Computerworld – Apple’s next big thing may be a video platform that combines cameras in the next versions of the iPhone and iPad with the giant data center the company’s building in North Carolina, an analyst said today.

During a quarterly earnings conference call with Wall Street and industry analysts Tuesday, Apple’s chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer cited “future product transitions” as a contributing factor to the anticipated decline from a 42% margin for the year’s first quarter to a 36% margin for the quarter ending June 30.

The conservative guidance isn’t unusual: Apple typically underestimates its margins for upcoming periods, and often explains that “future product transitions” are one reason why it won’t clear as much profit.

But one analyst read more into those tea leaves.

“They seem to be saying that there’s more to the next quarter than the introduction of a new iPhone,” said Ezra Gottheil, senior analyst with Technology Business Research, referring to the expected launch of Apple’s next iPhone this summer.

Gottheil thinks that Apple is ready to make a major move into video, and based his bet on a series of clues in the company’s upcoming hardware, as well as the $1 billion data center in North Carolina that’s now hiring personnel.

Gottheil’s prognostications have been spot-on at times, off the mark at others. A year ago, he bet that Apple would enter the netbook market with an “iPod Touch on steroids,” a good description of the eventual iPad. In December 2008, however, he predicted that Apple would launch a pair of netbook-style systems the following month, something Apple did not do.

“The front-facing camera in the next iPhone is something we’ve always wanted,” Gottheil said, referring to this week’s disclosure by tech blog Gizmodo that the 2010 iPhone will have two cameras, including a new one that faces the user. “But that also makes sense if Apple is going to push into video conferencing, video social network or video social gaming.”

Calling that market a “kind of white space,” Gottheil sees it as one of those opportunities that Apple has historically grabbed. “Apple is the kind of company that could make that a big deal,” he said.

The current iPad, which lacks a camera — one of the pieces that was on most wish lists before the tablet debuted — also seems to have space in its current design for a front-facing camera, Gottheil added. Others, including teardown expert Aaron Vronko of Rapid Repair, have also speculated that the next iPad will sport a camera. “It looks like it’s all ready for the camera, even including a hole in the glass for the lens,” said Vronko, who earlier this month tore apart the first-generation iPad. “Apple probably made a game-time decision not to include it.”

Also in play, said Gottheil, is the $1 billion data center that Apple began building in Maiden, N.C., last year. Apple currently has 15 positions listed on its jobs site for the data center.

“That’s a humongous data center,” Gottheil observed. While others have speculated that the center will power an iTunes music streaming service or store customers’ iTunes libraries for everywhere access, Gottheil as a different idea. “Apple needs to get into the online services business, but it can’t be plain vanilla,” he said. “That’s not what Apple likes to do.”

Instead, he believes Apple will craft a video platform that other developers can use to build video-enabled iPhone and iPad applications, then use the data center as the switchboard that, for a fee, routes the ensuing data traffic. “They’ll build the platform, make an application or two — maybe a game where people see each other as they play — and then provide some kind of switchboard service. That’s exactly the kind of thing that they like to do.”

In a follow-up research note that Gottheil sent to clients today, he also hammered on the idea. “By providing critical applications and a platform for third-party development, Apple could create a compelling and very sticky subscription service,” he wrote.

Not everyone buys Gottheil’s theory on video and the data center. Brian Marshall, an analyst who tracks Apple for BroadPoint AmTech, agreed that the next iPhone would have a camera, and believes a refresh of the iPad with a camera will appear in time for this year’s holiday season. But he has different plans for the data center.

“That’s for their cloud-based service,” Marshall said, “which will probably be hosting iTunes libraries in the cloud. That will let customers access their iTunes [music] from anywhere, and untether it from their computers.”

Nothing about parsing Apple is easy, said Gottheil, who acknowledged that his conjectures could come to naught. “They’re always manipulating us with their guidance,” he admitted, talking about Apple’s tendency to under-promise and over-deliver, and the often fruitless attempts by outsiders to penetrate the company’s veil of secrecy. “But this could be a place for Apple to play in online.”

The original article can be found here.

Apple posted details of its iPad battery replacement service earlier this week. Mind you,the iPad isn’t even expected to hit the stores until April 3rd. Perhaps Apple has learned something from the battery life backlash that continues to plague its iconic iPhone.

