 3G. It weighed a mere 4.5 ounces, featured a 1.2 megapixel camera, an MP3 player and promised extremely fast Internet transmission – up to forty times that of any U.S. or Chinese competitor – but unfortunately failed to deliver.

A second high-end model, a clamshell 6260 with a swiveling flip, incorporated a video recorder, Web browser, email and VPN within its configuration, and came with a Bluetooth network and an optional wireless keyboard.

Bells & whistles even populated the low-end of these Norseland Nokias. For instance, the 2600 came standard with a full-color display and a handfree speaker – the latter being an excellent choice for safety-conscious consumers but largely ignored, as safety with cell phones never made decent hype in those days.

Enter CPR. “We’re getting a lot of these old Nokia flips in,” says CPR expert service technician Sven Svardd. “I blooming hate the things,” says the blonde Great Dane. At nearly seven feet tall, he looks like a Viking about to lead a band of marauders, and if reincarnated admits to a predilection for pillaging, but also possesses a Jack O’ Lantern grin that can be endearing to certain women. Although he hates the things and prefers newer model smartphones, “practically anything that you don’t have to plug in,” he explains, “They are extremely simple to fix,” he admits. He might add, especially if you take your smartphones down to your nearest CPR.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The iPhone is swiftly becoming the eBook reader of choice for many people. Last year, the iPhone and iPod Touch claimed the handheld gaming market for the first time. Now, due to new support features, it’s no wonder that book applications for iPhones have begun to exceed the popularity of gaming apps. One out of every five new apps introduced to the App Store during October were book apps. With 57 million iPhone and iPod Touch users worldwide, Apple’s touchscreen devices are far more ubiquitous than is Kindle; so despite the fact that iPhone screens are a lot smaller than Amazon’s six-inch Kindle, they remain a much more feasible(and lucrative) gateway for book publishers . Although their screens are tiny by comparison, loyal iPhone and iPod touch users don’t really mind now that iPhone apps exist to support Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader. In fact, because iPhones and iPods are a heck of a lot more popular than the more practical Kindle due to its more effective marketing blitzes, iPhones are swiftly becoming “preferred” as eBook readers, even if Kindle is still numero uno for the moment. Industry analysts are predicting that Kindle will consistently lose market share as the Christmas buying season looms. Reading books on your iPhone and iPod make these popular gadgets more than mere platforms for handheld gaming.

So what if you’re on Page 223 of Frank Herbert’s Dune Trilogy and your iPhone breaks? Even the peskiest of malfunctions can take that engrossing momentum and personal satisfaction that you can only get from entering an imaginary world of your own choosing and appreciating it in a nouveau setting. There is a way to “get reading” again, the CPR way. CPR’s expert service technicians like to read too — so let them empathize. “I hate it when I’m reading my favorite copy of War and Peace and my iPhone gets tossed onto the concrete by my girlfriend Estelle,” says expert CPR service technician Leroy McVeigh, “I can fix it fast and all that, but if she keeps doing that, I’ll never make it past the third chapter.”

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s new. It runs Windows XP and blends in PC features within the palm of your hand. But is it really useful to have a smartphone so small? The pocket-sized XPPhone blends smartphone, PC and mobile Internet device into a do-all. Microsoft’s Windows XP Operating System never had it so good. Or maybe not, you techno Dr. Know it all.

In the middle of the bug-sized device is a Geode LX chip, running at 533MHz and drawing less than a single watt of power as if it were Picasso in a Spanish outhouse.

Enthusiasts proclaim that a demand exists for devices smaller than netbooks that can deliver the functionality of a much larger PC. Smartphones are changing into Internet surfers and readers of Word documents. This thing may be pushing a similar “one-box” envelope. But is it too laden with resources for such a Lilliputian contraption?

Some experts are daring to ask the fifty-cent question: “Why would anyone want a phone that runs XP?” How often will you have to replace its batteries? I’m thinking a mechanical version of Flomax on steroids might be an apt comparison of what we’re dealing with here. Also, personal computers have had their own issues running XP. Why make a mechanical mini-me vulnerable to the same family of problems? The blue screen of death comes to mind; only it buzzes and stings in a peculiar annoying way because it’s so freaking little. Try to load Microsoft Office on it if you’d like your own immediate cardiovascular event as a way to put frosting on frustration. Add some of the other components of the Windows arsenal and you might just be asking for a convulsion.

There’s also a follow-up fifty-cent question. What if it breaks? Isn’t any repairing a questionable proposition if the unit’s functionality is questionable in the first place? Makeshift repairs might accomplish more harm than good. How can you tell what “works” if you can barely see it? What about warranties? It seems that an independent repair shop might be your only solution, but make certain that the techno-nerds employed as service technicians there have their magnifying tools handy.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

On its first day of availability in the United Kingdom, the mobile phone company Orange sold 30,000 iPhones. Most were sold within hours. Such volume would have been unheard of a decade ago.

Considering what was being sold, it’s not that surprising. It’s the fastest iPhone ever, twice as quick as its predecessor the 3G. It’s amazing how quickly you can launch apps, render Web pages, or view email attachments. The nifty little gadget can also shoot, edit, and share video – in premium quality VGA portrait or landscape perspectives. Not enough for you? You can also trim your footage by adjusting start and end points with reckless abandon. Take that same instantaneous video and share it in an email, post it to your MobileMe gallery, publish it on YouTube, or sync back to your Mac or PC using the ubiquitous iTunes.

Apple’s 3GS also comes equipped with a 3-megapixel camera that also takes still photos and has a built-in autofocus. A voice control learns the names in your contacts and the music on your iPhone. It comes with a built-in digital compass, so that you might reorient a map to match the direction you’re facing – which is ideal for lost elves at Christmas. Apple’s smartest of phones also can cut, copy, or paste with the best gadgets ever imagined, provide additional typing room with a landscape keyboard, send messages with text, videos, photos, audio, locations, and contact information. An extraordinary feature called “Internet tethering” allows you to surf the Web from practically anywhere.

But there are so many features that can fail – given the slightest accident to befall your treasured little creature of state-of-the-art techno prowess. The merest accident, and suddenly, a precious feature is lost, maybe two, or three, or maybe it’s all dead suddenly and about as useful as a rock.

That’s when the “what ifs” begin to kick in. What if the warranty has expired and your rock is starting to gather dust? What if your little machine has sentimental value or is broken and the person who gave it to you as a gift doesn’t know yet that one or more of the features is broken? Your option is clear. Run, don’t walk, down to your nearest independent repair shop. Don’t drop your iPhone. Don’t you dare drop it.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

About a month ago Apple introduced an updated iPhone OS 3.1. This smartphone-related software debuted with a plethora of new features, including a Genius system to recommend new apps, new ways to organize your apps, and the ability to download ringtones wirelessly.

On October 8, 2009, Apple released another update for the iPhone OS. This most recent upgrade is 3.1.2. In the grand scheme, it’s just a minor update as updates go, but the update’s introduction has resolved issues that have arisen since 3.1. According to Apple, the latest update fixes a bug that might cause an occasional crash while streaming videos, resolves sporadic issues that may cause your iPhone to continue sleeping even after you try to wake it up, and further resolves intermittent issues with cellular network services being interrupted. This update is not only for all iPhone models, but also applies to the iPod Touch.

But what happens if your operating system is functioning fine and dandy, and your iPhone is still an itty-bitty clunker? Unless a new “cash for clunkers” program is brought onto the tables to reward you, as you so richly deserve to be rewarded, your best option is to run, don’t walk, to your nearest retail emporium with the CPR logo prominently displayed.

Claude C. Claude, a skilled CPR technician, was recently brought onboard to handle such matters, has this to say about moribund smartphones and streaming videos that show up stillborn. “I’m thrilled to be working at CPR, where my skills for fixing the smartest of the smartphones are appreciated, and where I’m beloved by both colleagues and inanimate objects. Can I, or somebody who looks like me, repair your smartphone if the thing stops working? Let me tell you this. I repaired one the other day that the customer had given up for dead, placing it in an unmarked grave in his backyard before bringing it to me. Is this a Halloween prank I asked? But the customer is always right, even when he stares back at me like a zombie.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

So many smartphones have Wi-Fi capability now; the feature has almost become standard. If you’re shopping for such a phone, you might compare. For instance, the Apple iPhone 3GS is probably the most expensive; it does boast a battery-life that rivals the Great Bunny, and of course has Wi-Fi capability. The Palm Pre, a Sprint novelty, is a lot cheaper, going for about half the price of an iPhone 3GS, also has Wi-Fi. Verizon’s entry into the Wi-Fi capable extravaganza is the HTC Ozone, and it’s even cheaper. Blackberries like the RIM Curve 8900 don’t close like certain smartphones, but they’re convenient in the sense of Wi-Fi too. Another smartphone, the Nokia N97, not only is Wi-Fi capable, but is unlocked – able to be used with any mobile carrier. The Nokia’s downside is that its operating system apparently first came out prior to the GEICO caveman. T-Mobile MyTouch 3G also is Wi-Fi capable – providing you don’t touch it. That’s the problem with smartphones and their Wi-Fi abilities, akin to telekinesis. If your phone is prone to glitches, or else it actually breaks, the first capability to become extinct is Wi-Fi.

