What happens when you don't have a mobile phone?

Last year I dropped my iPhone 5 at Town Hall Station in Sydney.  It was okay because although the screen was cracked the phone itself still worked and I was still able to use it normally.  I also had the 4S as back up should anything go wrong with it.  The 4S had one or two issues but I was able to get those repaired as they were minor.

Last night however I was at the gym when a dumb bell fell on my iPhone 6 Plus and the screen not only shattered, some of the LCD leaked and the volume controls on the side bent out of shape.  In other words, the phone is unusable this time.  I wanted to take a photo of it, but I couldn’t because I didn’t have my phone to do so.

I marched down to Apple first thing in the morning to see how much it would cost for a replacement.  It was $409.  This was different to the website, but I forgot about the fine print saying, “prices are in US dollars”, so the $329 I thought, was significantly higher.

I have savings for emergencies but normally it takes three days to access those savings.  I was on the phone to the bank several times and finally I was able to access the money.  I went back down to the Apple store and was told it was a two hour wait so I had a quick look online and saw that sometimes you can jump the queue, if you’re lucky.  So that’s what I did.  I purchased my new replacement phone.

Although the charge was higher than I thought it would be, the cool thing is, it was only a third of the price of what it cost new because of the limited warranty.  The limited warranty does not cover accidents such as the one described.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that Apple do actually replace phones for a fraction of the cost of the original handset.  All it takes is arranging an appointment with an Apple Genius and then going in and showing them the problem.  Apple is great.  They'll give you a replacement phone ON THE SPOT.  Too easy.

I think a while ago I was going to blog about the cloud and didn't.  Well now is the perfect time to do so.  Basically the cloud is this magical place online which stores all your iPhone's data and I cannot emphasise enough, BACK UP your data and music.  When you have to change devices it will make life so so so much easier.  Did you know that when you restore from back up it even remembers your passwords?  When we have a password for everything this is very very handy.  I think I have about 10 passwords I use regularly.

So what was it like not having a phone for one whole day?  It was torture.  The only functions I could use, ironically, were the phone and iPod feature.  You may recall previous blogs where I've talked about how in the past I was so anti the iPhone when it was first announced by the late Steve Jobs.  I believe my exact phrase was, "why would you need an iPhone?  Why would you need a pocket browser?"  and "what if something goes wrong with the device?".

The phone still physically worked but the LCD had leaked so a third of the screen was gone and rendered useless.

I realised at that moment just how reliant I was on my phone when I couldn't do simple things like:

1. Listen to the radio
2. Send a text message
3. Set the alarm
4. Use the calculator
5. Check the weather
6. Do my banking
7. Take a photo
8. Record my workouts
9. Check my email
10. Check the news and browse the internet.
11. Use social media.
12. Use Skype which is cheaper for international calls.  I was able to make phone calls but it was very hard to get the number entered because of just how much of the screen was destroyed.
13. Check the time.  
14. Blog about not having a phone on my lunch break because I didn't have a phone to blog on.

 In other words, when the screen was half gone all the phone could be used for was.....phone calls and listening to music.  In a nutshell mobile phones really are pocket computers and without them we just can't function in modern society.  Without a mobile phone we are disconnected from the world and can't do any of the things we normally would.

And this is why you should always have a back up phone, just sitting there, just for emergencies.  And I have my back up phone coming in the mail in a few weeks time.