“The iPad’s typical use scenario is sans power cord, whereas the power cord travels with the laptop,” says Aaron Vronko, CEO of Raid Repair, which services broken iPods and iPhones and replaces worn-out batteries. “It’s the biggest device to be used off the power cord most of the time. That makes the battery a huge factor in the success of this device and how it’s received by its audience.”

Apple’s iPad $99 battery replacement service is a bit of a misnomer; Apple will replace the entire iPad, not the battery.

Already, the iPad battery has come under fire. The iPad’s 10-inch LCD display requires a battery that’s more than five times the capacity and size of the iPhone 3GS battery. The screen alone consumes roughly 2 watts per hour, Vronko says, and will drain the large battery in 12 hours by itself.

Apple, which claims the iPad has a 10-hour battery life, doesn’t want the iPad to face the kind of vitriolic complaints regarding battery life that the iPhone has endured since its debut.

Bad News: Your iPhone Battery Is Dying

Every time you go through a charge cycle on your iPhone, you’ll permanently lose anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute of battery capacity. Typically, you’ll get 250 to 500 charge cycles before a lithium ion battery has outlived its usefulness, Vronko says.

(A charge cycle covers the entire capacity of the battery. For instance, if you drained a third of the battery and recharged it, and then used two-thirds of the battery the next day and recharged it, this would still be considered a single charge cycle.)

Using your iPhone in extreme temperatures—below 40 degrees Fahrenheit or above 95 degrees—will degrade the battery capacity faster, he says. Also, you shouldn’t regularly run your iPhone battery completely down before recharging it. Doing these things will shave maybe a minute and half off the total battery capacity per charge cycle, Vronko says.

However, it’s a good practice to run the battery dead before fully recharging it once a month to keep the chip on the battery and the chip on the device that measure the current flowing back and forth in sync . This is one of Vronko’s six tips for cleaning and caring for your iPhone.

There are ways to improve battery life of a single charge cycle. Here are three tips for getting more juice:

1. Disable power-hungry features such as Wi-Fi, Notifications and Location Services.

2. Buy a battery pack, especially if you plan on taking your iPhone to places that don’t have a ready power outlet like, say, a golf course. (Check out my review of iPhone app Golfshot GPS.)

3. Get it tested by an Apple Genius, because anecdotal evidence suggests there are a lot of iPhone 3GS lemons with poorly performing batteries on the market.

Time to Replace Your Battery?

Eventually, though, you’ll need to replace your iPhone battery.

Vronko says the battery-replacement demand curve starts with a 10-month-old iPhone. “That’s when we get the first run of customers,” he says. These customers are often heavy iPhone users who may have lost up to 30 percent of the original battery life—and 70 percent of the remaining battery is not good enough for them.

Next, Vronko sees a pick-up in demand for battery replacement with 12-to-15-month-old iPhones. The peak age for battery replacements is 18 months.

Rapid Repair charges $20 for just the iPhone battery, although you’ll have to be brave enough to put in the new battery yourself. Or it’ll cost $50 for the battery and Rapid Repair to do it.

For do-it-yourself folks, swapping in a new battery on an iPhone 3G or 3GS isn’t terribly difficult. The units have tiny screws for removing the outer shell, and the battery has a pluggable module. This wasn’t the case with the original iPhone, which had a battery that was soldered to the unit.

Vronko hasn’t seen the iPad yet, although he figures battery replacement won’t be easy given the iPad’s unibody design. Another sign is the fact that Apple itself plans to replace whole iPads rather than batteries.

“My guess is that the iPad is going to be more difficult for end users to open up the case without damaging it, in order to replace the battery,” Vronko says.

Tom Kaneshige is a senior writer for CIO.com in Silicon Valley. Send him an email at tkaneshige@cio.com. Or follow him on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.

The original article can be found here.

Leading iPod/iPhone Repair Company Pays Top Dollar for Fully Functional, First-Generation iPhones; Guaranteed Prices, Shipping Included KALAMAZOO, Mich., Oct. 14

KALAMAZOO, Mich., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ — Rapid Repair, the most well-known and reputable national online repair service for portable electronics like the iPod, Zune and iPhone, has unveiled its iPhone Buyback Program, giving first-generation iPhone owners a new option for generating the
funds needed to trade up to the new 3G Apple iPhone — or just for turning their iPhone into cash.

