1.  Go to user–>library–>caches–>com.apple.iPhoto–>Cache.db and trash it.
2.  Reboot the iPhone.

Everything’s importing now like it should.

Otherwise, I’m actually rather happy with the new iPhone.  It’s noticeably faster than the 3GS, and the camera is a significant improvement.  (Of course, more internal storage would facilitate taking and storing bigger photos and videos, but hey.) The flash is more useful than I thought it’d be, though mostly as a flashlight, since its being so close to the lens makes for some great red-eye. Multitasking, gimped as it is, is actually pretty useful and well-implemented.  The antenna issue exists, but in practice has yet to be an issue for me. Yes, the bumper alleviates it to some extent, but doesn’t “solve” the issue as some would have you believe. Of course, the bumper also has a way of muffling your voice due to the little echo chamber it places right atop the microphone opening.

Anyway, since the first iPhone 4 I picked up got scratched so quickly, even while being carried mostly in my hand or in my jeans pocket with only guitar picks and a plastic usb thumb drive (that I haven’t used much in the last year or so thanks to Dropbox, now that I think about it…), I decided it would behoove me to get a screen protector. Gorilla Glass, my ass.

I read a bunch of reviews and wound up going with the only product I could find in person that offered front and back protection:  Zagg invisibleSHIELD Dry. On the box it says “The original military grade, clear protective film”, except in all caps and orange text.  They’re being half-honest.  The front screen protector is actually pretty nice and clear. However, the back is a mess:

“Why would they want us to put such an ugly thing on our iPhones?”, I wondered. And then I emailed the president of Zagg.

Hi,

I just got the dry application invisibleSHIELD full body screen protector for my iPhone 4.  I installed it fairly well (only slightly askew so the home button isn’t quite in the center of the circle…), though there was an issue with the instructions from the applicator staying on the shield.  I attached a picture below that shows the problem.  I was able to wipe it most of it off with some difficulty and some moist paper towels, but I was surprised that I had to do that. There are some places where the cover is now scratched as a result of this scrubbing.

The other issue is with the protector for the back of the phone.  It is not clear, nor is it invisible.  It’s this terribly ugly textured/matted thing.  Nowhere on the packaging for this product, nor on your website anywhere, is this described to be as such. I expected the back to be the same lovely crystal-clear product as the front. Why is it different and worse?  Did I get a defective item?  Is there any way I could get a replacement set that doesn’t have these problems?

Sincerely,
Mike Grosshandler

We’ll see if I get a response.  Has anyone else experienced this?

*EDIT*

Well, not an hour after I emailed him, Cameron Leishman, from the Office of the President of Zagg Inc. replied to me.  Impressive!

Hello Mike,

Thank you very much for your email, as well as your purchase of the invisibleSHIELD Dry! From the picture you provided, it looks like you have not removed the layer above the invisibleSHIELD. This layer has the alignment pattern printed on it, and is designed to come up. You can actually remove this layer at the corner indicated by the “Remove with Tab” and arrow printing. You can gently use your fingernail to separate the two layers, and then carefully peel up the alignment layer.

If this is not the case, please let me know at your earliest convenience and I will be more than happy to get a new invisibleSHIELD Dry sent out to you!

All the best,
Cameron Leishman

I replied:

Hi Cameron,

Thank you very much for the quick reply! I assure you, I removed the alignment layer as it was significantly larger than the remaining cover.  Right?  The printing was left behind on the actual shield, I’m sure of it. However, like I said, I was able to remove it by scrubbing it with a moist paper towel for several minutes, though that process left scratches on the shield.  You didn’t address my other question, though, which was about the BACK cover.  Would you be so kind as to let me know if that leathery/matted texture is the way it’s supposed to be, even though that’s not how it is described anywhere?  Don’t you have a back cover available that is just like the front one – clear and smooth? Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about with the back cover: (same picture from above)

If you can send a replacement set, I’d be most appreciative.  Here is my address:

Thanks!
-Mike

*EDIT 2*

His reply:

Hello Mike,

Thank you for your email. There are three layers of the invisibleSHIELD Dry, other than the original backing paper you have already removed: The top layer, which you is significantly larger than the invisibleSHIELD and the screen itself. The second layer is what you see on your screen–the alignment template This is identical in size to the invisibleSHIELD. The third, and final layer, is the invisibleSHIELD itself (i.e. it is under the design template you have noticed). This makes it highly unlikely that the template has transferred its design to the invisibleSHIELD, especially in a manner as detailed and unblemished as your pictures indicate.

