The year was 2000. Text messaging had just been introduced and the early adopters of mobile phones were still perceived as yuppies. If your phone was damaged you took it in to be repaired and it would take a few days if you were lucky but up to two weeks if you weren't. My first phone, an Alcatel One Touch Max DB died a couple of months after getting it. It drowned in some fizzy drink. I was annoyed but it wasn't a big deal. I waited a few months for a new phone. Over the next few years people upgraded their phones every few months and the big thing was when colour was introduced, yes, my first ever phone was black and white. It was the dark ages. Phone manufacturers wanted to get away from the old "brick" phones and there was a competition to see who could make the smallest phone.
When I was 19 in 2005 I found myself without a phone. You see, I'd just bought the Alcatel 525, it was a gorgeous phone, and I ended up losing it one night at Auckland's Kings Arms where I met a guy I refer to as Carousel Jo whom I dated for a month, so the night wasn't a total bust. I was without a phone for a weekend. I had to wait until Monday to get a replacement phone which cost about $349 if I remember correctly. It was annoying but it wasn't a big deal.
Fast forward to 2014. Last year I upgraded my phone from an iPhone 4S to an iPhone 5 because I had charging issues with the phone and I didn't want to risk the battery dying. For some reason I kept the 4S. I didn't even keep it as an emergency phone. I kept it because I wanted to eventually get all the music and I only had the music on the 4S.
A couple of months ago I was walking in the city and dropped my iPhone 5 at the Sydney Town Hall station. My first instinct was to just buy a new phone, which although a pain in the ass would solve the problem then and there. Instead I didn't. I waited a couple of months, but then this week the phone start flicking on and off and I was really scared I'd end up being without a phone, so on Friday I went to a phone repair place at Wynyard Station. They replaced the screen which cost $100, the cheapest around, but I wanted to save myself some money. It appeared to have worked but when I got home the phone switched off. I thought, "okay, maybe it wasn't the screen after all". Then last night around 11:30pm it completely died and is now on an endless loop where it will load the Apple logo but won't go any further than that. Effectively the phone is dead. This time I am not going to bother getting it repaired, I mean I could get it repaired, but what if the next repair doesn't work? Then I'll be out of pocket a few hundred dollars and I'll have to buy a replacement phone anyway.
So I thought, okay phew, I still have my 4s. It has issues too. It will only charge if I switch it off and then plug it in so the battery needs replacing (and when I replace my phone I'll be getting a new battery for this one from Apple George Street Sydney). I bought a sim card today and activated it thanks to a kind stranger at the train station who let me use their phone. Yes that's right people, these days it's impossible to be without a phone for even 5 minutes.
After activating the sim card I tried to get my music from my iTunes account but I couldn't so I did system restore and I lost the 250 songs I had on it, which was rather annoying to be honest. By this point I was actually freaking out about the phone situation. I had no music, no good phone and a back up phone which could die any moment. It was panic station.
I lost ALL my apps, and I've lost photos, song lyrics and passwords, because yes folks, we store our passwords on our devices but we don't have a back up plan for if that device dies. After work I went to the Apple store and they were at least able to help me recover my music from my iTunes account when previously the device had been locked to a previous Apple ID. The nice guys at Apple reset the device, which was a relief. It's 6 hours later and I'm still downloading the music over WIFI because computers won't register this iPhone (like I say, I replaced it one year ago for a reason) but until I replace it, it's okay. It will do. It's taken away some of the urgency to replace it. In fact Apple were so good that I'm able to recover 996 songs. There are still 500 songs missing but they're on my computer and I can get them back when I replace this phone, or in 90 days (once the lock down period finishes) so it's not that big a deal. They also aren't my favourite songs. I like them but I can live without them.
This whole experience has made me realise just how reliant on technology we are these days and I actually wonder if it's gone too far where we can't be without a phone for even a couple of hours. I'd be completely freaking out if I was entirely without a phone for a few days. It's such a foreign concept. Phones aren't just phones anymore. They're basically life planners and communication devices, radios (I have radio and other media apps).
The real moral of the story though is, do not try to save money by going to a cheap repair place. If your phone needs repairing take it back to the manufacturer or skip that step and just get it replaced. That was my first instinct and it was the right one. The question now is whether or not to wait for the iPhone 6. Because of the great Apple customer service I received today I'm even more determined to remain with Apple (ignoring brand preference etc). And the other moral of the story is, if you think you should throw out your old phone but it still works, KEEP IT as a back up. Once I've replaced my iPhone with an iPhone 5S or 6, I'll be getting Apple to repair the battery on this one so that it's a proper working back up phone - and then if anything goes wrong with it, it's no big deal because I can just use the back up.
Where technology is concerned cheap never works. I've always thought that and this time, for some reason I broke my rule and now I've lost $100. Could've been worse though, I could've paid $180 for the repair at the more expensive place AND still had to buy a new phone.
It's safe to say we are all way too reliant on technology when we can't even be without a phone for a few hours.
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