Time and time again, I have seen the power and beauty of Twitter with regards to our iPhone, iPad, and iPod repair business that we conduct here at milliamp.com (you can follow us at @milliamp, btw). Rather than talk about how Twitter has become a powerful tool for us to engage with our customers in near-real time, I thought that I would just show you a recent exchange here:

And this gentleman was kind enough to leave us a nice review when it was all said and done, too!

busy-iphone-repair-beavers

We have been busy, busy, busy, not only trying to keep up with the deluge of iPods, iPhones, and iPads that hit our doors each day, but also making sure that our websites look good, convey lots of information and trust, but also function properly as well.

You would think that, after more than SIX YEARS in this business, we’d have shopping carts, conversion funnels, hover-over text, order data extracts, etc. nailed, but it is a continuous, frustrating process, but we are determined to get our websites working and looking great, no matter what it takes.

Most people do not know it, but many of the emails and phone calls we get each day from customers wanting to buy something from us also give us suggestion (or harsh critiques!) on what they liked and did not like about our website. These suggestions never fall on deaf ears – we weigh each suggestion accordingly and then often improve the site – sometimes within hours of the suggestion.

It seems that, whenever I take an order at our front counter or over the telephone, I see something on the site that jumps out at me, be it a rare typo or price discrepancy, a weird link, goofy graphic, or a field that looks out of place in our shopping cart. What a great team that we have where I can take a snag-it screenshot, email it off to my hard workers, and hours later have it fixed!

In closing, I wanted to mention a new business that recently sprung up – it’s a site that is all about twitter marketing and is called outsourced-tweets.com, and it is pretty cool business idea, if I do say so myself.

Have a great evening, and remember, if you spot an error or even a fancy new addition to one of our websites, you can be sure our busy beavers will have/had something to do with it. Chomp on!

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner

On Friday, we reported that we had been informed of issues with the newest version of iOS (4.3.3), the iPhone 3GS, and our replacement batteries. We had a similar instance of incompatibility this time last summer, but fortunately, this time around the issue is not much of an issue at all. After extensive experimentation and research, we have concluded that the Milliamp iPhone 3GS replacement batteries are perfectly compatible with iOS 4.3.3, so if we alarmed you with our blog on Friday, I’d like to apologize on behalf of the entire company.

What’s perplexing is that we confirmed the “error 29″ issue a customer reported to us, but when we tested our batteries again today, there was no problem at all. I feel so strongly that our batteries are compatible because of the number of times I was successful in installing 4.3.3 on an iPhone 3GS with our battery inside. I currently have one of our batteries installed in my 3GS and running 4.3.3 so I can field test the performance and look for any issues that may crop us as a result of our battery. I’ll post any significant findings here.

So, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to call us, email us, facebook us, tweet us, or even leave a comment on this blog and we will get back to you post-haste.

If you’re interested in replacing your iPhone 3GS battery, take a look here (we offer a DIY kit/intructions, too!).

possible-apple-ios-iphone-3gs-battery-compatibility-issue

We had two folks that contacted us today (one in Singapore and the other in Chicago), each having experienced issues with a third-party iPhone 3GS battery whilst upgrading to the newest iPhone operating system available today, iOS 4.3.3, specifically, Error 29.

Hearing this, even from just two people thus far, made us quake in our boots – we experienced a similar issue before when Apple released iOS 4.0 and blogged about it right away back then as well. We eventually figured out how to obtain new iPhone 3GS batteries that played nice with that operating system, but it was a pain in the ass to manage all of those folks that needed their recently-upgraded batteries upgraded again.

Taking one of our iPhone 3GS’ that was running an earlier iOS, we installed one of our iPhone 3GS 1200 mAh batteries, and sure enough – freakin’ Error 29. When we re-installed the old stock battery, the device worked with iOS 4.3.3.

While it is WAY too early to tell how big of an issue this is going to be, you can rest-assured that we will be on the front lines and will figure our a solution.