In addition, the texture of the invisibleSHIELD Dry for the back of the device is different from the front. You will notice that it is slightly “rough” to the touch, almost akin to leather. This is an intrinsic property of the invisibleSHIELD Dry, and is a texture that many customers actually prefer to the smoothness of the regularly installed invisibleSHIELD. If you were interested in the purchase of a normal invisibleSHIELD for the back of your iPhone 4, I’d be more than happy to offer it at 50% off. Please let me know if this is something you would be interested in.

Please let me know if you have any other questions!

And mine:

I tried, with my fingernail, to see if I could tease out two separate layers as you described, but it still seems this is just one piece remaining here on the front.  I followed the directions in this video here on your website:

http://www.zagg.com/support/dryinstallvideo.php

That video does not describe the 3rd layer you mention. It just says to peel the application film away from the shield, and shows it all coming up in one motion. It is impossible to separate the design template from the shield as you describe, if they are even two distinct pieces by design. All I’ve accomplished in trying in two of the corners is getting fingerprints UNDER the shield and further scratching the screen protector!  If there’s some secret method to separating the two pieces, please let me know.  As I said, I was able to remove the white overlay paint from the screen protector, at the expense of slightly scratching the screen, so the phone is usable as it is now, but it’s not ideal, especially for $30!

As for the back, that’s interesting.  People really prefer that?  Well, personal preferences aside, it’d be supremely helpful if somewhere on the packaging AND on your website that difference was clearly and obviously disclosed. As it is, the product is very misleading. I noticed now that it is mentioned briefly in the video, but that goes by quickly and the point isn’t made obvious. It should be listed in the product description with a photograph.  I can live with the textured back, but I may not have bought your product if I’d known it’d be like that.

I’d still appreciate a replacement front shield.

-Mike

*EDIT 3*

Then:

…It sounds like the invisibleSHIELD stayed on the backing when you first began your installation. I would be more than happy to provide you with a replacement at no cost to you.

So, score one for good customer service. Hopefully the replacement works better!

I googled and found a few blogs saying you could fix this by copying a bunch of mp3s to the phone and then deleting them.  I was able to copy about 50mb of stuff to it, but after deleting them, the space vanished as before.  It seems to get gobbled up by that secret orange “Other” category.  I tried deleting the “trash” in my email, clearing the cache in Safari, but nothing helped.

So I am now doing a restore, and hoping for the best…  I’ll update when it’s finished.

—

Well, it finished.  And I have plenty of free space left…  14.3GB!  It seems to have reset everything back to the default, only leaving the “original” iPhone apps on their respective “pages”…  My email accounts seem to be fine, at least.  I’m now trying to re-sync all the other apps I had on there, then I’ll worry about all the music and photos, etc…  Yikes.  Restore, my ass!

—

So, that process completed, and now I seem to have all my applications back on the phone, though they are all over the place.  I’ll have to put them back where they should go by hand, I guess.  It did copy my podcasts back.  Still have 13.79GB of free space, but I also don’t have any music or synced photos.  I’m gonna have to copy all the music back by hand.  This sucks.  The camera roll is there, at least.  I’m also noticing now that “other” category is showing 227.8MB of usage.  What is that stuff?

I’m still not convinced that this will have done any good in solving the original problem.  Gotta love it.

Relevent lesson learned?  Take screen shots of all your app pages before doing anything stupid like this.

All four corners protected?  Check.

Extends battery life more than double?  Check.

Isn’t completely fugly?  Check.

