Hi all. I hope you’re all doing well. I ran into some technical difficulty with my phone recently. Not particularly interesting, perhaps. But, it was the first time I’ve ever had a serious issue with a phone, and it was also, therefore, the first time I had to deal with phone repair. I thought I’d talk a bit about that today. Enjoy:
I was relatively late to the smartphone game. Considering the first iPhone came out in 2007, when I was a very young man, you might have expected that I’d snap one up straight away. But I didn’t. This is even more baffling if you know how tech-savvy I was in general back then as well. However, this nerd wasn’t for turning. Yet.
To this day, I don’t know why. I don’t remember making a conscious decision not to get a smartphone. I just didn’t get one. And on and on it went, weeks becoming months, months becoming years.
If memory serves, I got my first one in 2011. And, even then, I only got one because the company I worked for gave me one. It’s hard to escape the reality that I was very passive in all areas of smartphones. The company I worked for happened to have a deal in place with Samsung, so the phone naturally ended up being a Samsung. I’ve only ever had Samsung smartphones since.
So, even in something as ‘important’ as picking the device manufacturer and/or the operating system, I didn’t make a choice; I just took what was handed to me.
Perhaps this is why I don’t get too overly invested in the whole Apple vs. Android thing. For some people, they will die on the hill that one OS is better than the other. Obviously, I am Team Android, but I’m also fairly certain that all phones, particularly in this day and age, are all much of a much. They all basically do the same things and cost a lot of money.
Anyway, I’ve been incredibly lucky with phones over the past 14 years. I’m not someone who has ever kept my phone in a phone case. Mostly because I think they make phones look ugly. But, I’m also not that clumsy. I’ve never once had a cracked phone screen. Whether that is down to luck or judgement, I’ll let you decide.
I came to the end of a phone contract towards the end of last year, and I decided to splurge (a little). For a couple of years, I had been intrigued by foldable smartphones. They seemed so cool, and, naturally, Samsung seemed to be at the forefront. So, I decided to go for it!
It was the best decision I’ve made… for about four months. I went for the Galaxy Z Flip 6, and, to give it its dues, it was everything I had hoped for and more in those first few months. I loved it. For the first time in my life, I was being asked about my phone on a near-weekly basis. I’d be using it to do contactless payment, and the guy behind the till would ask me what the phone was like, or would simply comment on how cool it was. This, or similar, must have happened at least a dozen times.
Then, completely out of the blue, one morning, I opened up the phone, and the screen stayed black for a few seconds. Not a biggie, but I had grown accustomed to the inside (main) screen waking as soon as I opened the phone. I don’t tend to panic in these situations. I figured it was either a one-off or something that would resolve itself.
How wrong I was. Not only did the issue not go away, it got worse. It went from a black screen for a few seconds to a black screen for maybe a minute. It went from that to the screen staying black indefinitely. I could sometimes trick the phone by doing something on the front (small) screen, like opening an email, and then opening the phone. This would sometimes awaken the main screen.
If that didn’t work, then sometimes restarting the phone fixed it. The frustrating thing about it was that once the main screen was working, it would stay working. But, as soon as I closed it, the problems started up again.
Glass half full, I suppose if you’re going to have a phone where the screen stops working, it’s handy for it to have a small screen on the front (when folded). I was able to do basic things like send text messages or look at Google maps. But it was far from ideal.
Naturally, I looked the issue up online to try to find a solution. Nearly everything I read pointed to a hardware issue, but I convinced myself that maybe it was a software thing. I updated the phone OS version. Didn’t help. I updated/removed any apps that could have been buggy. Nada. I did a soft reset of the phone. I even attempted starting it in safe mode. No joy.
The only thing I didn’t try – and, if you keep reading, you will see that this was a very good decision on my part – was a factory reset. For those who don’t know, a factory reset completely wipes the device and essentially puts the device back to a fresh device straight from the factory. So, it would have been a Hail Mary, to say the least.
I lived with the issue for about a month before my frustration boiled over. I had no choice but to get it fixed. The reason I procrastinated for so long was due to a combination of fear and laziness. I feared that it would be a difficult process for getting the phone looked at. I feared that, even though the phone ought to have been under warranty, there would be costs involved. I feared that I would be without my phone for a long time, and – even when I did get it back – the repair people would have factory reset it, and I would have had to set it all up again. And I couldn’t really be bothered. As it turned out, all of my fears were unfounded.
The process could not have been simpler. I had assumed that I would have to take the phone into a Samsung store. This is where one of the big benefits of having an iPhone started nagging at me; there are Apple stores everywhere. For Samsung, not so much. Fortunately, as long as I took the phone to a Samsung-approved repair shop (which was easily searchable on Samsung’s website), I was covered. I ended up choosing an EE store not too far from where I live.
