Wesley's Tool-Box

This post should have been up much earlier, but thanks to a week-long business trip it was inadvertently delayed. Anyways, going back to the day I got the Apple Watch two weeks ago, I noticed that the longer sport band was pre-installed on my 42mm version. I have a relatively thin wrist, around 170 to 175mm circumference, which is at the lower end of the Apple's 165 - 195mm range for most men. So I felt that a shorter one would do just fine.

Switching the band was quite easy. I just pressed the button at the back of the watch near the band and the band was slid out smoothly. Then I inserted the shorter band into place, after which the button clicked and the band was locked.


With the right band in its place, I put the watch on my wrist. Initially, I had the pin on the 3rd notch from the end as you can see here. After a day, I felt that the watch was put on too tight - there was a bit of an ache where the watch's back pressed on my wrist. So the pin was put on the 2nd notch thereafter.

This was much more comfortable, as the Apple Watch was able to shift around the wrist more. But this occasionally made the watch go into the locked state because it thought that it was no longer touching the wrist (more about locking in another post).

Apple Watch first arrived at the hands of the regular users of the first wave countries in April 24, 2015. But it would not be sold at the Apple Store for the first few weeks, so either you had to get your order practically within seconds of the start of the pre-ordering back in April 10, or buy it at a handful of retailers that did get to sell them in the store at the launch. Because of this difficulty, apparently only a trickle have made over to Korea as of this writing, with the official launch date still unclear.

Meanwhile, my American friend Andy accidentally ordered two Apple Watches during the pre-order phase. His first choice, a silver Apple Watch Sport with green sport band, was slated to arrive between April 24 and May 8, but arrived at the launch day (April 24). He's been enjoying it since. His second choice, a space gray Apple Watch Sport with black sport band, was to arrive between May 13 and 27, but it arrived much sooner, on April 27. I asked him to ship the second one over to me, as I would pay him fully. He gladly accepted the offer, and sent it to Korea just after receiving it. Children's Day delayed the arrival a bit, but it finally came into my hands today.


I got to make this unboxing video soon after. You can see how one hand was recording the action and the other was furiously trying to open the box. Once everything was open, the full extent of what came with the package became visible. There's of course the watch itself, and the shorter lower strap for people with thinner wrist like me was also there. The magnetic wireless charger and a user manual was also included.


In the coming days, I'll post incremental reviews of the watch as I try to blend this into my daily life.

I had been using my iPhone 6 Plus with the repaired screen for a few weeks without issues. But one day, I put the phone down on the desk a bit hard... and the screen somehow cracked like crazy even though the screen was facing up. I suppose the previous incident weakened the screen already and this was sort of a final blow.

You can see that the cracks occurred near the original hairline cracks and spread dramatically. Much of the original cracks were held together by the glue, but the nearby areas were already vulnerable to crack anyway. While the touch screen functionality was not affected, the cracks undermined the safety of my fingers and the visibility. It was time to try the Screen Glue again.

I've cracked the back side of an iPhone when it was made of glass, but never the front side. That changed with iPhone 6 Plus - the screen got hairline cracks when the device was dropped from about 50cm (1 1/2 feet) high onto a brick road. Getting an iPhone bought overseas serviced by an Apple designated service center in Korea isn't possible due to local warranty (as opposed to world-wide), so I looked for other ways to get this fixed.


This is when I found this "Screen Glue" manufactured by DiYPRO which claimed to fix screen cracks by filling the gaps with a UV-curing glue. The package, which costs about US$17, comes with 5 ml of the glue and a sheet of instructions. Frankly, the price seemed steep for the amount of glue provided, but if it could get the job done, I thought it wasn't too bad. So I bought a bottle and got to work.

There's been an uptick in interest in viewing contents in 3D due to many movies being created and shown in 3D format and televisions adding 3D support to accommodate them. Unfortunately, you need wear a specialized pair of glasses in order to see these 3D contents, making the experience cumbersome. Hence the glasses-free methods are being sought after. There have been some success with this in the handhelds due to needing only one set of eyes to care for, such as the Nintendo 3DS.

While Nintendo 3DS employs an active solution that uses head-tracking, a passive method that uses lenticular lenses exists as well. EyeFly3D is bringing the latter to the smartphones, so that anyone with a compatible device can enjoy 3D contents without wearing any glasses. It's certainly an intriguing concept, and as luck would have it, TodaysPPC provided me with a sample that was compatible with my iPhone 5S with the condition that I write a review. So I eagerly took upon the request.

As you can see here, the EyeFly3D package looks nearly the same as what you would get when you order a set of a regular screen protection film. That's because the product itself is just that - a screen protection film. It just has the added benefit of enabling glasses-free 3D viewing with the use of the lenticular lenses. To avoid redundancy and maximize the effect of the lenses, one is instructed to remove any existing screen protectors before installation.


You can see the blurring effects of the lenticular lenses here, which makes it evident that the regular film covers the area outside where the display is supposed to be. You'll also notice the black tape with the EyeFly3D logo on it that covers the bottom of the film. This is an important feature that we'll see in action shortly.