Lets you charge and sync via standard mini-USB port?  Check.

Next Friday, I’ma be all over this, barring any terrible reviews or completely ridiculous pricing.  It does look a little thick in some of the photos, but maybe that’ll be ok…

*Edit*  Well, reviews are in, and not so great, and this thing is $100.  Forget that!  Next?

It didn’t get destroyed or anything, and is still perfectly functional, but it’s now got some more personality.  So maybe the case did protect it a little. Still looking for a good leather or neoprene replacement that covers all 4 corners of this thing…

(This is a followup to this post.)

Now, when I got my phone back in July, I made sure to pick up a good case for it, since I’m prone to dropping my phones.  I had an Incase case for my last phone (a vx8300), and it was great.  It did its job of protecting the phone when it fell from my hands, off my desk, out of my car, wherever.

However, this time around, the story is different.  When I got the case, I was a bit wary that it left the top corners of the phone exposed, but figured that most of the phone is still protected at least. What were the odds that of all the ways a phone can fall, it’d fall on its two Achilles Heels?  Every time.

I don’t yet have a photo of the damage done to my phone, but I’ll get that up later today.  Suffice it to say for now that there are two relatively large gouges on each exposed section.  Perhaps that end of the phone is slightly heavier, minutely toying with the likelihoods. The phone still works just fine, but looks worse for the wear.  Luckily, the camera area wasn’t affected.  The funny thing is that the bottom corners of the case don’t seem to have even touched the ground.  It’s not that the case protected it, it’s just that the phone doesn’t even seem to ever fall on that side!  (Though I guess it did protect a little, since the phone also skidded across the wet concrete after the fall, and the back would have been torn up quite a bit from that.  But still.)

I’m now in the market for a new case.  I otherwise like the form and materials in the Incase case, but there’s no good reason why they couldn’t have extended the material another centimeter or so.  Any suggestions?

*Edit*  I posted photos of the damage here.

On another note, I miss the “Install all updates” thing.  It’s sort of a pain to have to manually install each update one at a time.

I just tested it out from my Vista pc and it works really well.  I dragged some mp3s, a pdf, a quicktime .mov, and a .wmv file from windows to the shared folder on the phone using windows explorer and they copied very quickly (I’m online on the phone via wifi).  The mp3s and the pdf opened and/or played (as appropriate) from the phone.  The .mov file curiously played back the audio with a stutter and didn’t show the video.  Maybe it was the file?  The .wmv didn’t play, so the phone is only good for storing and transporting those, not playing them.  The app supports a folder structure, which is nice for organizing stuff.  You can also access the files on the phone from a web browser, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to add/remove them that way, just to view them.

You can’t touch or see the iPhone’s internal file structure, mind you, this just creates a shared folder on your phone, a little sandbox.  But that sandbox will be very handy for transporting files.  If only Apple allowed you to delete music files directly from the phone to make space when you needed it…

You can only access the files on your phone from your PC when you are actively running the app on the phone, which makes sense as per Apple’s “nothing runs in the background” rule.

There is a neat use of this which I could see being very helpful.  Here’s a possible scenario:

Say you’re out on the road and a friend wants to send you an MP3 of a cool new song (or a spreadsheet or word doc or whatever) he’s working on.  Sure, he could email the file to you, and you could play/open it over the air via gmail or something, but now, you open the app, he could just use the “Public” folder that the app lets you use (you can also disable it), and he can drag and drop the file right onto your phone from his computer.  Windows or Mac.

There’s a better write-up here on lifehacker if you want to see pictures and stuff.

This little phone keeps getting more and more useful.  Hopefully Apple won’t break this with the next update.

http://www.andrewgrant.org/2008/03/30/how-to-sync-an-iphone-with-two-or-more-computers.html

*One thing to watch out for: my Apps got ALL messed up (read: deleted) when I tried to sync them on the computer on which I wasn’t doing so before.  I had to reinstall them all by hand one at a time since iTunes helpfully removed them all.  So, maybe don’t try to sync them on both computers, just the music for now…