Do Not Remove

It was only a few years ago that I was the only Apple person in my family. Recently however, my sister has taken a bite and now has two Apple computers, two Apple TV's, two iPhone 4's and an iPhone 3G that my nieces use like an iPod Touch. Anyway, the old iPhone 3G's battery is starting to fail so I brought it back home to replace the battery. How hard can it be?

Well, if you're not a nimble 13-year old farm girl from China working at Foxconn in Shenzhen, it's pretty hard. I did manage to swap out the 3.7V Li-ion polymer battery but it took awhile. Two electrical engineering degrees were not enough to overcome old age and very small screws and connectors.

Why yes, I did take photos:


Working iPhone 3G with battery replacement kit ($6.31 from Amazon). Note the time = 9:38pm.


Remove bottom two screws and remove LCD display. The "case cracking tool" was useless. I ended up using a suction cup to lift up the cover/display. Next disconnect connectors 1, 2, and 3, which were conveniently labelled.


Remove 7 tiny tiny screws. One was under the "Do not remove" sticker. Oh well... it's out of warranty anyway.


After removing the screws, disconnect connectors 4, 5, 6, also conveniently labelled, and unnumbered connector for the camera. Remove motherboard and finally see battery.


The battery was held down by double-sided tape. Remove old battery and replace with new battery. Connect and screw everything back. Look it still works. Again, note the time = 10:30pm. Took me almost an hour to do everything.


Final test: see if Land Before Time (Sydnie's favorite movie) still plays. Check!

Couple of thoughts. I've owned many Apple products from an old Apple II+ to a Mac Plus to a Mac mini plus several iPod/iPad/iPhones, and everything has been sealed up tight at the factory. Most product needed special tools to open the case, and you can't change the battery in mobile devices. My Samsung GalaxyS has a back cover and a battery change takes only 10 seconds, not close to an hour with the iPhone. Totally lame.

I am also lucky that I wasn't born in rural China. I would totally suck working at Foxconn assembling iPod/iPad/iPhones, unlike this factory girl:


iPhone girl

Seriously, if I had to do this 12 hours a day, six days a week, for $0.50/hour, I'd probably want to jump off a building too.

2010 Asia Trip, Taipei Day #2 Evening

I like Taipei... the only drawback is the frigging weather. I walked around outside a bit today and each time I ended up sweating profusely. People must take a lot of showers here.

The "work" portion of my trip was completed in Shenzhen. The only PMI related task was to bring some sample materials from Chengdu and give it to our manufacturing partner here in Taiwan. Other than that, all I've done is hang out and eat/drink stuff with friends/family. I'm staying with a friend who is on an expat assignment here in Taipei though he just left about 5 minutes ago to go back to the US for a week.

The flight from Shenzhen was pretty quick though turbulent at times. International flights, including my flight to Taiwan (ha!), departed from a small terminal next to terminal A. It was a bit confusing. Similar to Chengdu, we had to take a shuttle bus to our plane even though there were plenty of open gates with jetways at the terminal.


Helicopter landing at Shenzhen Airport


Terminal A of Shenzhen Airport


China Southern served lunch even for a 90 minute flight. It was the worst airplane food I've ever tasted.


Girl next to me on the plane. She had these weird bumps/scars on her arm... not sure if it was some kind of body modification. She ate all of her lunch... maybe I'm just too picky.


Engrish?!

After arriving at CKS Airport (not sure if it's still called that... DPP/KMT keep changing the name), I got my luggage and took a bus (NTD30) to the Taoyuan HSR (high speed rail) station. From there it was only NTD155 and 20 minutes to Taipei main station, and another NTD20 to take the MRT to my friend's apartment. It's much faster than bus or even a car if there's traffic.


Taoyuan HSR station. I think they're building an additional line to the airport so you don't have to take a shuttle bus to reach the train anymore.


Northbound platform. It looks like a regular MRT station in Taipei but much longer.


HSR train. It certainly looks fast though they never displayed the speed inside the train so I didn't know how fast we were traveling.


Train diagram on the seatback tray. Each train has 12 cars with one for business class and three with general seating. Since it was Saturday, the general seating cars were pretty empty. Leon said the train fills up during weekdays.


End of the line at Taipei station. It was only two stops away from Taoyuan and all underground from Banciao station into Taipei.

I remember looking at a map of Taipei train station and it had 8 levels or something. After getting off the HSR train, I had to go down another level to get to the MRT lines. Taipei station is a transfer point between the blue and red MRT lines so there were a lot of people.