This can be more inconvenient than sin. You’re hoping to download photos and find a good restaurant to take your significant other for sushi and pasta. You have your smartphone; you’re in a Wi-Fi hot zone, but … it WON’T WORK!

That’s when you need CPR. The skilled service technicians at America’s leading independent repair shop franchise can make your Wi-Fi function again. It doesn’t matter what brand of smartphone that’s failed, we can fix it so that your Wi-Fi becomes standard again, not a capability that has become extinct.

Says CPR’s service technician Malcolm R. Middel, a true geek if there ever was one, “I hate it when the Wi-Fi fails. That is not good, not good at all.”

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Who names these things? If you incorporate an 8 MP camera with LED flash and enough video editing software to have a party in your handset, what do you call it? If you guessed an LG Viewty Smart GC900, you have rocks in your head, but you’re right. What is this thing really? It’s a phone.

This beauty of a Viewty comes equipped with a standard S-Class interface and a touchscreen that looks suspiciously like a refugee from LG, and despite its light weight of 102 grams, the stocking stuffer is extraordinary for its uncanny metallic feel, though some might perceive this wonder of 2009 as being a tad delicate. It doesn’t have a 3.5 mm headphone port (what do you want, blood?), so there’s an adaptor in the box with or without a jack, but it isn’t the only phone blessed with a socket.

Yes, but did I mention that it is a tad delicate? Your little Viewty, unfortunately named, is bound to break. What do you do then with your not-so-smart-phone?

Since it is a stocking stuffer, you might consider asking Santa’s elves to fix it. Santa often marvels at their prowess; he has been looking on approvingly as they pound away with their little tools in Santa’s workshop since the year 647 A.D. Those particular elves are dead now; no longer busy in our realm, but their replacements might be ready and eager to fix your broken beauty of a Viewty. But there are at least two reasons why Santa’s elves, even the contemporary versions, may not be able to fix your delicate and now mangled smart phone. There’s also a bigger reason why even if they could repair your Viewty, you wouldn’t let them. The elves are based at the North Pole!

Elves also tend to be techno-challenged, although if it was built prior to the 9th Century, they can fix anything. But if an elf isn’t your solution, how can you get your LG Viewty Smart GC900 repaired in a timely manner? The answer is right there, in plain Viewty. Take your unit to your nearest independent repair shop. If you have to remove it from your Christmas stocking, so be it.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Sony’s PlayStation Portable with a slide-screen gamepad added, but without its disc drive, and what have you got? You have a PSP Go. For $250, you get a PlayStation with a retooled grip, Bluetooth support, and internal flash memory to the tune of 16 GB. This expensive handheld weighs a svelte 5.6 ounces, lighter than the PSP-Slim or the original PSP-1000, but there are compromises that had to be made. For instance, the pixels in the LCD (it’s still a widescreen configuration, 480-by-272) now occupy less physical space, as the diagonal span has shrunk ½ an inch from 4.3 inches to 3.8 inches. The consequences of this varies by game, but to paraphrase the legendary Jerry Lee Lewis – there’s a whole lot more squinting going on when you try reading the on-screen text. Your plans for the future should now include learning Braille.

While you can still see, you might notice that your PSP Go looks nice. It’s an elegant black rectangle nestled between glossy, beveled half-moons. You can buy it in “piano black” or “pearl white.” Fingerprints can show up ugly on the black surface, but there is a way to get around that flaw: just don’t touch it with your fingers. Certain people have learned to make their PSP Go units function quite admirably employing only tactile toes, especially their index toes combined with the uncanny dexterity embodied within their large toes, avoiding fingerprints entirely. This takes a lot of practice, but can be worth the gargantuan effort, especially for those consumers who might find a coating of unsightly finger smears objectionable.

If you are less agile with your feet than you’d hoped to be, apparent disaster can unexpectedly occur. Enough “manhandling” with your toes can cause your PSP Go to simply stop. And remember, explicit stupidity is often not adequately covered in manufacturer’s warranties – if such symptoms are even covered at all. What do you do with a PSP Go which is sure no Energizer Bunny? Well, don’t be a dumb bunny and take that broken PSP Go to your nearest independent repair shop.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, is a long way from the spaceship Enterprise. But their newest entry into the retail consumer market may just be the ticket to resuscitate the company’s gasping handset division. Remember “Data,” the peculiar humanoid android character on Star Trek who was one of the crew but never quite fit in? Motorola’s new Android-based handset doesn’t look much like Data, instead it resembles a smartphone, and has a different name, Cliq.

The Cliq comes with a lot of standard features, and even quasi-innovations. It has its touch screen and QWERTY keyboard, in this instance the QWERTY slides out from the side. Its five megapixel camera is said to produce sharper images than most other phones like Apple’s iPhone, which only manages three-megapixel resolution.

This widget is versatile, more so than any fictional character no matter how well-scripted. Motorola is attempting to lure away Blackberry loyalists from their arch-competitor. It’s a stab at the smartphone market worth taking, that’s for sure. But warranties? It’s unlikely that if it breaks, Motorola’s struggling handset division is going to want to “be there” for its own.

CPR will be there though. Your most trusted name in independent repair shops for electronic devices is not going to leave Motorola’s Cliq lost in space. “I remember watching that show as a kid,” says CPR expert service technician Manfred Manifold, “It starred June Lockhart and Billy Mumy.” About saving DATA, and more recent science fiction-like technological innovations such as the Motorola’s Cliq, Manifold is much more succinct. “We salvage hundreds of Blackberries every day,” he says with a kind of charismatic robotic expression etched onto his Midwestern yet other-worldly features, “I don’t see why we can’t make those Cliqs start clucking if they’ve become a dummied-down smartphone all of a sudden.”

What would happen if your Cliq’s touch screen becomes untouchable? “I’d take it to CPR before I’d use a phaser on it,” Mr. Manifold concludes. An alternative theory may just be that certain CPR expert service technicians watch too much sci-fi on TV when they’re not working. As for android-based smartphones like Motorola’s Cliq, it might be wisest to search for the nearest CPR shop so you don’t lose any megapixels.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The Blackberry Curve Series has been arguably the most popular series of smartphones ever marketed. Their design is elegant, stylish, and to use a tinge of jargon deemed apt for the most recent entry into the retail consumer sweepstakes, “incredibly approachable.” The nouveau smartphone is the Blackberry Curve 8520, and it comes in another “color” besides black, “frost”, which is a combination of silver, gray, and white, yet has nothing to do with winter. T-Mobile USA and Research in Motion have outdone themselves this time.

Like many so-called “smartphones,” the Blackberry Curve 8520 provides easy access to such communication venues as email, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS), and popular social networking sites (including Facebook and MySpace). Its full QWERTY keyboard is highly tactile, making comfortable, accurate typing relatively easy. Multimedia capabilities are built-in, and music, games, and entertainment mobile applications are at the ready. The thing is Wi-Fi enabled; aren’t they all these days?

But what if another feature worth mentioning – its touch-sensitive optical trackpad – won’t scroll for you all of a sudden? What if navigating the trackpad comes to resemble rubbing your fingers over a patch of cacti? What if the Curve 8520’s dedicated media keys suddenly begin to seem as if they’re dedicated to someone else instead of you?

If your Blackberry, even the newest models like the Curve 8520 begin to get, well, a little too QWERTY on you, it might be time to take the thing into an independent repair shop, specifically, your nearest CPR location.

“The Blackberry is the top selling smartphone brand in the United States,” says expert CPR technician Johnson H. Johnson III, a geek if there ever was one, “but the marvelous thing is that we fix ‘em, we make them work again, so you can text to your heart’s content, little one.”

A colleague of Johnson’s, John-John Doe, agrees. “I bet you’re wondering how I got the name John-John even though I’m not a Kennedy, but more significantly, Johnson H. is correct. We do fix Blackberries, even the curvy ones that can get too QWERTY on you in a hurry.”

Johnson H. Johnson III has more to say, which is a revelation, because he usually is a man of few words. “I want to say that a lot can go wrong with a Blackberry, and when something does, we can make it right.”

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The Twist’s features don’t end there. It’s compatible with VZ Navigator SM, V CAST video as well as Music with Rhapsody, Visual Voice Mail, Mobile Broadband Connect, and Corporate Email. Its exclusive habitat mode activates a special interface for visualizing a consumer’s social circle on any of a dozen popular social networking groups, while allowing its customers to easily organize their calls and messaging history. Its 3.0 megapixel camera is also a camcorder with flash and autofocus with a dedicated camera/video key built-in. The Twist allows users to operate customized slideshows. Its Media Center is capable of downloading games, a panoply of ring tones, and more. You can edit photos with this device. Threaded messaging helps users keep track of multiple conversations – like a kind of stellar audio multi-tasking. Twist has an exciting “Post to Blogs” feature. It has a built-in mirror. It supports Bluetooth Profiles. It retails for $99.99 before mail-in rebate, just $49.99 after. What’s not to like?

A simple question seems relevant. What if it breaks?