“Lots of 1G iPhone owners are excited about the 3G — but they don’t know what to do with their current device,” said Aaron Vronko, CEO, co-founder and service manager of Rapid Repair. “Our iPhone Buyback Program is a unique alternative to eBay, Craig’s List or other self-directed sales channel. It’s fast, simple, and best of all, our prices are both fair and guaranteed.”

Rapid Repair’s iPhone Buyback Program pays top dollar for fully-functional iPhones. Current prices range from $100 for the 4GB model to $200 for the 16GB (prices subject to change). Upon contacting Rapid Repair and qualifying for the program, an overnight shipping label is immediately sent to the seller to cover the cost of mail-in.

Furthermore, Rapid Repair guarantees its buyback price for up to 14 days. “If for any reason our price changes, either up or down, during the two weeks after the seller contacts us, we will still pay them the higher price,” stated Vronko.

Currently there is no trade-in option for iPhone owners at any iPhone retailer. “Apple and AT&T do not accept trade-ins. Best Buy is not expected to accept 1G iPhones either,” said Vronko. “To our knowledge, Rapid Repair’s Buyback Program is the only such program from a reputable company.”

To take advantage of the Rapid Repair iPhone Buyback Program, interested individuals should go to the program Web page at http://www.rapidrepair.com/iphonebuybackprogram.html. After filling out a
short form, a Rapid Repair sales associate will contact the individual with the information he or she will need to mail in their device. Rapid Repair will accept all standard accessories included with the original iPhone device; no offers are currently available for aftermarket accessories.

For those individuals with a broken or damaged iPhone, Rapid Repair offers an iPhone repair service as well as a full line of iPhone replacement parts. The company also buys damaged iPhones and will soon begin selling used, fully-functional iPhones equipped with 90-day unconditional warranties. To
learn more about Rapid Repair’s sales and service programs for iPhones, iPods and other handheld devices, go to http://www.rapidrepair.com.

About Rapid Repair:
Rapid Repair is dedicated to the service, repair, and modification of all iPod, iPhone, Zune, and other small electronic devices. The national company specializes in small electronics repair, with quality workmanship, speed and efficiency, and offering customer service that is second to none. Rapid
Repair is headquartered in a 3,000 square foot building in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with 15 employees.

iPod and iPhone are registered trademarks of Apple. Other products and trade names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Rapid Repair

http://www.earthtimes.org

The original article can be found here.

They are young alumni who met as coworkers and soon became roommates. But it was inconceivable that Ben Levy, BBA ’04, and Aaron Vronko, BBA ’06, would still be together today as founders of a multi-million dollar iPod repair business. “It all sort of happened by accident in 2003,” says Vronko. “It was my junior year in college and Ben’s senior year. We had both been laid off from a local pharmaceutical company. I moved in with Ben and slept on the couch … we were broke,” says Vronko. “Ben’s iPod was in need of repair, and we were hard-pressed to find a service to fix it. We soon realized that other iPod owners were in the same boat. To save money, we tore apart the device to see if we could fix it ourselves.” Their inquisitiveness paid off as they managed to repair the unit. Then through discussion forum postings on the Internet, and as they searched for further information on parts and repairs, they
began to draw interest from even more iPod owners and businesses who were searching for help with iPod repair. At the
time, the devices were still fairly new— so no one really knew where to go for service. “Within a month, the whole thing
snowballed from repairing 3-5 devices a week to 20-25,” says Levy, “and it wasn’t long before we converted a second bedroom in the apartment to a work area. We both had our brothers working for us to keep up with the rising demand. It was quite evident that we had struck an opportunity in this niche market,” says Levy, who developed the concept that would become iPodMods, and later, Rapid
Repair.
The new company grew 50 percent in its first year and the duo moved the business out of the apartment to an office on West Main St. in Kalamazoo. Last year the business realized between $2.5 and $3 million in sales. Levy serves as the president and CEO and focuses more on the purchasing aspect of the business and scoping out new products to sell. Vronko handles the day-to-day operations. The two have learned a lot firsthand about running a business over the past four years. Levy worked particularly hard in the beginning by reaching out to others and forming relationships with clients. “Some of the clients ended up being some pretty big companies that we still work with today. Back then, there was slim to no competition, but now it’s an everyday battle with 50 to 100 competitors.”
Vronko talks about the important skills required of today’s entrepreneur – adaptability, persistence and passion. “We recognized early on that business environments change quickly and this means we have to have the ability to adapt to markets at the speed of change,” says Vronko. “We expanded to include other devices such as iPhones, Zune, and video game consoles like PlayStation3, Nintendo

