I had to send my iPhone 3G for repair/review last week because of a dead pixel. Well, the pixel wasn’t completely dead, it was more like a walking dead, a pixel zombie if you will. It started right out of the box, when I noticed a pixel was just green (see photo below). A green pixel just sitting there, mocking me. And then… It went away. Go figure.

I spoke with the sales lady at the local Telia store (yeah right, like I have a local Telia store… I have to make an hour drive to find one) on the phone, and she said that because I have such a drive to make each time, she would hook me up with a replacement straight up, so I don’t have to drive back and forth. But by the time I got there, the pixel had gone away, and I had nothing to show for.

So I went back home, went on with my life in a normal paste, and then the pixel went green again. So I ran to get my camera and took a bunch photos and shot some videos to have as proof, so I could have the iPhone replaced, and then called the Telia lady back up and told her all about it. She said that the photo proof would do just fine in case the pixel goes away again (which it did) and I drove over there once again.

But now, for some reason, her promise of a replacement right there in the store, had become null and void. Just like her promise of a loaner, which she promised me before the instant replacement deal, for the 14 day wait to get the iPhone back, and I got slightly ticked off. But I kept my cool as one does, and I gave her my iPhone 3G with its limp pixel and went on home preparing for the wait and to use whatever phone I had lying around (I landed on the Sony Ericsson K750i). And today, a mere 8 days after I took it to the store, I received a text message saying my iPhone was returned from the undead.

Though earlier than expected, it was not a moment too soon. I have missed it so. Productivity went down, and the feeling of being naked went up by the hour. Welcome home my friend. The worst thing about this I think, is the fact that the iTunes Backup application does not remember placements of application icons, so now I have to rearrange the whole thing. That’ll set me back a while. Also, WEP/WPA keys isn’t stored in the backups, which I suppose would be considered more secure than actually storing them, but with no copy/paste… it’s a bitch. I truly, truly despise having to type WEP/WPA keys. Email passwords aren’t stored either. All good, I wouldn’t wanna have them stored.

Oh, one more thing for you to consider if you’re returning/selling your iPhone. Resetting it to default, meaning erasing all the data and settings and what not, took roughly two flippin’ hours! I had not expected that, so standing there in the store, I had to tell the nice lady I’d get back to her after a few cups of coffee at the nearest coffee shop. Which turned in to a very nice lunch, yummy taco pie. Good coffee. Good company.

Google announced yesterday that they are rolling out some Google Labs features for Gmail, which is very exciting! The gadgets include Calendar, Docs, Mouse gestures (like the famous All In One Gestures for Firefox), Signature tweaks (to place your signature above the quoted text when replying, very much wanted by many Gmail users) and many more.

A few gadgets that truly offers more usability are “Navbar drag and drop“, which simply allows you to rearrange the gadgets on your left hand side. This gadget, or more of a plugin if you ask me, is a true miracle worker. At least in my opinion. Being able to choose what gadgets to sit where makes all this so much better. Another gadget that offers more customization for your Gmail inbox is “Custom Label Colors”, which allows the users to personalize Labels, making it slightly better from a usability standpoint.

Lastly, “Mark as Read Button”, here to save the day! Or at least 1.8 seconds of your life. Per click. This gadget places a Mark as Read button right in your inbox. So instead of hiding under the More drop down, you can access it directly, saving you one click. This may sound dorky to some, but it actually make sense from a productivity standpoint, and I can honestly say I’ve wished for this a number of times.

In their announcement they mention a possible performance loss using these, as they are still working on optimizing the gadgets, but that they are keeping a close eye on the performance as they move forward. Well, the last thing we want is a slow email application. They also say that some of them does not work with https, which could introduce some issues for some. You’ll see some error messages if you run in to this.

They also say they are aware of the lack of scalability of gadget real estate: “We’re not tied to the left-nav as a primary way to extend Gmail — in fact we think it is relatively limited and doesn’t offer scalable real estate.” which is nice, that they approach this publicly. Adding in the ability to stretch columns, or maximize them, or possibly pop out a gadget could be cool. But let’s just be happy they finally allows us to implement Calendar huh?