With this “Twist,” it wouldn’t take much of a fateful twist for the device to suddenly not function – either partially or entirely. Historically, when such inexpensive, mass distributed devices appear, and their novelty wears off, so does their manufacturer’s warranty. With so many components, an independent repair shop may become the only option to get that QWERTY into revealing itself again. Fixing whatever isn’t functioning reasonably and in a timely manner will become a Twist owner’s top priority.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

While American cell phone manufacturers have reluctantly begun to voluntarily release emission levels on specific phones, it’s still a daunting task to determine which phone is the healthiest of all, or even if the phone you own is relatively safe, safer, or safest. It would be nice if U.S. laws required cell phone manufacturers to include radiation information on their printed materials and advertising, but they don’t – and probably won’t anytime soon.

Cell phones, PDAs, and Smartphones, as a generic species of electronic device, do raise health concerns – such as the risk of cancer due to exposure to radiation. Recent studies have found significant increases in salivary gland and brain tumors in consumers using cell phones, especially over long periods such as a decade or more. Excessive use of radiation-emitting devices, such as cell phones (but not limited to cell phones) pose special dangers to children because their skin is softer and their skulls less developed – and less able to protect their younger brains from excessive radiation. A child’s brain can absorb up to twice as much radiation as an adult’s brain. Commercial interests involved with the manufacture and distribution of cell phones and similar electronic devices – perhaps the most lucrative commercial enterprise geared to consumers in decades — don’t wish to “rock the boat” with more conclusive studies. The very idea that the ubiquitous cell phone might pose health risks is controversial, especially to capitalists – somewhat in the way that Global Warming was just a few years ago.

But while American industry and regulators are quite passive when it comes to these touchy topics, governments in the UK, France, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, and Israel have cautioned their citizens against excessive cell phone use, especially by children. As far as radiation emitters, the worst offenders are manufactured by Motorola and distributed by Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular. Among ten phones that emit the most radiation, half are Motorola phones, two are T-Mobile, two are Blackberries, and the odd phone out is a Kyocera Jax distributed by Virgin Mobile. Another Motorola model, the RAZR V8 distributed by Cellular ONE, ranks among the safest phones, oddly enough. Except for that RAZR model, five of the six safest phones are various models produced by Samsung.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Solomobi makes them. The electronic gadget is called the Cool8800C and it’s a mix of cell phone gaming and transformer, a pretty smart machine made smarter theoretically when it’s combined with a way to play Nintendo games via dual sim cards. This foldable PlayStation Portable comes complete with a d-pad, and does everything it’s hawked to do – read E-books, play its FM radio or an inserted MP3 or MP4, when it’s functioning. The problem is it’s so cheaply made; the “C” only works to a certain extent when it does function. But while NES games are mentioned, no titles ever appear or even information to find titles should they miraculously turn up. This device ‘made and marketed in China’ doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. What “functioning” of the Cool8800C really implies is a slow page-turning for reading E-books that can drive users to distraction, an FM buzzing that emits fuzzy sound in a radius of about six feet from the source and no further, MP3 or MP4 recordings that come out sounding like Alvin and the Chipmunks rescued from pop music antiquity land, and if a user ever tries to learn what to do from the manufacturer, a company called Solomobi, they are out of luck unless they speak a hybrid strain of Mandarin & Cantonese Chinese quite fluently.

Enter CPR. Imagine a scenario when a customer saunters into one of our independent repair outlets, and drops a malfunctioning Cool one, an 8800C, on the counter. “Can you make it work?” the owner of the peculiar little device might ask in a very plaintive tone.

“Sure, I’ll crack it open,” our intrepid and expert service technician might offer bravely. There is no swagger but we will try, as a song from “The Impossible Dream” blends with a selection from “The Miracle Worker” on the thing’s tiny FM radio.

The next day the customer returns to CPR. “Well, is my Cool8800C working again?” he asks, still sounding as plaintive as ever.

“I have good news,” our expert technician says, “Yes, it’s functioning as well as it ever did.” He turns it on like you would begin playing a Nintendo game back in 1978. Strains of music begin emanating. What is heard if you listen very closely is the high-pitched squeals of chipmunks. The customer smiles slowly, satisfied, a bit like the Mona Lisa.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It wasn’t long ago when the first iPod Nano knockoffs were brought naked into our unsuspecting repair shops, one after the other. They came from China, maybe Taiwan, maybe the mainland. Who actually manufactured them and sold them to gullible but thrifty Americans in the United States is anybody’s guess. One prominent distributor being mentioned was a bizarro referred to only cryptically as ‘Nanohead.’ He looked a little like ‘Eraserhead’ from that classic film of the same name, circa 1980, but this is innuendo, since no CPR employee has ever actually seen him.

An iPod Nano is constructed with several capacities, but the worst of the Nano nonos are these: 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB. Each is ugly as sine, as in critical function, a gadget reeking of cheap construction with little attention paid to detail. On the iPod Nano’s dial, this knockoff is made to resemble a genuine Apple, one suspects, until one of CPR’s observant technicians happened to notice that instead of “Menu,” a Nano customer has to settle for an “M,” while the gadget’s “play” button is in the center of the dial, gazing back at you like a Cyclops arrived fresh from the junker heaps in Hades. Greek mythology aside, volume is controlled at the dial’s bottom, why, no one really knows, unless it has something to do with a spanking. With that instruction in mind, sometimes a CPR technician’s well-placed little tap made the Nano “M” hum again.

Another fake iPod got their start as part of a U.S. government giveaway program. A group called “Voice for Humanity” began passing out customized digital audio players that looked like the trendy iPods, only they were pink—the hue having something to do with the gadgets intended as literacy tools for Afghan women inhabiting remote villages. Several of these “pinkies,” as they came to be called by our clever service technicians always at the ready, made their way through the doors of selected CPR storefronts.

We were as adept at fixing these as we’d been at repairing the Nanos, even if our service technicians instinctively recoiled from their litany of National Public Radio-like sounds, primarily public service messages on topics including human rights, women’s rights, Afghanistan’s elections, and reproductive health, in other words – what went on under the burka. Fortunately, these too were relatively easy to fix.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Cell phone gaming and transformers were a marriage that was bound to happen, sooner or later. One smart electronic gadget is morphing into another. This Cool8800C, a Nokia Smart Phone knockoff, is the newest techno-entry from Solomobi, a Chinese manufacturer and distributor of mobile phones. The thinga-gizmo is delicate, in the sense of cardboard, because it opens up into a PlayStation portable mode, complete with a d-pad. But its features are amazing for a hybrid, including trendy innovations that seem increasingly indispensable: E-book reader, FM radio, MP3/MP4, and an attractive LCD screen. When it works, the E-book reader is a real page-turner, the FM radio speakers are tiny but can be clearly heard up to six feet from their source, MP3 recordings sound tinny but are impressive considering that we’re still in the midst of the War on Terror and can’t be greedy, MP4 recordings are fainter but still barely audible– and that’s a good thing — and the embedded LCD screen comes in several flavors, including tutti-fruity.

But this level of performance can’t always be depended upon with the Cool8800C. Even the LCD screens can lose their luster when the knockoff is knocked around a bit. Other features of the thingee are even more impressive. NES games, also described as “old school” Nintendo, are mentioned, although titles don’t appear and there’s no clue about how to actually access them during “the best of times,” as Dickens might have said.

This hybrid contraption is a heck of a lot better than any Sony-made genuine PSP phone, especially when you consider that Sony does Skype which doesn’t really count. It’s true that this “C” thing barely functions when you look at it from a naysayer’s vantage, but what is really worrisome from Pollyanna’s perspective is what happens if your treasured little knockoff (still selling at $140.00)crashes completely?

The independent cell phone repair shops are the only place you can dare bring it to, when the unthinkable happens. Soon enough, your Cool8800C will be nifty again, and you’ll be able to turn the pages of any E-book of your choice. You’ll be so engrossed in the text by then that you won’t want to do anything else.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

You might have already heard about the “iPods for Democracy” program, a distribution of iPod knockoffs as some kind of goodwill propaganda effort sponsored by an American organization called Voice for Humanity. This bellicose-related fit of mind flu is ostensibly a showcase for American idealism, a benevolence dubiously demonstrated on the backs of angry donkeys and Arabian horses trekking through isolated regions of rural Afghanistan bearing pink iPods as gifts to curious Afghan women eager to leap burka-first into the twenty-first century. This supposedly invaluable stepping stone toward literacy is genuinely gender-conscious; being pink, but otherwise only resembles a real iPod. Aid workers dutifully distributed 65,800 of these customized digital audio recorders, which cost $50.00 each – an iPod knockoff manufactured in China and loaded with public service messages on topics such as human rights, women’s rights, Afghanistan’s election process, and reproductive health.

Incredibly, dozens of these have been turning up lately broken in various ways, sometimes brought in by family members of Afghans now living in the United States, especially to independent repair shops specializing in cell phones, and electronic gadgets, including pseudo-iPods. A few were turned in with bullet holes lodged in their cheaply-assembled LCD screens. Perhaps ill-advised gifts in the first place, being remote Afghan villages, technicians at a number of independent shops have described the little pink gadgets being recycled as “scary” and very difficult to repair. “I’m not sure what they’re supposed to contain,” admits one less than impressed expert service technician who was soon seeing pink.