Wii and PlayStation PSP.” And as new devices are rolled out, you can be sure that Rapid Repair will be upto-date on what’s out there. Last year, 12 hours prior to the latest iPhone release in the United States, Vronko flew to Paris to be one of the first to pick his up at a midnight iPhone release event—only to tear it apart to see how it was assembled. “Today, there is a real demand for the ‘doit-yourself’ market,” says Vronko. “We could have viewed this as a lost opportunity, but you’ve got to get your head out of the clouds, figure out a way to make operational changes and have the courage and persistence to adapt a plan until it works for you. Through our online assistance, we now sell parts and accessories for these do-ityourselfers.” Vronko says the passion to be an entrepreneur is the most intangible requisite. “If you can’t get up in the morning and be excited about making something happen for your business, you’re in the wrong place,” says Vronko. “You have to wake up knowing that every day you are ultimately responsible for sales, finance, labor, expenses, and every other facet of your own success. While most people understandably prefer the comfort and security of having a limited scope of functions of the company, an entrepreneur sees this responsibility as the  call to arms of each new day.”

As business continues to grow, Vronko and Levy are moving the business to a 4,300 square foot building in early fall. Rapid Repair employs 15 people. The Web address is: www.rapidrepair.com.

Aaron Vronko, BBA ’06
Aaron Vronko’s inquisitiveness was evident at an early age. He admits to always questioning how things worked while growing up and credits his parents for putting up with the question “why” a million or so times. A highly energetic individual, Vronko attended
classes at Grand Valley State University to obtain a Microsoft Systems Engineering certificate while still a junior in high school in Grand Rapids, Mich. He entered WMU as a freshman undecided in his major and admits he “bombed out” the first semester. He took the next semester off and landed a job at the help desk of a local pharmaceutical company where he worked for 2.5 years before losing his position, along with many others, through a merger. “I soon realized that I had to get my life back on track, so I enrolled in
classes at a local community college for a year before transferring back to Western as a management major.” He graduated magna cum laude in 2006 and from then on he began to devote all of his time to the business. Vronko credits his professors at the Haworth College of Business with “teaching me the sound fundamentals of running a good business,” and for “showing me how to advance business development.” Vronko married fellow WMU alumna Lindsay Scott, BS ’08, this summer.

Ben Levy grew up in Kalamazoo, but spent his high school years in Grand Rapids, Mich. Ben was an all-state wrestler. “My coach, Dave
Mills, helped me excel in the sport and also taught me many things about life and ethics,” says Levy. Levy chose Western because
he had a lot of family and friends in Kalamazoo, and it was far enough away from home to live on his own. He started as a computer science major, and then switched to computer information systems. Levy graduated with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration in 2004 with a major in computer information systems.

The original article can be found here.

Earlier this year, reportedly faulty exploding iPhones in Europe caused a whole lot of finger pointing at Apple and its suppliers-but more often than not, iPhones get sent to the repair shop because of user slip-ups.

Aaron Vronko, CEO of Rapid Repair, an iPod and iPhone repair shop, and one of the first technicians to take apart the iPhone 3GS and write a repair guide, has seen his fair share of reasons why broken iPhones need emergency surgery. Here are his six favorites, along with advice on how to triage the problems:

1. “My iPhone went through the washing machine.”

Liquid is public enemy number one of the iPhone. One reader wrote to me that Apple refused to fix her broken iPhone because the Apple technician saw a red line on the base of the phone where the charger attaches. “It’s some kind of liquid submersion indicator,” she says, adding that her new iPhone was never exposed to water, rain or humidity. “They insisted I must have somehow submerged the iPhone in water, voiding all warranties.”

When an iPhone gets caught up in the washing machine, you’ll probably have to kiss it goodbye. “This all-too-common cause has a high mortality rate due to the thorough and prolonged penetration of the water,” Vronko says.

2. “I plugged my iPhone into my car charger, and it started to smoke.”

Chances are you’ve fried iPhone circuits because of a power surge. The 12 volt electrical system of cars used primarily for headlights and interior lights was not designed to handle the loads of modern cars with their big stereos, myriad gadgets and electronic features. “It’s common to have power surges simply because we’re overloading a small capacity system,” Vronko says.

