I always considered those 3rd party rubberized iPhone protector/sheaths too bulky and ugly: an almost complete negation of the sleek Apple design (something like the pocket protector for the 21st century).   Then I discovered that although you have some leeway dropping your new iPhone onto a linoleum or wood floor (having thoroughly tested out both scenarios within just the first few weeks of ownership), if dropped even one or two feet onto a completely non-yielding surface such as a sidewalk or tiled airline terminal floor, that glass screen is gone, son: a spider web of cracks.

The real cost of the iPhone is heavily subsidized by the service plan contract, so it’s easy to forget just how expensive these things are (check out the price of an ‘unlocked’ iPhone 3G on eBay).  Just repairing the glass alone is a $250 trip to the Apple store, but I was resolved to repair it as inexpensively as possible.  Not surprisingly, there’s a healthy online iPhone 3G parts market out there already, and several days later I had my new glass panel/digitizer and was searching for directions as to how to open the thing up and do the repair.

A few things: on a hardware level, the iPhone turns out to be very conscientiously designed, well-machined, and solidly built – if you’ve ever opened up a computer or two, physically it’s more like a Sony in there than a Dell (which is gratifying, given the price).  Secondly, the replacement process is a considerably more involved than the parts sellers would have you believe: at one point you’ll be holding your wife’s hair dryer on the broken glass/digitizer, trying to melt some very tenacious adhesive just enough to be able to pry it off its fragile plastic bracket.

That moment with the hair dryer was the low point, when I was convinced I’d end up at the Apple store with a handful of iPhone parts in a bag, prepared for the full scorn of the Geniuses in return for a rescue.   But I pressed on, and after some mistakes on my part involving the placement of some impossible tiny and fragile ribbon cables and a bit of poor “glue-control”, I finally just about had the thing back together.  As I put the last microscopic screw in, I calculated there were at least five ways in which I might have irrevocably broken something, but lo and behold… my iPhone came right back to life!

That the phone worked perfectly when I was done with it wasn’t the strangest thing, though: earlier on, with the glass and LCD screen removed and everything in pieces spread out on the dinning room table, I happened to get a call, and the phone rang!  It was a little creepy, actually - like a chicken with its head cut off, or maybe something out of a Stephen King story: “The Smartphone That Would Not Die”.

In an action aimed directly at the iPhone (which now accounts for almost 39% of Apple profits vs. only 30% for all Macs), the EU is now considering requiring that all mobile devices allow easy user battery replacement, but expect Apple to fight the major hardware redesign that would entail.  In the meantime, while it’s gratifying that it worked and it’s nice to know the device is so solidly constructed, I would *not* recommend opening up your iPhone.

Unless you’re the type that builds ship models inside bottles in your spare time, that is…