Instead of paper tickets for single trip purchases, they now issue these blue plastic tokens. You hold it next to a sensor pad on the turnstiles, similar to the electronic fare cards, and deposit it into a slot when you exit at the destination station.


My friend lives right next to one of the MRT stations. Next to the exit where I was waiting for him, there was a lady selling food. There are lots of street vendors everywhere but I didn't see any chengguan beating people up like in China.

After meeting my friend and unpacking (he let me stay in a spare bedroom in his apartment), I contacted PMI's sales rep and arranged for him to pick up the material sample. Since there was road construction on the main street, he stopped in mid-traffic and I ran over to hand him the sample. It felt like a drug deal. :)

Since the friend I was staying with had previous dinner plans (he asked me to join them but since they were having spicy hot pot, I passed), I contacted a co-worker who recently transferred to Taipei, and we went to Shilin night market to get something to eat.


At the front of the building with all the food vendors, there was a huge line with >100 people. It was the line for a "chicken steak" vendor where you get a deep fried piece of chicken for NTD50. I had it last time when I was here in 2005... it was so-so. Not sure why the line was so long while other "chicken steak" vendors didn't have any lines.


We got some drinks (mango slush... they use real fruit here) first since it was so hot. Next we got some small dishes (tapas?!): oyster omelet (蚵仔煎), fried tempura (甜不辣, not the same as Japanese tempura), and stinky tofu (臭豆腐).


We walked around and had a few other things, ending up with some shaved ice. One of the more unique stalls was serving Mexican food and the guy running it was a foreigner. He didn't seem to get much business though. We stopped by and chatted for a bit (in English). He has only been there for a month.

After stuffing ourselves, we walked around a couple of side streets with mainly non-food vendors. There were portable stalls set up in the middle of the pedestrian walkway and occasionally they would pack up and take off with the merchandise. These were "illegal" stalls and a system of lookouts would warn them whenever the police showed up. It didn't seem like the enforcement wasn't too serious though.

2010 Asia Trip, Shenzhen Day #1 Evening

It's raining outside. Actually, it's been raining all day in Shenzhen and Dongguan. I had heard that there was a typhoon offshore, maybe they're referring to tropical storm Malou. It's still on the other side of Taiwan... not sure if it's causing all this rain.



I know it's raining outside because I just went out to find some food and got completely soaked. I walked all the way around the hotel just to find a small market and some street vendors right behind us. I'm still feeling sick to the stomach so I just got some bread and bottle of ice tea, and will probably go to bed early tonight.

Today was a fun filled day driving hours through the often heavy rain. We had two business meetings in Dongguan, but it turned out they were over an hour apart. Combined that with a unknown driver, we got lost between meetings and were ~an hour late to the 2nd one. You can never plan too much or too far ahead in China. I did find our destination on my Blackberry and Google Maps but was too uncertain about its accuracy to trust it while we're lost.


Breakfast in the lobby this morning. It wasn't that good. :(


We took a taxi to meet someone at the Sheraton downtown who drove us to his factory in Dongguan.


Just in case you forgot what day it was (Friday)


It rained so heavy at times we couldn't see the road. Most people drove pretty slow with their hazards on.


Even though it was raining like crazy, the bus stops were full of people waiting.


Chinese night market right behind the hotel. It was kind of shabby... I wonder what kind of people liver around here (industrial zone).


Dinner :)

2010 Asia Trip, Shenzhen Day #1 Early Morning

Business travel is lonely and tiring. We spent most of the day yesterday traveling from Chengdu to Shenzhen and didn't get to sleep until almost midnight. It's now ~5:30am and we have to get going again at 8:00am.

I spent the last day at PMI interviewing the production manager trying to figure out our electricity costs and production flow process for bottlenecks. However, I was still feeling sick from the hot pot dinner from Thursday and ended up lying down on the sofa in Leon's office, skipping both breakfast and dinner, debating whether to try to throw up to feel better. Ugh...

At ~2pm, Leon and I left PMI and headed to the airport to catch our 4:10pm flight. Traffic has gotten a lot worse in Chengdu since this time last year. It now takes about an hour to get to the factory from Jiaoda in the morning.


A temporary traffic light in the middle of the intersection. It wasn't there yesterday... and people are actually obeying it. Why can't they follow the regular traffic signals?