The good news is that the iPhone probably can be repaired cheaply, unlike the iPhone in the washing machine. In the iPhone, the dock connector acts as a kind of protective layer to the main board, and so a power surge will likely fry just the dock connector. You’ll need an inexpensive dock connector replacement, Vronko says. Of course, you’ll still have to go a couple of days without your iPhone.

A big power surge, of course, can make it to the main board. In these cases, it’s bye-bye iPhone. “It wouldn’t make economic sense to fix it,” Vronko says.

Vronko doesn’t make many recommendations about iPhone accessories, save one: Buy brand-name chargers because they’ll have a better fuse to protect the iPhone. A brand-name company will also be more likely to help you out if its product causes damage to your iPhone.

Also, if you’re intent on using a car charger, try not to have the iPhone plugged in when you’re starting or turning off a car. That’s usually when electrical spikes occur, Vronko says.

3. “I dropped the iPhone and the screen cracked.”

You may pull an iPhone from your pocket or bag 40 times in a day. Its thin shape and slippery plastic shell is a disaster in the making. I’ve probably dropped my iPhone once every other week, luckily on carpet, and thus had to replace the screen’s protective film or live with the scratches on the back. With a drop on concrete, though, it’s easy to see the potential for cracked screens.

A cracked screen is fixable, says Vronko. The combined LCD-digitizer screen module on the iPhone 2G will need to be replaced. On the iPhone 3G and 3GS, only the digitizer usually needs replacement, Vronko says.

4. “My iPhone won’t charge.”

When an iPhone won’t charge, consumer fears may turn to the highly publicized iPhone battery lemon phenomenon. More often than not, however, the problem is far less dramatic. “This is usually the result of a misaligned dock cable or a foreign object being forced into the dock connector, causing damage and requiring that this module be replaced,” Vronko says.

The advice is simple: take care when plugging the cable into the iPhone. Also, make sure it’s the right cable. Yes, people often try to force in a wrong cable into the socket.

Along these lines, some iPhone owners complain that their iPhone won’t charge fully-that is, the iPhone indicates a less-than-100 percent charge. Yet the problem might be that the chip on the battery and the chip on the device measuring the juice flowing back and forth are out of sync.

Vronko advises customers to run the iPhone completely dead and then charge it until it can’t take anymore charge. Repeat this process, “and this should sync up the chips,” he says.

5. “I tried to repair my iPhone myself, and now it doesn’t work.”

This common response often is accompanied with a bag full of parts and screws, says Vronko. Chances are, if you play Dr. Fix-It, you will do additional damage to the iPhone.

While we all took apart bikes or computers when we were kids, a person must know his limitations. Seek professional help when dealing with high-tech devices like the iPhone.

6. “My son (or daughter) says nothing happened, it just stopped working.”

There are just two kinds of parents, Vronko jokes: the parent who believes the teenager, and the parent who knows better. It’s a good bet that the son or daughter let water get into the iPhone, dropped it, or jammed the wrong cable into the iPhone dock connector.

Earlier this year, an 18-year-old French teenager complained his eye was injured when his girlfriend’s iPhone overheated and the device’s touchscreen shattered, according to a report by the AFP news agency.

After researching the case, Apple responded: The glass cracked “due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone,” and not internal heat, Alan Hely, a London-based spokesman for Apple Europe said.

The original article can be found here.

After high volume of complaints it asks some users to install power-logging software

Continued complaints by iPhone owners about fast-draining batteries have prompted Apple to ask some users to install power-logging software on their smartphones in an effort to diagnose the problem, according to messages on the company’s support forum.

“Some of you may already have been informed via e-mail [by Apple], but for those of you that haven’t, I can assure you that Apple is trying to get to the bottom of this problem,” said a user identified as “mikefradette” Friday on a support thread dedicated to poor battery performance. “Let’s just say they have selected a beta group to help solve this issue.”

Others reported that technical support representatives had asked them to install Apple software that logs application usage and power consumption. Apple technical support has also used an 11-item questionnaire in its discussions with users in an attempt to figure out the cause of rapid battery drain, including questions are about Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and e-mail use.