Until then, hold off on upgrading to iOS 4.3.3 if you have recently installed a new battery in your iPhone 3GS.

More information to follow as soon as we have something more definitive to report.

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Email: anthony@milliamp.com
Cell Phone: 210-787-9482

 Now that Apple has “finally” released the white iPhone 4 out into the world, the luster of the white iPhone no longer lies in the hands of those individuals who paid to have their iPhone’s parts converted to white. Bummer, man. If you happen to be one of those individuals who went off the grid to make their iPhone 4 white, don’t fret, you can, again, experience that same feeling of being unique and get the attention and jealousy of all your fanboy (or girl) friends. Just let Milliamp “mash-up” your iPhone 4 with custom color replacement parts that come in colors that are vastly more interesting than white!

We here at Milliamp have purchased some of these custom parts and have been “field testing” them for the past month or so; those pictures above are 2 of the phones we field tested. The parts have been awesome, they totally match the quality and durability of the original parts that were installed on the phone, and that’s not even the best part! The best part is having a totally unique phone that even HTC EVO users drool over.

From gold and diamond (read: not real diamonds) custom frames to replace the…. YAWWWWN… aluminum frame, to clear front displays and back plates with no Apple logo, there are a lot of really cool looking, QUALITY custom parts for this device, and we plan on bringing them to you very soon.

Consider this the official announcement of our Milli-Mash-Up; I don’t know if we’ll actually call it that; it does sound pretty awesome though! We are in the process of ordering a wide array of custom color display panels, home buttons, and back plates, and we’re developing a system to let you pick and choose how you want your phone to look and actually see an example of that exact configuration in real time! BUT WAIT! THAT’S NOT ALL! Our prices on these items will be our competitors’ envy!

Now that I have you drooling, go ahead and “Like” our Facebook page so you can keep up to date with our release schedule for this awesome service and be the first on your block to have an orange, black, and pink iPhone 4!

Go on! Go like us!

Strongly considering this as an alternative...

Recently, my husband and I acquired a super cool Subaru wagon as a second vehicle and have been really loving it so far. Sure, it’s from the ’90s, has about 160k miles on it, but dangit, it’s in excellent condition and fun to drive! Plus, there’s tons of room inside which is really nice for a certain baby that’s coming this July (:))… Moving along, it has been fantastic not having an extra car payment, so I’m in heaven with this car (though it will never take the place in my heart reserved for my cute, little red Mazda).

However, I must say, I am DESPERATELY missing a simple feature that I never thought would be absent from any: CUP HOLDERS! Lord, how I miss the cup holders when I drive the Subaru. Apparently, there was such thing as a time when cars were meant for driving and not as miniature living environments. I really hadn’t a clue that this was the case is many (if not most) older vehicle models, so I’m obviously either sheltered or spoiled. However, now I am a little wiser and will keep this in mind when my husband asks to use my car!

Seriously, imagine your vehicle without cup holders. You might think, “Eh, no big deal,” but it’s a helpless feeling when you have a cup in need of a secure spot. Sure, you may not always use a cup holder for, well, cups, but it’s nice having a little extra space where you can put your iPhone or iPod in, or even store your spare change here and there.

If you’re like me at all, breakfast is somewhat of an afterthought. Meaning, I’m about to leave and realize I haven’t put anything in my stomach since the night before! This usually means that it’s a ‘cereal in a cup’ kind of morning. Ya know, grab some mini wheats, pour ‘em in a plastic cup, add milk, grab a spoon and go! I can be really innovative sometimes. To be fair, I only eat at stoplights, but that doesn’t mean it was a hassle driving with one hand while my delicious breakfast stared at me in the face.