From the island of Taiwan, iPod knockoffs have been flying off the shelves fast enough to prompt repeated warnings from Apple. These Chinese substitutes can cost as little as a third of a genuine Apple, and come in various storage capacities from 512 MB up to 2 GB. These knockoffs look like the real Macintosh except for a less clearly delineated “menu” and have a play button in the center of the dial that is typically the first component to break. “I hate those things too,” said one service technician working at an independent repair shop who refused to be identified.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

CPR is fixing most anything these days. I-phones, Blackberries, Kindles, Palm pre, 3G, laptops & notebooks, it doesn’t seem to matter what it is. Their expert technicians used to just fix cell phones cheaply and quickly, but although CPR still fixes “at least several” of those communicating contraptions unknown to the Founding Fathers despite what Sarah Palin might say, and cell phone repair is still what they’re best known for, this trendsetting independent national chain of individually-franchised repair shops has become much more versatile. Since the realm of the I-touch has been breached by CPR’s fix-it gurus, anything seems possible, even engaging in a bit of speculative extrapolation.

Rumor has it that something made by Apple that looks nothing like a breadbox (if one were to guess) but might well resemble a Kindle in that it’s virtually certain to be a 9.7-inch diagonal, and that it will boast a touchscreen display computer tablet as it comes down from the R & D mountain in time for Halloween and that retail frenzy season otherwise known as Christmas – will become available by the millions. Assuming that this newest denizen of the mobile internet world will be reasonably priced (guesstimates of $800 for a single unit have been mentioned), this can only mean that the new whatsa-ma-callits, a touchscreen display iPod-like thingee made by Apple, will be widely available well before the dawn of 2010. Permitting yet another leap of faith, and notwithstanding any claims by Apple or its minions of the newest thingee’s indestructibility, or even similar boasts of such incentives singing the praises of extended manufacturer’s warranties, when the glitz wears off and someone is just a wee bit careless, who shall fix them, these newly-treasured computer tablets, when they inevitably break?

Just as the ingenuity of human error knows no bounds, so might the creativity of CPR’s expert technicians finally be challenged. The key word here is might.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

With the sad passing of pop icon Michael Jackson during the waning days of June, it was bound to happen: Evil geeks set loose a computer virus that played on the music superstar’s death.

In fact, at least a baker’s dozen worth of viruses, malware, and spam bearing the subject heading ‘Michael Jackson’ were making the rounds of computers worldwide.

One significant contaminant was posing as an innocuous e-mail under the subject line “Remembering Michael Jackson.” This techno-crawlie was circulating with a worm contained therein. A zip file attachment would latch onto a victim’s hard drive if downloaded. The e-mail, claiming to originate from sarah@michaeljackson.com, indicated that the attached zip contained secret songs and photos of Michael Jackson. But it was only a worm that was up to no good, no good at all.

Whether or not your computer has been “Michael Jacksoned,” you’ve probably picked up vicious viruses at some time in your downloading history. You might even have difficultly when trying to eradicate contaminants messing up your hard drive right now. What can you do about it when your name brand virus protection software package fails, and all else seems to?

You can have a good geek come to your computer to clean it up, at outrageous “house call” rates. You can take it in to a computer retail store where you got it, lock, stock, and hard drive – with all of the hassle and expense potentially entailed. Or you can take it down to CPR – especially your laptop or notebook – the same place where you got your cell phone and your Blackberry and your iPod fixed so cheaply and quickly.

CPR’s expert and experienced technicians are ready for any virus that might be ruining your Internet surfing, rearing its ugly head like a worm bearing fangs. It seems like there’s a new malicious virus or malware catching you unawares just about every week. If it wasn’t Michael Jackson, it might have been something equally trendy just to make you open it … open it … why don’t you open it? Not!

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s only a rumor so far, arriving upon American ears via a Chinese website (Taiwanese). But come October, a splendid thingee might greet consumers as a boon to Halloween. An Apple in some bags of treats may be a leap in mass consumer technology featuring a handheld touchscreen computer, its attractive display less than a ten inch diagonal in size – smaller than most netbooks yet adding an iPod flavor to its ownership experience.

Apple has long hinted that such a tablet will be brought down from its R & D mountain, even if Moses has long been dead and so is Charlton Heston. Apple has never touted a netbook of its own, and to tout one just in time for the 2009 Christmas season would be a coup in itself. The touchy feely among us (of which there are many) would relish such a gadget, as would such denizens of Nerd-vana as Ebook readers and people beginning to get bored with their smartphones. The excited murmurs are predicting a price in the $800 range and sans a physical keyboard or a slider (it might come equipped with a slider) this newest electronic gadget looms as the next new fad impetus destined to slide the mobile internet into a nouveau perceived realm.

The size, precisely 9.7-inch as a diagonal, is probably influenced by the Kindle (which is practically identical as to how big it is, an often-asked question), and due to that product’s demonstrable success, should make the Apple tablet whatever it’s called into a hot item with brisk sales manifested during the buying season when retail counts the most.

But this Apple touchscreen to be, like anything sold by the millions, is bound to fail even before the novelty of its existence wears off. What kinds of warranties will Apple or distributors offer, and how useful will these be? It will be a rather expensive item to break, and certainly treasured by many leaving Nerd-vana. Will it be repairable at places that once fixed cell phones and iPods and Blackberries – like independent repair shops when all else fails?

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The bad geeks couldn’t even spare the already tarnished memory of pop superstar Michael Jackson within days of his tragic demise. They had to create a worm piggybacking in an email that lured the unsuspecting into a treacherous Moonwalk when opened. The bad geeks have no shame.

The e-mail in question with the innocuous-sounding subject line “Remembering Michael Jackson” contained a corrupted zip file spread by USB memory sticks. Claiming to originate from sarah@michaeljackson.com, its wormy zip was supposed to contain secret songs and photos of the dead but bigger-than-life legend, but instead it was primed to infect your hard drive, and any others that you contacted with the efficiency of a Ponzi scheme.

Michael Jackson is just the tip of the gravestone. While spyware is on the wane, the new computer mal-boy of choice for evil geeks is the deceptive Trojans, no nicer now than they were in the time of Troy when Helen was still around. A Trojan used to be something else, an article worn that offered protection. Those safeguards are gone, only to be replaced by fake antivirus protections, counterfeit creations like MDW.

What to do? Where do you go to eradicate the lying software once it’s mistakenly loaded onto your ‘puter? An unlikely destination is the independent repair shop, the same place where you went to fix your iPod, Blackberry so cheaply and quickly you can take your notebook or your laptop. Increasingly as a sign of the times, these convenient places are becoming the ‘in’ place to find out what condition your condition is in – at least when it comes to infiltrators messing up your hard drive because some bad geek wants to have a little malicious fun at your expense. Don’t get mad, get even. Get rid of that MDW before it has a chance to cause too much hullaballoo.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

They break down so often that if it was anything more expendable, we’d abandon the computer age en masse. But we need them, like a co-dependency that won’t quit. Still, the computers crash and crash so much that you get the urge to mash and mash – and they’re not potatoes. What kind of computers will CPR fix? Any brand of laptop or desktop is doable. Got a virus or too much spam? Worried about hackers or spyware? Is your broadband like the freeway at rush hour, clogged and mired so you can’t get wired? We can repair your ‘puter so that it’s cuter. Can’t access your email or Twitter? Bring it over to CPR and cease your titter.

It was inevitable that we learned about software and hard drives and modems. Got Windows on your PC or Final Cut Pro on your Mac? It doesn’t matter. We can fix it without much adieu for you, just for you.

Where that familiar smile on your FaceBook? What, you can’t access it? The Internet is down. You can’t even get WORD to work. Your favorites are being neglected now that you’ve crashed? Your passwords and URLs are worthless suddenly, don’t you know? CPR does computers now. We can fix ’em. Yes we can. Our expert technicians are compulsive geeks when it comes to making your desktop seek, especially on Google but on other search engines too.

Says Stanley L. Succotash who was a vegetable before he started fixing computers for CPR, “I am genuinely curious about what ails your ‘puter,” he asserts with his distinctive Japanese brogue. “I like to poke around their innards. I’d do it for free if CPR didn’t pay me. It’s a compulsion, like eating gravy with turkey on Thanksgiving. I can’t help it. I fix computers for CPR. That’s my life purpose. I’ve found my religion.”

Says Stanley’s brother Seth P. Succotash, who also fixes computers for CPR, “He ain’t heavy. He’s my brother.” Of course we already knew that.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

A friend of mine recently had his cell phone stolen. “It was worse than losing my wallet,” he moaned. “I was devastated,” he said, and the Isle of Despair drifted into mind. With devices such as the Nokia N97, the Palm Pre, and the iPhone 3G s now on the scene, it’s easy to guess why. “I had all my phone numbers on my cell phone,” my friend moaned, shedding real tears instead of the Croc kind. Many users of these devices store not just phone numbers, but address and other contact information on their mobile handsets. Information such as digital photos, videos, calendars, and music downloads of their fave tunes. Getting one stolen brings up other concerns – such as a user’s personal information being used for fraudulent means. It’s so much easier if you just happen to get your phone wet, so it drowns on you, and can’t be salvaged, can it?

Not so fast if there’s a CPR around. Like a drowning person, CPR can and will resuscitate your drenched and soggy not-so-smart anymore phone. While most independent repair shops wouldn’t even consider the wet ones, CPR will carefully investigate how to make it function again, troubleshooting through the damp device’s drizzly recesses no matter if it went down into the depths of Lake Michigan or into the shallow end of an Olympic-sized oval in the backyard of your dearest billionaire buddy. “It will work again, I know it will,” asserts CPR expert technician Sam G. Soggy, a specialist in all gadgets wet. For Sam, the flask of hopefulness is always half full.

