In the God’s breath of a decade, but an instant in time, cell phones have morphed into creations barely imagined just a decade ago. With all the improvements, one thing remains true: They still break, and independent repair shops are more needed than ever.
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.