The lesson of the day is:

Don’t take your cup holders for granted. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

It was a crazy, crazy day yesterday, as all eyes turned to milliamp.com where flocks of people headed to pick up one of our free pentalobe screwdrivers – you can still get them on our website, and we will probably continue to offer these freebies for a few more days, so don’t delay! The news wires and websites and blogs and twitterverse were buzzing with our free pentalobular screwdrivers, and here’s a glimpse of the craziness that we experienced:

all-eyes-on-milliamp

Stats from yesterday showed that we nearly quadrupled the number of hits and pageviews to our website – cool!

Mid-day yesterday, some customers reported trouble during checkout, but that was only because so many people were hitting our site at the same time, so if you were patient and placed your order later in the day, you likely had no issues. And you can always pick up your free screwdriver for removing those pesky pentalobe screws here:

http://www.milliamp.com/iphone-pentalobe-screwdriver.html

Thanks, and enjoy!

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Milliamp LTD

milliamp-pentalobe-screwdriver

With all the gnashing of teeth regarding Apple’s new pentalobe screws now becoming standard on all new iPhone 4′s, we thought we would put people’s minds at ease by simply giving away the damn screwdriver. You can get a new pentalobular screwdriver by heading to our website and grabbing one for yourself (limit one per customer, please).

While you are on this product page, you can grab the free tool, but if you are a serious iPhone 4 user, you may want to consider sliding up to our deluxe pentalobe screwdriver for a few bucks more. The ones we have in stock now are gold in color, and have that handy rotating end cap on the handle – something you grow to like when you work with small repairs day in and day out.

And we added this cool product option as well – if you really do not want pentalobe screws in the bottom of your iPhone 4, you can swap them out with an original Phillips-head style screws (screws and Phillips-head tool for just a buck).

A free pentalobe screwdriver – only at milliamp.com.

milliamp-pentalobe-screwdriver-free

Regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
milliamp.com

P.S. Here is that link again – share with your friends! http://tinyurl.com/free-pentalobe-screwdriver

We encounter a lot of interesting folks in our line of work. From that one guy iwho sent us an iPhone 3G for a new battery because it was “only” providing about 23 hours of use on a full charge, to the fellow who walked into our shop asking us to load up a few hundred songs on his device (um, what?!). Now, I would be lying if I said that Steve Wozniak himself strode into our shop for a bit of iPhone repair love, but his business card did make it into Milliamp LTD headquarters recently.

It is quite a specimen, and from a bit of googling, I am not the only one that has gushed about it, so I won’t blur out any of his personal details:

woz-card

The card is made out of a thin sheet of metal, and has been laser-etched by a company called PlasmaDesign, which is located in the United Kingdom. You have to look around on their site a bit, but they even boast about making Woz’s business cards:

plasma-design-woz-card

They apparently make the cards in a few different shades of colors; their green sample looks quite similar in color to the green leaf in our milliamp.com logo. The cards must be wicked-expensive, however – the detail on them is just exquisite.

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
milliamp.com

I have a friend that once thought, as we emailed each other back and forth several years ago, that I was typing out my entire name, address, and phone number at the bottom of every response to him. What he was looking at was my signature line – that part of the email that you set once and never change.

But here at milliamp.com, we tweak it every so often.

We just did that, so next time you get an email from us, look for these aspects:

1. See who you are communicating with. First Name and First Initial of Last Name. Great to know who you are communicating with, and for people that are sending devices to us, gives you a good understanding of all the people it takes to move a device through receiving, evaluation, repair, testing, shipping, and anything else in between.

2. Our tagline reinforces what we do (in an Apple-friendly way). Note the addition of the word ‘iPad’. iPads are here to stay, and we’re going to keep fixing them.

3. You can find the toll-free number to us on our site, but for our signature line, it’s our 210 prefix number. What person who owns an iPhone really cares about long-distance phone calls these days anyways?

4. We are all over the internet, and here are many of the links to learn more about who we are and what we do. Note the “call to action” before each one.

new-milliamp-signature-line

Tell you what – email us now (service at milliamp.com) and see if for yourself!

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Milliamp LTD