But don’t go and lose it again after Sam dries it out and restores your smart phone’s intricate mechanisms. Losing it can lead to Hari Kari, beriberi (due to a weakened immune system from worrying where you lost it) and willy-nilly. If you happen to have it stolen, that can’t be helped, unless you chain it to your right leg. If you happen to be guilty of bedwetting and you’ve taken it to bed with you and it somehow gets wet, but at least it’s not stolen, you know what to do. Take it to CPR a little voice in your dream says, CPR …CPR.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It sold out within an hour. Still, the numbers selling out were small, maybe 50 or 60 in stock — just enough to feed smaller skeletal crowds with Palm on their minds, nothing like the iPhone mania. Sprint Nextel itself seems vestigial compared to the giant it was when Sprint was a byword for telecommunication. Now Sprint’s days selling the Palm Pre are numbered, less than 200, until January 10, 2010, when Verizon becomes the exclusive vendor. They’re a new smart phone touted by Palm groupies everywhere, but is this commotion just a conniption?

You could be the first octogenarian on your block to buy a Pre with its nouveau WebOS, but Palm Inc. is dying, and the wireless carrier Sprint is no longer so wired.

Palm Pilot users are like devotees to Marihesh Mahaha Yoga, but will they have the last laugh? Many do prefer a QWERTY keyboard to an iPhone’s touchscreen. It’s relatively cheap too. Sprint sells the Palm Pre for $200 after a $100 mail-in rebate, plus a two-year service agreement which is better than you can get now with most American-made cars.

Selling out might be deceptive to speak about. Sprint wouldn’t say how many units were available nationwide, certainly not thousands at any one outlet, probably not even hundreds. The Pre is great for sorting through emails using a common interface – the secrets of Yahoo, Google, revealed by this smart phone with a QWERTY. The octogenarian might sync his Pre to iTunes — there’s no law against it — and he was heard saying, “I love iTunes,” to his granddaughter, a young woman wearing a cowboy hat from Nevada who prefers Blackberries and calls them fruity. But the Sprint deal will expire sooner rather than later and Verizon will bound onto the scene, with its stability for such issues as service and maintenance, although an Indy repair shop for cell phones might be a better answer for the Sprinters in the interim. Is it Palm pre Sunday yet?

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s the newest in smart phones, and it’s bound to sell better than its predecessor, the iPhone 3G. This one is hyped with the letter “s” which stands for speed, twice as fast. But it looks almost identical to a ‘regular’ iPhone 3G and does twice as fast mean much when it comes to these gadgets? Has it been hyped by Apple? Has this Apple fallen from the tree like the sound of one hand clapping?

It does process tasks twice as fast, with data speeds increased to 7.2Mbps HSDPA (which is nowhere to be found in Pennsylvania, I checked). The newest iPhone’s camera has been upgraded to a 3 mega-pixel unit with tap-to-auto focus and auto white balance. The tiny camera even supports 30fps VGA video recording with editing features so users can create their own real-time docs. Other features with the newest iPhone 3G include a built-in compass, Nike+ support, and its own itty-bitty battery that gives you 5 hours of 3G talk time and 9 hours of WiFi use for those absurd moments of messing around time in an Internet café of your choice. You get a voice control interface with the 3G s that allows you to make calls or even control iTunes, and your gadget’s “fingerprint-resistant oleo phobic coating” will make it seem like you never touched it even if you’re afraid to. 3D graphics and an associated display, so let your games begin …

The newest smart phone boasts cut-copy-paste just like the iPhone 2.0 never had, even though you craved it, you know you did. Now you can paste words and photos, even between applications, like a pasty-faced fool. MMS capability means that you don’t have to rely on email alone to text messages or snapshots. Lose your 3G s? The thing has ‘Find my iPhone.” Probably a small nuclear explosion in your neighborhood will alert you to where it’s hiding, I don’t know. This feature also allows you to remotely erase all data from lost or stolen iPhones, and then reload the information using iTunes if your device is rediscovered.

So what’s not to like? It’s hyped as God in a gadget, but is it really supernatural? Errr, no, not really. Everything on the iPhone 3G s can be found on most smart phones available in the market – Nokia, Blackberry, HTCs and Palmtops, for instance, even come with more features in some cases. It’s a great music phone, but it doesn’t even come in chartreuse. It’s common, like a duck among geese, or a mouse among rats, or a pigeon among birds.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

CPR’s trained technicians hail from the four corners of the world. As children, they dreamt of nothing else except repairing cell phones and a myriad of electronic devices. Bobby’s tale is typical. When Bobby BestRepairGuyEver was six years old, he found his first cell phone on the street outside his beige row house in an unspecified part of town. “It was blue,” he says when asked or poked, “and I fell in love with it. But it didn’t work at first.” Little Bobby learned to use a screwdriver in ways unimagined by other little boys inhabiting his desolate environs. Other little boys brought home kittens or puppies and learned to pet them after much practice. Bobby BestRepairGuyEver, however, disdained animals that failed to beep or emit electronic sounds. “My blue cell phone was just like my pet,” he says, “until there came a day when just staring at it for five or six hours wasn’t enough.” Acting on some impulse as yet unexplained, Bobby began poking and prodding with his screwdriver, also a beloved pet in his infantile mind. “I opened my blue cell up,” he remembers, “like I was dissecting something alive. I heard it hum, and then beep.” Soon his cell phone was working just fine. “I called Canada one day, and then a friend of mine in Chicago. Even the primitive LCD screen was working again.”

Bobby fits in perfectly at CPR. “Like most of our trained technicians, he can fix anything,” asserts an admiring colleague. “I’ve seen Bobby undo liquid damage, fix an iPhone that was stepped on by a radio celebrity, repair cracks in LCDs, even big ones, and repair broken phones that were shattered, dropped, or cruelly silenced like his beloved blue phone from boyhood once was. He can mend phones broken in halves or even thirds, and do this with a smile.”

Another colleague is more direct. “Bobby, and most of our trained technicians at CPR, usually feel compelled to fix anything broken that comes into contact with their nimble fingers. Most amazing, they’re so fast. Bobby prides himself on repairing cell phones and electronic devices while customers wait, and sometimes they don’t even have to wait long.”

Says Bobby, “Where’s my blue cell phone? Did somebody hide it again? C’mon you guys. Where is it?”

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

CPR announces “The Sale.” Cell phones that some might refer to as “used,” or “pre-owned,” others might call “refurbished.” CPR’s trained technicians are experts at performing the precise unlocking modifications necessary to make a cell phone work for you in the same way that it once worked for its previous owner, with every one of its touted features intact. Refurbishing a cell phone is not a whole lot different from refurbishing anything else of value, and it can often be considered a little more time consuming or involved as an extensive repair. A phone might have been on its last leg. Instead of being on the way to the nearest landfill, it lives again to become your communicator. What could be sweeter than that?

But it gets better. CPR offers a 90-day warranty on any unlocked or refurbished cell phone. If it were to fail within that 90-day interim, you are not out of luck as you would likely be when dealing with a manufacturer. We’d fix it, as if it were a brand new unit.

In a word, another sweetening agent for CPR customers interested in purchasing refurbished or unlocked phones is price. We do have set prices for previously owned models, but we like to think that any reasonable offer will be considered. Imagine all the features you’d come to expect and that would be available for you during the unit’s “second run,” what could be more thrifty than that?

It gets still better. We live in an age when our landfills are filling up, often with gadgets like cell phones. An environmental catastrophe beckons like the Grim Reaper high on the polluting fumes contributing to Global Warming. If you decide not to buy yet another new cell phone, and instead content yourself with a refurbished or unlocked model fresh from the trained technicians at CPR, you’re helping the environment. Once again, what could be sweeter than that?

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It doesn’t cost as much. It’s available in so many places that it’s said to be ubiquitous. But like runners-up everywhere, according to First Quarter 2009 sales statistics, the iPhone is now in second place. How do you like those apples, Apple? Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve is officially the most popular U.S. smartphone.

The smartphone list of bestsellers was primarily BlackBerry territory, as several types of BlackBerry sets made the list. Hip Hooray for RIM, of course, but since the iPhone is only available from a single source (AT &T), is it surprising that Apple’s pride and joy has suddenly morphed into an also-ran? Every major carrier makes BlackBerry’s devices ubiquitous, but if that’s the case, why is it still a race? Why has it taken this long for the Curve to emerge as numero uno?

The picture is in constant flux. June 2009 is virtually certain to introduce some brand-new Apple hardware, even as BlackBerry’s devices are being continually updated since the release of the iPhone 3G in 2008. The Curve’s current lofty stature might soon be as relevant as the hula hoop’s place as a child’s toy.
Smack in the middle of the list is T-Mobile’s G1, the only smartphone to employ Google technology, at least in the sense of an operating system. If Google were to be sparked in some unseen manner, sales of the G1 could leapfrog over all the berries, whether sweet or not.

More likely will be a resurgence of Apple’s iPhone during the summer, despite but not because of their single-offering business model. A new less expensive iPhone introduced with a big league marketing push would mean not only a return to #1, but if the platform finally gets stretched beyond the captive AT&T, RIM might be pulling a Satchel Paige before long – Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you! That something might be a more ubiquitous iPhone that might even threaten to lap the field. But these ranking games can prove fickle.