“There’s still no smoking gun,” said Aaron Vronko, the CEO of Michigan-based Rapid Repair, an iPhone repair shop. “But the processor in the iPhone 3GS can use 50% more power in some situations than its predecessor. I’d bet that Apple missed some key interactions between the iPhone’s software and the processor in the last update that causes it to over-utilize the CPU, especially since [the complaints] came after the software update.”

Vronko was referring to the iPhone 3.1 update that Apple shipped two weeks ago.

Most of the users grousing on the Apple support forum who identified their iPhone’s model said they were using the 3GS, although some said they had seen battery life drop off on their iPhone 3G smartphones as well.

In fact, complaints about battery consumption started in June, when “http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135181/iPhone_users_harangue_Apple_over_battery_life?”>Apple rolled out the iPhone 3.0 software.

The clamor grew even louder after users installed iPhone 3.1, and shows no sign of abating. One thread on the topic, which debuted Sept. 10, has more than 570 individual posts, and has been read by over 40,000 people, an extremely high number for Apple’s forum.

“I’m glad this is an actual problem. I thought I was just going crazy,” said “iPhil” Monday afternoon on that well-trafficked thread. “After [iPhone] 3.1, battery sometimes doesn’t even last an entire day with no additional talk than I had using 3.0.”

“The day after I installed the 3.1 firmware, everything changed. I have to charge the iPhone in the middle of the day to be able to have enough battery to get home,” added “help with iPhone.”

“Same problem here,” reported “cathjock12345″ on the same thread Monday. “The battery was completely drained after about 1 hour of Internet use, 10 text messages, and 2 quick (5 minute-ish) phone calls over the course of 5 hours. Unacceptable.”

“I think this is exactly the kind of thing you’d see from an unexpected software interaction with the processor,” argued Vronko today.

But Apple’s doing the right thing by asking iPhone owners how they’re using their smartphones, and requesting that some install logging software.

“Some of these [people] are probably heavy application users, though they may think they’re light users,” said Vronko. “But [the logging software] is likely looking not just at the applications being used and the power consumption, but recording down to the last processing thread what’s occurring.”

Vronko was optimistic that Apple would get to the root of the problem. “Diagnostics like that should make it pretty easy for them to narrow it down,” he said.

The original article can be found here.

The original article can be found here.

The Flip line of video cameras – with more than 2 million sold in the past two years – has been the dominant entry in the nascent low-cost camcorder market.

The original article can be found here.

One user said he was surprised but not overly concerned by his “warm-to-pretty-hot” iPhone, while another said her 3GS got so hot that she was afraid to hold it up against her face. Is a recall in order?The story first cropped over the weekend, with a few owners of the white iPhone 3GS noticing that their handsets were running a bit too hot—so hot, in fact, that brownish patches (scorch marks?) were starting to appear on the glossy white backs of their phones.

Then a few tech editors began feeling the heat. Melissa J. Perenson of PC World wrote that her black iPhone 3GS got “very, very hot” if she used it while it was plugged into its AC charger—indeed, “toasty doesn’t even describe hot surprisingly hot it got … it was too hot to even put the phone against my face.”

Next, cranky PC World columnist David Coursey noticed that his iPhone felt “warm-to-pretty-hot” on “several occasions,” although he doesn’t feel the overheating problems are “terribly serious, just surprising.” Meanwhile, a MacNN writer with a white iPhone 3GS “encountered the [overheating] problem independently,” and confirmed some “discoloration” on the back.

Wired’s Gadget Lab talked to Aaron Vronko of Rapid Repair, who thinks “faulty battery cells” are the problem and that a recall might be necessary. “If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it’s probably going to be spread to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more,” Vronko told Wired.

OK, but how widespread is the problem, really? Hard to say. For its part, Wired pegs the figure at a “small number.” I have the black 32GB iPhone 3GS, and so far I haven’t noticed any overheating problems at all (or at least nothing out of the ordinary). I also did a quick check of the support forums on Apple.com and Macrumors and only found a few sporadic threads—in fact, I’d say people are more upset about the 3GS’s battery life than overheating issues.

Still, you never know, and the problem might blow up in Apple’s face—literally—if someone’s iPhone 3GS battery explodes.

As Coursey writes, “A mass iPhone recall isn’t likely, but it isn’t impossible, either. Just see what happens if an iPhone catches fire.” Well said.

So, any iPhone 3GS owners out there having any overheating problems? Seeing any brown discoloration on the while model? Let us know.

The original article can be found here.