So, that was the ‘where’ sorted. I now needed to worry about the ‘how’. As I admitted at the top of this blog, I didn’t know much about phone repair. But I knew enough to know that my phone would likely be wiped. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a pain. Luckily, my cautiousness (finally!) paid off.
Every time I’ve upgraded my phone, I’ve always kept my old phone “just in case.” You see so many adverts – particularly targeted online ads when you purchase a new phone online – telling you that you can sell your old phone for cash. I’ve always resisted the temptation, in case anything were to go wrong with my new phone. The best part of two decades later, and that decision came up aces.
Because I still had my old phone, it was easy enough to back up my current phone to it. Samsung has this feature – and I’m sure other manufacturers have something similar – called Smart Switch. You would usually use it to copy over data/settings to a new phone, but it works just as well in the other direction, too.
Phone backed up, it was time to drop it off at EE. They confirmed that it was under warranty and wouldn’t cost me anything to get it repaired. Result. And then this is where my final assumption about phone repair made me appear foolish, but it also made me happy. I’d assumed that the phone would have to be sent off for this repair. Imagine my surprise and delight when the bloke in the shop said he had the part in stock, and it should be ready to pick up within a couple of hours.
Everything was coming up Millhouse. One final thing to do before handing the phone over. Not to sound like a parrot, but Samsung has this feature called Maintenance Mode. Yes, I’m sure other phones have this as well. The idea of this is that you can hand your device over for repair, but the repairer only gets access to the areas they need, rather than having free reign.
I don’t know if Maintenance Mode always does this, but in this particular case, my phone didn’t get wiped. I got home with my phone, turned it on, and was expecting to have to set everything up again. Instead, I found a phone that was still in Maintenance Mode. I switched Maintenance Mode off, et voilà: my phone was my phone. Everything was exactly how I had left it. Even the episodes of Reacher I had downloaded on my Prime Video app were still there. It was at this point that I was extremely relieved that I hadn’t attempted a factory reset myself.
Overall, the repair process was a piece of cake. I don’t know if this is standard fare or if I just got very lucky with this particular repair. I suppose some people wouldn’t necessarily have a quickly accessible phone shop near to their house. I guess on another day, perhaps the part needed to fix my phone wouldn’t have been in stock, so the process could have taken days. And maybe another repair shop – or maybe even a different repairer in the same shop – would have wiped my phone.
Do let me know in the comments if you’ve had recent bad experiences with phone repair, as I’d love to know if it is always as easy as this.
I’ll leave you with one final part of my experience that I found funny. Before I handed my phone over in the shop, the guy helping me produced two contracts for me to sign. One for them and one for me. It had my personal details on it, the details of my phone, along with the issue I was hoping to get fixed.
As I was about to leave the shop, the guy impressed upon me the importance of bringing my copy of the contract back. He said that without it, it could be difficult to get my phone back, so I’d better not lose it. I folded it up small and put it in my wallet for safe keeping.
Upon receiving a text message saying that my phone repair was finished (my SIM card was in my old phone at this point), I headed back to the shop to pick it up. While waiting, I retrieved the contract from my wallet. After a couple of minutes, a man appears from a door and hands me the phone. Now, bear in mind that this is a different man to the one who had helped me earlier. I ask him if he needs to see the paperwork. And he goes, “Nah, you’re alright, mate.”
I’m not saying that you could potentially get a free phone by walking into an EE store and simply asking for ‘your’ repaired phone. But I’m not not saying it. Food for thought…
Thanks for reading. I’m sorry it’s been so long. Just to be absolutely clear, I’m not actually suggesting anybody try to scam EE out of a phone. If EE goes bust, they’ll be no more Kevin Bacon adverts for us! And no one wants that… Until next time everybody. Take care. I’m out of here quicker than Jazz being thrown out by Uncle Phil. Aaaaarghhhh!
Rob Recommends
Reacher – TV – 7/10
Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted this show mentioned above. I’m actually not finished watching it yet. I’m halfway through the latest season. I usually like to finish watching something before I review it, but this is the only thing I’ve come close to finishing recently.
This is a difficult one to rate because it sort of depends on how you approach it. If you’re expecting a highbrow or high concept show, you’ll likely be disappointed. I went into this with my eyes wide open, pretty sure what sort of show it would be. And I’m enjoying it.
It’s kind of a modern Western. A mysterious stranger turns up in a small town and helps to uncover a nefarious plot with the local law enforcement. It’s very ‘wish fulfilment’ in many ways, with there being a lot of action and a surprising level of violence.
The lead, Alan Richardson, who plays Reacher, is impressively large. If I were to nitpick, he’s almost comically large at times. It’s sometimes hard to take it seriously when there is a character who looks like he belongs in a comic book. Don’t let that put you off, though.
If you’re into action or Westerns, this one will probably be up your alley. I don’t think there’s much in it for your average viewer, though. I like it, but no more than that.
A Rob Blog 