Tuesday, July 27, 2010

My Phone and Me

Dear Reader, I am writing this post in order to give you some valuable advice. My wisdom is free of cost, though I have gained it through painful experience.

And my advice, reader, is this: If any part of your phone stops working, just ditch it. Buy a new one, no matter how much you love your phone, no matter how minor the malfunctioning.

Why? Let me tell you my experience.

My phone is a Moto Rokr, which my uncle gifted me almost two years ago. It has always served me perfectly well, once I figured out the touchscreen.

Unfortunately, one fine day in March, the touchscreen stopped working. And since the Moto Rokr is a phone that has about five keys in total, this made it almost completely useless.

I googled a lot, to try and figure out what I could do to make it work again. Some website said I should try re-flashing it, so I did that. Nothing happened, except for me losing my entire contacts list.

Finally, I went and got the screen replaced. Eight hundred bucks, end of story.

Or so I thought.

Three days later, the cover of the phone started peeling off. Yup, peeling off. Apparently, the guy hadn't put the cover back on properly when he replaced the screen.

I was in Kerala at the time, and I tried to glue the cover back with Fevicol.

Long story short, my brand new screen got a few white pimples. And the phone and its cover continued to refuse to meet.

Fine, I thought. I'll put a piece of cello tape around the body and just continue using it for a while. So I did that for a couple of months, though both my poor phone and I had to suffer a lot of people's contemptuous looks. I stopped carrying it around unless I absolutely needed to. A phone with white pimples, held together by cello tape.

In the meantime, another tragedy happened. The touch screen's lock stopped working. Which meant that I had to always hold it in my hand, because otherwise it might go and dial some random number.

So I was again in a quandary. I could neither carry it around in my hand, because it looked so supremely fugly, nor could I put it in my bag.

Back to the repair shop.

The repair guy quoted thousand bucks for the replacement of the body and the lock. Fine, I said. Just do it - I just want a working phone again!

But when I went back to pick it up, he said that the fevicol had damaged the screen, and so he had had to replace the screen as well. Another five hundred bucks, he said.

I explained to him patiently that it was after he had replaced the screen last time that the body had started peeling off. He told me, equally patiently, that that was all very well, but who had asked me to smear Fevicol all over the screen? We spoke very patiently (okay, not) to each other for some half an hour, providing much amusement to the other customers. At the end of the half hour, I paid him the money and came back.

Clearly, I should have listened more in those Collective Bargaining & Negotiation classes in XL.

Anyway. The phone came back good as new. The body was completely scratch-less, the screen was absolutely spotless. Wow, I thought - maybe all that money was worth it.

And then the buzzing started.

Let me describe the buzzing noise. It's like a loud bee somewhere inside the phone, singing exclusively for my pleasure, and that of the caller.  And the best part is that the bee likes singing only when I'm at home.

When I'm in the repair guy's shop, trying to yell at him, it refuses to open its mouth.

Fine, I thought. I'll carry out all my phone conversations in other parts of the city.

So that was the status quo. Till today.

Today, my phone decided to just give up and die. It conked off without a word, without a final tearful goodbye. At first, I thought it had run out of charge. So I plugged it in, but it refused to show its lively blue face to me. Right now, I'm staring at it, completely emotionless and empty, resigned to the fact that two grand has gone down the drain, and I will have to buy a new phone. I just wish I'd made this decision four months ago.


Update: It's back, the phone is back! It seems it heard my plea and decided to come back to me! Woohoo! (Though the loud bee seems to be still residing inside it, but who cares!)
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