Many U.S. rural areas are without AT&T service because networks are yet to be built. Many consumers really want iPhones, but feel obliged to settle for BlackBerries. When that happens, even the currently exalted Curve is less than sweet.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The landfills are filling. It was bound to happen eventually. In a disposable society, it’s become second nature to just throw things out.

What gets thrown out more and more often are electronic machines like computers, personal digital assistants, and increasingly, cell phones. With billions of cell phones accumulating in trash bins, discarded like so much flotsam, an apocalyptic environmental disaster is just waiting to happen. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Cell phones can be recycled.

Even the Environmental Protection Agency has leaped onto the recycling bandwagon in 2008. Last year’s EPA initiative, “Recycle Your Cell Phone, It’s an Easy Call” was joined by Big Corporate in the form of AT &T, Best Buy, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Office Depot, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless.

Public service announcements heralded the campaign in print, touting environmental, social, and convenient benefits entailed with recycling cell phones. Downloadable podcasts discussed how and why in technical terms. Special cell phone collection events were hosted. Did I mention that cell phone recycling is usually free? Some programs even bought cell phones back from consumers so that they could be recycled. Dropping them off or mailing them in was made easy.

But now it’s 2009. The Bush Era is over; enter Obama. Is the Easy Call campaign still in the forefront of your mind? If it isn’t, it should be. Cell phones are still filling landfills at an alarming rate. Cell phones are made from precious metals, copper, and plastics – all of which require energy to mine or manufacture. They’re not just a gift from Oz, simply appearing in reality and disappearing when you throw them out.

Even if a government campaign isn’t in full swing in your area, there are plenty of avenues for recycling your cell phones. Donate them to a charity of your choice while helping the charity earn recycling dollars. Manufacturers and independent retail shops will accept them for refurbishing, if not always for recycling. If you wish to recycle, an independent repair shop will usually know the best way to do it. You can go green. You just have to want to do so.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

In the days of the not-so-wild Midwest, when Chicago was first becoming a metro full of cell phones in need of a fix, once upon a time when the companies who made them still had maintenance plans but didn’t always honor them, a little business that could and would, was born, not in a manger, but in a building that became known as the place to take your cell phone when it breaks. “I dropped my Nextel, and its LCD, primitive as it was, cracked like a tiny windshield,” remembered Eighties Geezer, who still has memories these days but is no longer a fresh bright twenty-something. “I took it to CPR for its resuscitation,” he pronounced slowly in articulate English during his informative interview, “their first and only shop existing at the time.”

He recalls little else from those bygone days of Reaganomics and Seventh Heaven.

Pinky Pearl White recalls foggy days in winters now distant when getting your cell phone repaired was a little like snowshoeing through Halstead with no direction home, to put it in Dylanesque terms. “The first CPR shop was the little shop where they fixed horrors, and it was like an oasis shimmering in the faded light of a Cyclops car with a headlight missing. I fixed a cell phone there, I do believe, my purple one that was shaped like a grape, only it was crushed.” Pinky is a prose writer, talented as a computer’s mouse, given to long rhapsodies on his cell phone of choice in those bygone days, and he later took successive electronic devices to other CPR locations in the Chicagoland metro, as the business grew and grew, mushrooming throughout the nation called America, until more than 20 locations had sprouted in the garden that eventually became Obama’s, as the city once had seemed his but a little while ago.

Now CPR is the best and brightest name in the industry, and their shops repair G1 phones & Blackberries and Playstation versions that some would covet, along with water damaged devices, a species that competing independent repair outlets recoil from in horror. With billions of these gadgets owned by almost anyone, an opportunity to become part of a competent authorized repair center for a $75K minimum means that time is of the essence before the entry window slams shut, perhaps on your cell phone, perhaps on your fingers. It’s up to you.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

CPR began when the cell phone repair industry was in its infancy, back when it was almost impossible to find an Indy place to repair an ailing cell phone. Dissatisfaction with cell phone manufacturers had yet to crest, or even surge, and if you couldn’t cajole your manufacturer to fix your broken cell phone, you had no choice; it was time to buy a new one. If you’d grown attached to the one you had and even given it a name like “Perky,” it was too bad. You’d kiss it twice with tears in your eyes and then toss it into the nearest bin.

Those days are gone, like Little Mouse on the Prairie or Stanford and Son. The good old days weren’t really that good when it came to cell phones and similar electronic gadgetry that began springing up. Was that a Y-Pod I once owned that a dog peed on and I had to throw out because it was suddenly gross and sticky and incidentally, no longer worked? Memories can be hazy, like halcyon summer days. It was also expensive to keep throwing these things out and buying new ones.

But along came CPR, like a fresh breeze. Pretty soon they developed a rep, as they say on the streets of Chicago, for fixing cell phones that manufacturers loathed touching after they’d closed the sale when you bought the thing. CPR became the most widely known and respected brand name in the Cell Phone Repair industry. Even their logo was trademarked by USPTO, where patents come from, don’t you know?

Eventually CPR started fixing every electronic whiz-i-mi-gig that could break, from IPods to Xboxes, and their business took off, like Wii.

Now for a start-up minimum of $75K you can get in on the ground floor. Like the tail of the tiger, you can grab the phenomenon of cell phone and electronic whiz-i-mi-gig repair. Think about it. It’s an industry with massive demand. One in two human beings on the planet are estimated to own a cell phone, and it’s rumored that other whiz-i-mi-gigs also sell in tremendous volume. Such electronic marvels have become ubiquitous, but they break. Manufacturers seldom fix them these days; in fact, in today’s recession, fixing something old and borrowed or blue, is a whole lot better than buying something new.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

The machine was tiny enough. The “pod” preceded by some no-longer-mass-marketed universally popular letter contained an LCD screen that would be large enough for an ant’s eye view if only it opened its compound peepers really wide. But inside the LCD was something more miniature still, something that couldn’t be plucked out even with the most delicate of tweezers. It was my X-pod. I wondered why I had purchased it in the job lot store, a warehouse of all sorts of odds and ends. Why didn’t my X-pod work? I wanted to dig out the microscopic battery with my clumsy fingers, but knew I wouldn’t dare.

I knew there were independent shops that repaired electronic things such as my X-pod, and could dig out the batteries inside, while teaching them to hum. I made a dash for the nearest cell phone repair shop, and then another, and then another. I saw the heads of clerks and desk attendants shake back and forth like negative bobble heads; a supposed technician said that he wasn’t “qualified” to open even a lowly X-pod’s case. “I can’t. It’s internal,” the guy with the dyed orange hair muttered, as if mouthing a pearl of wisdom from his foolish gob. I was beginning to grow weary of walking block after block, like a darn Quixote in search of a chicken’s foot in a potpie. “You will need to find a trained and qualified technician to do that,” said a cowardly technician with a lion-like mane who protested when I asserted that he was probably trained. “Do you want me to ruin your battery?” he finally said, “or maybe lose it on you?” This brought to mind a contact lens I’d once lost in a restroom at the airport, down one of those filthy sinks.

I kept walking, not daring to look back, as if somebody stupid might be gaining on me. Finally, I came to a storefront that gave me a tingle, and it wasn’t Jimmy. My heart started pumping faster as if it had just been resuscitated in a cardio-pulmonary manner. I’d never been to Utah, but something told me, perhaps a tiny voice inside the battery, that this was indeed the place. I walked in, confident. “Do you do batteries?”

“I’m a trained and qualified technician,” the dark-haired geeky guy said, “Let me see it. Yes I can.”

“It’s internal,” I warned him.

“Duh,” he said.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Thirty years ago, a cell phone was something out of Jules Verne. Portable telephones were the newest thing. It was considered amazing when you could carry the entire phone with you to a different room, but if you dared bring it out of doors, weaker signals had a tendency to break up in the manner of transistor radios, another popular hand-held device that truly was portable.

By 1985, transistor radios were virtually obsolete. In the 1960s and early 1970s, these Marconi-spawned gadgets were ubiquitous as the children, often male baseball addicts, who carried them around everywhere except perhaps in the shower, which might have been shocking to some.

