A Broken Phone, A Loaner Phone
My phone broke in the oddest way, and now I have a dirty loaner phone while my replacement is mailed to me. It is fantastic.
Yesterday, while I waited for the light rail to take me home, my phone broke. Chock it up to quality Razr construction, because there is nothing that happened then that should have affected the phone. I’d just made a phone call, sent and received a couple text messages, and closed the lid of the phone. When I opened the phone again a minute later, no button would work, at least not properly. Instead, each button press started the phone in recording a voice memo. Only End acted as was expected, so the memos never got a chance to last more than a couple seconds.
I restarted the phone, hoping this would reset the system and make things happy. The buttons stopped recording voice memos - now they set the volume to max. Excellent.
Once I got home I headed for the lovely T-Mobile store just down the street and asked if they had any advice for me, as this was the 3rd time I’d brought in a Razr to be replaced. The guy at the store popped out the battery, removed the SIM card, and then put them back in. Hit power and… the phone was restored! Or so I thought. After thanking him for his help, I hadn’t walked more than 10 feet from the store when my phone started beeping randomly. Once again the volume was being changed to max, but the phone was doing it for itself this time.
I walked back in to the store, where the guy I’d met with was already helping another customer. I set my phone down on the counter, where it continued beeping and flashing. He looked up and saw me, nodded and said he’d be free in a minute. I popped the battery out while I waited - no need to annoy everyone with my phone. Another employee was free first, so he came and had me run over the situation again, then popped the battery back in to experience the fun for himself. The volume changing didn’t start right away, but once it did he chuckled, said “Razrs are crap”, told me I couldn’t get a different phone as my replacement, and started the process of ordering me a new phone.
Unfortunately, the new phone can’t be taken out of the store by me - it has to be sent in the mail. So, while I wait, I get a loaner phone. It’s not a horrible phone, but it’s bigger than what I’m used to having, and it doesn’t have any of my phone numbers on it (they were on my phone, not the SIM. I know, bad idea, I’ll do better next time). So until my replacement phone arrives, I have a loaner phone - a slightly older Nokia phone, moderately scratched in a few places. Other people have used this phone. Other people have placed their sweaty faces against it; have yelled to people on the other end and spit all over the mouthpiece. There were even phone numbers stored in the memory, including one for someone named ‘Pooker’. I deleted all the numbers, because the temptation to call Pooker and learn about this nickname would otherwise have been too much.
And now I sit and wait, for my next Razr to arrive. Maybe this one will make it more than a few months before it breaks. After all, the last one lasted for nearly six months! That’s much better than the two before it.