While some may consider my disinterest in and not wanting a iPhone to be considered sacrilegious of being a geek, I do however find the iPhone disassembly pictures very interesting. I really like seeing how things are made and what hides under its outer casing. It appears the very same day that the iPhone came out, the guys at iFixit acquired a couple of units and disassembled one of them for the viewing pleasure of the curious.

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[Ed. note: I got an IM from Larry this morning saying "God!... forgive me please... someone got killed by me...".

Immediately concerned, I looked at the Flickr address he had included. Holding back the laughter, I read Larry's next IM, "don't call the police, please~~~".

Well of course not Larry! I'll post the victim here for everyone to see, instead.

Larry originally wrote this dissection for the Palm Is Life forum, but he has also translated it for Gear Diary. To see it in the original Chinese, click here.]

Here is the one which got killed…

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[Ed. note: Larry originally wrote this article for the Palm Is Life forum, but he has also translated it for posting here. To see this article in the original Chinese, click here. Happy Hacking!]

Around two weeks ago at “http://www.palmislife.com/“, we had a group purchase activity for buying complete set of Treo 650 Housing as replacement parts for those with “poor looking” Treos.

These are “Genuine Replacement Housing For Treo 650″ with a “Verizon” logo printed. They are not brand new housings, they are all used but in good condition.

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In my job as a computer tech, I have seen it all - from the simply surprising to the most horrifying thing that can happen to a computer and its hard drive. These are just a few of my stories…

A Western Digital 172AA arrived in numerous pieces, and it was totally wrecked. According to the customer, a pin on the data connector broke off.

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[Ed. note: Larry originally wrote this article for the Palm Is Life forum, but he has also translated it for posting here. To see this article in the original Chinese, click here. Happy Hacking!]

When the Palm Treo 650 launched, it came with an earpiece issue; its speaker sound was too low for regular people to hear. How bad is it? Well, you could clearly hear the caller’s voice in a quiet room, but you probably couldn’t hear a honeybee flying around your ear while outdoors - even if you have turned your Treo 650 to the loudest level.

Later Palm Inc. released newer firmware to make the sound level of the earpiece receiver louder. However, unlike geeks, regular people may not know how to update their Treo 650 to fix bugs. Further, upgrading the firmware can be risky since doing so may result in repair charges not covered under warranty if the ROM flashing process fails. I guess a lot of users will leave the volume problem either because they don’t know how to fix it, or they are afraid of the update firmware process.

GoTreo Software Inc. must have heard the outcry from Treo 650 users, so they released the software called (Now the latest version is called “VolumeCare Pro”

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Larry at Palm Is Life is my hero!

Evidently I wasn’t the only one that wasn’t thrilled with the blue backlights in the Hermes keyboard. But instead of just mentioning it in a review, Larry did something about it!

Once again he has cracked his Hermes’ hood and tinkered until things were exactly as he wanted; Once again, he has worked magic.

Take a look…

Here is the Hermes with it’s blue backlight. It’s pretty, but not so easy on the eyes.

There’s lots more photos of the cracked Hermes in Larry’s article, but here’s a taste…

  

And here is a closeup of him working with the two different colored LEDs.

This final picture shows the result of his work, and will you just look at what’s on the left side screen? A shout-out to Gear Diary readers! Holla!

click thumbnail to enlarge  

Be sure to read all of the details of Larry’s latest modification at Palm Is Life; he never ceases to amaze me with his mad modding skills. Now I have to wonder what he will do to top this!

**Larry has asked that I state for the record that he is no relation to Leisure Suit Larry of Amiga gaming fame. ha!

I am about to begin work on the Hermes review a couple days ahead of schedule. In the meantime, I wanted to bring you an interesting article from Larry at Palm Is Life.

It would seem that some of the HTC Hermes family of PDAs have erratic touchscreens, displaying imprecise digitizer behavior. Larry received one such device at Mobius…

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