These days, cell phones along with their electronic contemporaries and offspring – IPods and IPhone, Blackberries and Xboxes, Playstation incarnations and the versatile Wii, along with their laptop computerized cousins — although many of these devices possess LCD screens which resemble miniature desktop flat screen computer monitors – have become as ubiquitous as transistor radios once were, perhaps much more so. The irony is that on many of these devices, including cell phones, a user can not only watch an entire baseball game of their choice live, but bring up a variety of multimedia visual treats as they do so – baseball stats of their favorite players or teams, historical footage and documentaries, you name it, and baseball is only the tip of the interactive Wii. As for the ubiquitous cell phone, in some cases people too impoverished to own a pair of shoes own a cheap cell phone, and yet the logical entrepreneurial step of franchising cell phone repair businesses is not ubiquitous. But one gets the impression it will be soon. One company with more than 20 locations around the U.S. has already established a presence, initiated when they were merely a cell phone repair business. Their name, like a catchy tagline, implies an urgency that appears synonymous with cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, which is precisely what they do with your ailing cell phone, or any of the other electronic wizardries previously mentioned. Their franchises can be had for a modest investment of under $100,000. A German cell phone repair company and one in Australia appear to be following suit along similar lines. A smaller American company also offers cell phone repair franchises at less than $50,000, but sans an established presence in the industry, perhaps you get what you pay for. Still, in an industry with massive demand largely due to manufacturers shirking any maintenance responsibilities to those minions of communications gadgetry that they’ve spawned, cell phone repair franchising opportunities aren’t yet ubiquitous, and that is surprising, akin to a transistor radio cradled to a boy’s ear in the shower a generation or more ago, perhaps even shocking.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Repairs for game systems like the Nintendo Wii or DS Lite, the Sony PSP or Playstation 2 or 3, or Microsoft’s Xbox original or 360, used to be performed by manufacturers while the unit was under warranty or not. It was part of the perks for customers after they’d purchased a popular toy that was dancing off the shelves. Full support implied repairing the thing when it broke. While America’s economy has slipped into some kind of unpredictable netherland (we’re not talking Holland here), incentives to fix the games when they break even while they are under warranty has become less attractive to the giant companies charged with the making of such coveted “toys.”

Thankfully, CPR is picking up the slack. Certified and expert technicians known for stressing customer service are doing more and more to fix the games. When your Xbox original starts doing those distressing DREs, or three flashing red lights make your 360 resemble a Trojan horse in a miniature Doomsday scenario, a CPR technician can make it work again.

When your Sony PSP goes silent, ceasing to produce any reassuring sound, power, or video, and you begin to think you’re suddenly a recycled Tommy from the Who’s now ancient rock opera, deaf, dumb, and blind, a CPR technician can make you feel alive again, or at least fix your game console.

When your Nintendo Wii won’t load its disc, and you are so frustrated you’re about to scream like a Banshee, a CPR expert technician can restore that feeling of all being right with the world – at least as far as your treasured Wii is concerned.

CPR is quick to the joystick, too: Sometimes your beloved game can be repaired while you wait. Even if it can’t, once it is fixed in a timely fashion, it’s under CPR warranty. That should bring some cheer back into your life, even if next Christmas is a whole solstice away.

To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It was only a matter of time before CPR moved into the game system repair niche. Like any electronic contrivance these days, manufacturers are growing increasingly reluctant to repair these expensive “toys” – especially once their warranties expire. Microsoft has recently (as of March 2nd) discontinued repair service for original Xboxes whose warranties have expired. In the cases of such consoles as the popular Nintendo Wii, or Sony products such as their PSP or their Playstation 2 & 3, the moans of distressed and frustrated customers grow ever louder. What can go wrong with these games touted by shrill marketing voices as the “next generation” of intricate video games? The variety of complaints is like a cornucopia. The Xboxes often pain their owners with DREs, an inability to read a game or games within the assembled configuration. Xboxes, whether the original models or the Xbox 360, can freeze or overheat, or suddenly lose sound, power, or video. Error messages and non-responsive controllers are common complaints, as are colorful troubles with the red lights – depending on which is flashing possibly indicating whether or not your unit’s destination should be the nearest landfill. Sony PSP consoles sometimes need a full shell replacement. A Playstation 2 can make a clicking or grinding noise that mimics the mating call of the giant earwig. The disc on your Playstation 3 might not load or eject. Your Nintendo DS Lite might have broken hinges.

Whatever the problem that your game system might be having, a friendly & certified expert CPR technician can provide a solution that you won’t have to wait an eternity for. Chances are your game can be fixed, no matter what the issue might be. CPR provides warranty on all game system repairs. If the problem is simple enough, a technician might even be able to fix the contrivance while you wait. Try asking a manufacturer to do that.

To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Microsoft’s recent decision to discontinue repairs for original Xboxes no longer under warranty is merely a continuation of a trend. In fact, many customers owning Xbox consoles had already taken their business elsewhere, preferring to seek out independent repair shops when their consoles began to fail – even while their units remained under warranty. There are several reasons for this. In the case of the Xbox, customers often ended up dissatisfied with manufacturer repairs, service, or combinations thereof that were performed. This unfortunate situation has become emblematic of an industry that is willing to sacrifice long term customer satisfaction in favor of short term high volume sales of their premium ticket consoles. In fact, many industry insiders argue that game system repairs should properly be delegated to independent repair shops, because maintenance, service, and repair is certain to dangle over a manufacturer’s profits like the proverbial Damocles sword.

If so, then independent repair shops seem ready and able to fill any “fix-my-game-please” void. Sooner or later, most of these games, intricate circuitry and quality control or not, break. As for Xboxes, these contraptions can become booby trapped with DREs, can suddenly freeze up or overheat, begin incessant “call customer service” warnings even prior to any trouble, or suddenly light up with “red light syndrome” – a techno-plague laden with signal error that can mean anything from general hardware failure (one red light) to the cancer of overheating (two red lights) to the cursed “red ring of death” (three red lights) to the flashing of four red lights – which ironically has the simplest solution – tightening or replacing a loose cable. Sony PSP game consoles and Playstation 2 and 3 repairs are somewhat similar symptomatically, but can show their own quirkiness; such as the mournful grinding wail sometimes heard with a sick Playstation 2 – a sound more agonizing than a toenail being pulled out. “Fix my game please, it’s broken” is becoming a more common refrain, but fortunately certified independent repair shops are there to keep those game consoles working. When your Nintendo Wii won’t let you load or eject that tricky disc, at least there’s somewhere your game can be taken to — if it’s to become “good as new” again – at least for a while.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

On March 2, 2009, Microsoft announced tersely and without compassion that service repairs for its original Xbox video game systems with expired warranties will no longer be available. While still offering “other” technical support; documents and content; maintaining an “upgrade” program; and support for consoles still under warranty, Xbox owners with expired warranties are heretofore out of luck. What, me worry? What can go wrong with an Xbox?

A veritable Murphy’s Law of wrong can go wrong and probably will. Lurking just around the corner of continued use is the dreaded DRE, or disc reading errors, when you learn in a moment of panic that your “games are not reading.” Other “issues” that your once coveted console might have include freezing or overheating, a sudden and inexplicable loss of sound, power, or video (how did that happen?), you keep getting a litany of error messages, you keep getting a “call customer service” message every few seconds (it’s taunting you as if it KNOWS that its warranty has expired), your controller won’t respond, you can’t modify; or, if it’s the Xbox360 you’re pitifully holding in your hand, you’re getting three red lights, also known as the “Three Rings of Death” and this is real, you’re NOT standing in a Tolkein-like mythical land of Mordar.

When one or more of these symptoms of despair begin turning your Xbox into something diseased, a real poxbox, and your warranty has expired, it’s time to start hunting – for an independent repair shop either in close proximity or else a shop with a reliable mailing address. You’ll be pleasantly surprised that many of these shops have access to the parts they need and are staffed by expert technicians, so that maybe, just maybe, your treasured Xbox can be fixed. Goodbye dreaded DRE. Hey, now you’ve got sound — power is back — video has returned — your controller is responding. Once again, all is right with your world, or at least your Xbox.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Nancy’s Blackberry had a cracked screen. She wasn’t sure about how the screen became cracked, but cracked it was; like a naked almond out of its shell. She knew something else about her Blackberry: its manufacturer’s warranty had expired. She had a moment when she almost panicked, but then picked up the phone. She knew who to call: CPR.

“I heard from a loved one twice removed that CPR was the place to take my Blackberry,” she explained, “but can they fix it?”

They could fix it, and would fix it. Nancy received prompt, courteous service that began with a polite question or two about what was wrong with her device, “Its LCD screen is cracked,” she said, but the nice, trained and qualified technician didn’t even ask her how the damage had occurred. “How did you hear about us?” the CPR technician did ask.

She replied confidently, “From a loved one twice removed,” she repeated. Although the CPR professional appeared slightly puzzled by Nancy’s response, he hardly missed a beat. “Oh,” he said, “we can fix your handheld with a replacement screen. It’ll look brand new.”

As she waited in the shop, Nancy observed other walk-in customers getting solutions for their Blackberry issues, as well as service for cell phones and iPods; and about any other device imaginable. Besides several other cracked or broken screens, she overheard one Blackberry-related customer ask about a trackball replacement assembly, and another mention a scroll wheel that wasn’t navigating correctly. Another had been missing keys from a Blackberry keyboard; finally, guess who’d been there all along? It was Nancy’s ex-husband, Nick, asking about his Blackberry’s escape button, perhaps an exchange prompted by unexpectedly encountering his ex-wife Nancy. The professional CPR technician waiting on Nick noticed that the man obviously recognized Nancy, and flashed him a knowing glance. “Yeah, she’s my loved one,” he admitted, “twice removed.”

To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s happened to you, to your loved one, or to someone else you know, but to whom you are relatively indifferent. A Blackberry accident, a mishap causing your trackball to fall out of your Blackberry 8100, 8120, or 8130 Pearl, has made you a saddened consumer, and an even sadder one when you discover that your manufacturer’s warranty has expired. “My trackball,” you scream to anyone within earshot, “is gone!” You feel like you did when your pet lizard died, or when your pet turtle was crushed when someone slammed a door; its shell cracked like your Blackberry’s LCD screen, which unfortunately, you just noticed. A wave of depression assails your senses. You are BUMMED.

