Phone Turns Ten!
My phone is now ten years old, which I thought was something worth mentioning, considering how quickly things break down these days. Actually, I should say I’m sure it has been in use for ten years, but there is a chance that it was actually bought slightly earlier. Don’t know for sure because I know Andra’s mom bought it for her but can’t remember, and in fact not entirely sure I’ve been told, if she went to pick one herself or it was received as a gift, the latter obviously indicating an earlier purchase. Either way, a couple of years later, when she got a new one, she passed this on to me and I’ve been holding on to it ever since.
Sure, the battery was having issues even back then, when I got it, and it hasn’t been good for much if you actually want to use it for phone calls for the past several years, but I don’t care for calls anyway, so this isn’t an issue. I imagine it could have been replaced at some point, at least before too many years had passed, since it’s certainly removable, but never cared and it still generally holds just fine for about a week if it’s basically just used as a clock. If needed for actual communication, as I said, phone calls basically only work if it’s plugged in, because otherwise it “forgets” it’s charged after as little as a few seconds, though it appears to recover if the call ends before it turns off on its own. However, there are no problems with SMSs, so I don’t mind.
There had been some issues with charging, which would probably be proven to still exist if it’d be allowed to drain completely, but I’ve been reacting very quickly to the battery empty warning for a long time now, hardly ever letting it turn off on its own, and it works fine then. Even the intermittent issues that had been rather frequent some years ago seem to have largely vanished lately, though what was holding the battery more firmly in place broke off long ago, so it may shift out of place and cause the phone to turn off if shaken a little, which may happen if I run or jump with it in my pocket, or in some rare cases even while simply walking.
The color has largely peeled off it and there’s even some rust inside, on a couple of small areas, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting anything so far, so I have no plans to change it. As long as it’ll still be at least somewhat functional, I’m keeping this, of course mainly because it’s from her, but also because I’d have no idea what to replace it with. Doesn’t seem likely that something at least as reliable could still be found today, much less one that’d also be very affordable, no bigger than this one and, of course, not black. That last condition alone tends to rule out the tremendous majority of the electronics released over the past several years.