Bicycle/scooter traffic at a busy intersection. Again, they are the worst traffic offenders. Almost no one stops at smaller intersections regardless what the traffic light says. Every time I cross the street I'm in danger of being run down by bikes/scooters.


We took a shortcut through a gas station (along with about 100 cars). On the way out, I saw a lot of police and chengguan (city manager?), where normally they're nowhere to be seen. Turns out there was a protest at some government office next to the gas station. I saw banners that basically said their land was taken and now they have nothing to eat. Pretty typical land rights abuse by local officials but I've never seen a protest or mass incident in China before... too bad I didn't get a photo.


Typical behavior when traffic is backed up at an intersection. People would drive into oncoming lanes and try to squeeze back in at the front of the line. This only works when a few assh*les do this; if everyone pulled this stunt, the entire road gets congested and everybody loses. I experienced this one time and it took 30+ minutes to untangle the traffic mess.


On the way to the factory, we drive by a Porsche dealer. There was only one Panamera parked in front. About 5 minutes later, I saw one drive by... same color. They're pretty expensive even in the US; in China foreign made cars are taxed heavily and end up costing almost double.


When we get to the high-tech development zone, the traffic drops off significantly. There are only factories and schools here in this area. In front of each school are parked scores of three wheeled carts. These are much cheaper to ride than taxis (also much more dangerous) so a lot of students ride these instead. Interestingly, though our driver drives pretty aggressively in the city, out here he slows down for each intersection, even if we have the green light. With much less traffic, a lot of people drive fast and ignore all traffic signals. I've seen many close calls as cars and trucks run through red lights. You'd figure in a totalitarian state people would follow rules better.


On the way to the airport we saw a huge congregation of driving school cars outside our factory. They like to train students in the high-tech development zone because of the lack of other traffic. However, since they all come here, most of the traffic are student drivers. This probably makes driving here more risky for the rest of us.


Sure enough, around the corner we saw an accident. There was a motorcycle down in the middle of the intersection but we didn't see anyone injured. Typically when there's an accident in China, they don't move the vehicles involved but stand in the middle of the road arguing, thus blocking traffic and making it more dangerous for everyone else.


The other vehicle involved in the accident. Uh oh, white license plate (on a black Audi of course) means military. Maybe the motorcycle rider was "disappeared" already. Our driver told me to take a picture but he closed all the windows so they wouldn't see me... how exciting! He later told us that cars with military plates can do anything they want since they're outside all police jurisdiction. They run red traffic lights, double park anywhere, and drive as fast as they want. Often you find military plates on luxury cars too. Despite being the People's Republic of China, it's easy to see which group (military) holds all the power (not the people).


Okay, enough political ranting and back to boring travel stuff. After arriving at the airport and checking in, we found out that our flight was delayed for an hour. The waiting area for our flight was packed so we sat at another area. While we were waiting, this guy came over to ask me where he should wait for his flight. It turned out that he was on the same flight so he ended up following us for the next two hours (more delays). Leon was joking that I made a new friend.


Shenzhen Airport baggage carousel #6. The flight itself was uneventful. We overheard a flight attendant say that a typhoon was near Shenzhen and there would be a lot of rain. When we landed and walked across the tarmac, there was only a light sprinkle of rain.


After finding a taxi that would take us to our hotel (lots of lazy drivers that didn't want to take us), we met Leon's aunt and cousins. They were at the airport early to meet us but since our flight was delayed, they went to the hotel to wait. They treated us to dinner at the hotel restaurant. Leon's older cousin ordered a lot of food, including sea cucumber... which came in individual servings (one each). Yum!


He also ordered lobster sashimi. I usually don't eat sashimi but this was pretty good. They also ordered roasted dove, some pig intestine dish, and several more. I was still kinds of nauseous so I didn't eat that much. Dinner was expensive... I thought I saw his cousin count out 1400 RMB from a brick of red bills. He seems like a nice guy but definitely had a Chinese mafia feel about him.


Hotel room at the Langshan Hotel in Shenzhen. This hotel is definitely an upgrade from the RMB 138 room at the Fuyuan. We got a discounted rate through another PMI person and only paid RMB 288 per night, including breakfast. I'm here for two nights then off to Taipei.


Even though it's a nice hotel, there's still a lot of Chinglish. This is the fire evacuation notice on the room door.

Please don't worry if a fire is occuring, the hotel have owned succour scattering facilities to ensure you transmitted safely.

Dang, I've wasted an hour on this post. Time to take a short 30 minute nap and get up again.