If someone calm, cool, and collected is within earshot, they might whisper a sweet something into your nearest ear, “CPR can fix your Blackberry.” The soothing sounds of a solution echo in your consciousness like rain dousing a fire. The voice in your head is authoritative, a low rumbling basso profundo, and the words come into your mind’s ear again. “CPR can fix your Blackberry.”

Indeed they can. CPR’s trained and qualified technicians can fix most Blackberries. A trackball solution is often fairly simple. CPR can have a complete trackball replacement assembly available for you in a wag of a lizard’s tail; trackball, metal retainer, and outer chrome ring will soon make your Blackberry whole again. Suddenly you, or a loved one, or else someone you know but are relatively indifferent about, will have your trackball back. CPR will provide you with a replacement screen, too.

But what if something else befalls your Blackberry? Maybe the rails on your Blackberry Pearl are broken or scratched. A CPR solution might be a chrome side rail replacement set that will make your device look brand new again. How about a battery door latch? “My pet turtle somehow crawled into my Blackberry and now my battery door won’t stay on,” says someone you are acquainted with, but are justifiably envious of because their pet turtle is obviously alive. Can CPR provide them with a replacement door latch assembly for their Blackberry? Quite possibly a courteous and trained professional behind the counter at a CPR franchise can.

To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Each year, more than a million abandoned Blackberry communication devices end up in landfills. “I saw one the other day,” asserts Joe Smoltz, a resources recovery and valued team member employed at a landfill this side of New Jersey. Joe did. Hundreds of abandoned Blackberries may be peeking out of smelly refuse in the state of New Jersey alone. You don’t have to be a leprechaun to find one, although it helps.

The question is, Why do the little contraptions end up there? How do they respond to being abandoned in such a cruel, impersonal manner? Were they programmed for this bleak eventuality before they left the manufacturer? Or perhaps more pertinent, is there another way?

Rather than toss the thing into the garbage so that your Blackberry ends up in the landfill, you can get your device diagnosed just as if it were a human patient at a hospital, or at least a pet at your local vet; and once diagnosed, your Blackberry can be repaired – even if it is out of warranty. Independent repair shops, franchised or chains, or occasionally single stand-alone shops opened by an entrepreneur with a knack for fixing these enterprising little machines, are becoming increasingly convenient options.

Often surprisingly inexpensive, the Repair Shop option may be able to replace your trackball or your LCD screen if it is cracked or broken due to the carelessness of your significant other, or due to the inappropriate intervention of a large South American rodent inhabiting your night table by your bed, perhaps someone inconsiderate let the capybara in? Wasn’t it supposed to be a yard capybara, and not a house capybara? It’s too late now, as it perched on your night table thinking it was a cat, and suddenly you were awakened by a series of odd noises, the most ominous sounds emanating from your now damaged Blackberry. You head into the repair shop, dazed but somehow confident. “My capybara …” The repair person behind the counter is friendly and immediately realizes your predicament. “Screen cracked? Scroll wheel no longer navigating correctly?” he asks. It’s obvious that you’ve come to the right place.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

It’s like a refrain. My blackberry is busted and it won’t work no matter how I jiggle it. When I was a kid, if someone told you about a smashed blackberry you’d be thinking fruity – perhaps worrying about stains that would be difficult to scrub out, or just cleaning up a tiny mess. But look at what a few decades have done. What kind of Blackberry is it? It might be an 8100, 8120, or 8130 Pearl. What’s broken? Has your trackball fallen out of your Blackberry? Have you lost or broken your trackball ring? What about your chrome side rail set for your Blackberry 8100? Are your rails broken or scratched? Has your battery door latch fallen out of your Blackberry? Why won’t your battery door stay on?

Then there are the issues with LCD screens. Is that nifty clear protective lens that covers your LCD cracked or badly scratched? What happened? What did you do to your little contraption? You just need a replacement OEM lens and all your worries will be over.

It gets worse. Other components can get damaged with your Blackberries. Perhaps you’ve had keys falling off your keypad like a case of high-tech eczema. Solution – replace the entire keypad, not just the missing keys. A brand new keypad with exactly the right color scheme will have you typing again in no time.

What if none of the above has happened, but something even more critical has been damaged? Help! I’ve lost my memory card door; I can’t remember where I put it. This kind of amnesia is becoming increasingly typical with the technologically-challenged these days. The solution is easy. Just order an OEM memory card door.

You can even protect your Blackberries from some of the destruction that you’re very likely to put the poor thing through. Personalize and protect your Blackberry with a new skin; skins come in assorted varieties and colors: black, blue, clear, or red. These aren’t exactly epidermis, but are rubberized shell guards; old-fashioned in their way, like the old-style “rubbers” used in bygone days to protect a fine pair of shoes.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Your hand slips and your cell phone falls into a swimming pool, sinking below the surface. You dive in, intent on a cell phone rescue. It ends up being a swan dive, and when you retrieve your wet phone, it’s suddenly a swan song. Your expensive cell phone doesn’t work! Something is damaged in your phone’s inner workings. Is it the phone’s battery, displays, circuitry? An annoying little dot in the display has ominously changed color, indicating that liquid has entered your phone, rendering it inert, but you knew that already. You may not have known that your cell phone’s one-year repair warranty issued by its manufacturer has also been rendered inert. You could park your keester in a nearby poolside chair, and begin your invariably embarrassing crying jag.

Or it could be time for CPR. Cell Phone Repair may be near enough so that you could walk with deliberate speed and intent to their nearest repair shop. If it’s not, you can use someone else’s phone, even a cell phone if you can bear to look at one, and call your CPR to discover where the nearest CPR-Cell Phone Repair is located. There’s also the mail-in option if you live in a different state, or perhaps a Canadian Province.

The miracle is that while most of CPR’s competitors avoid wet phones like the Wicked Witch of the West in the classic Oz scene avoided water, CPR maintains an 85% success rate with repair solutions for water-damaged devices – the best in the business. Maybe you removed the SIM card right away after the device got wet, maybe you didn’t. The fact is, once we remove the battery and get rid of any excess water that might be still inside your phone, and apply other drying techniques to aid in restoration, it won’t be long before even that little sensor, has changed back again into the reassuring color that you’re used to seeing. You might find yourself exclaiming, “How dry it is!”

To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Over the past several years, growth of the CPR-Cell Phone Repair services has been phenomenal. Nearly everyone has a cell phone that requires repairing at one time or another. Cell phones and iPods are dropped, cracked, submerged in liquids, exposed to excess heat or cold, or stepped on by careless feet in a million places every day. Components wear out as warranties expire. Sometimes a device will “act up” in strange ways and sending the thing back to its maker means a lengthy delay before a customer gets it back. In response to this pressing need, a unique business structure has been developed. It’s now possible for you to become a CPR-Cell Phone Repair franchise partner.

Such opportunities are already available in many U.S. states and Canadian Provinces for qualified investors. Our company began in Illinois, but it shows no sign of ending there. The Windy City was the cradle of Cell Phone Repair, but CPR is growing up.

For a modest outlay of capital (minimum investment = $75,000), you can own a burgeoning repair business with an established reputation in more than twenty locations in the United States and Canada. Cell phones and iPods will only increase in consumer usage as the next several years pass. As manufacturers of these devices become increasingly unwilling to foster maintenance and scale back customer support due to changing economic conditions, independently-franchised repair outlets will prove more and more convenient – and more and more necessary as an option for beleaguered customers who own cell phone, iPods, and similar electronic communication devices.

Friendly staff at CPR outlets are already becoming a sought after fixture in the minds of North American consumers. While franchise opportunities aren’t yet available in Rhode Island, North Dakota, South Dakota, Virginia, and Alberta, a CPR franchise is waiting for qualified partners just about everywhere else.

To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com

Electronic devices and water don’t mix. As for cell phones, because they’re often ubiquitous for their owners, a constant inanimate companion, they often end up in whatever water happens to be available – a swimming pool, the Red Sea, a bathtub, or even floating in a toilet like so much flotsam. When this sort of immersion occurs, bad things usually happen to the device. Afterwards, if you see water droplets underneath the LCD display, the first instinct for many owners is to … pray – especially if the damaged cell phone is expensive.

It doesn’t even have to be submerged in water to be water-damaged. If it merely gets wet, such as being left outside in the rain, it can be rendered just as inert as if it were dropped off a boat into the blue-green Pacific near the Marianna Trench.

It gets worse; it doesn’t even have to appear wet. The curse of the dot – tiny liquid-damage indicators – sometimes referred to as “the sensors from Hell” – can change color – indicating water damage when the unit appears to be dry. These liquid-damage indicators, tiny disks located inside the battery chamber and often inside the phone itself, may change color if exposed to sweat, steam, extreme humidity, or condensation. However this happens, it’s enough to void a manufacturer’s warranty if the color doesn’t change back.

The nightmare is intensified if water damage occurs in a cell phone, a common problem, and a consumer attempts to get the thing fixed. Most cell phone repair companies avoid water-damaged cell phones, or cell phones with wrong-colored dots, as if they were the wicked witch from Oz, afraid of their own meltdown, but there are exceptions. If consumers are persistent enough, a cell phone repair company that does repair water-damaged phones – or can merely get a recalcitrant dot to resume the correct color – can be found.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com