Adventures in Receiving a New Phone

So on Monday I received a new phone.

In today's day and age there are times when people choose to keep their phone until it croaks and dies.  You can see this with two different types of people.  One is the type like my mom who has the simplest phone.  It isn't a smartphone. It has no bells and whistles.  It makes calls.  Has a speaker phone.  And can save pictures that are sent to her.  For the phone person like my mom, it isn't necessary to get the latest phone because she does nothing with her phone but call people.

The other type of person is the one who has a smartphone, but doesn't want to go through the hassle of having to reinstall and reconnect to all their apps, specific phone settings, etc.  I will admit, sometimes that is me.  I get all my apps in to nice little folders and just the way I want them on the different screens.  I know how to set different ringtones and notification sounds and have themes based on the time of year (Trans-Siberian Orchestra rules my phone between November and early January) or TV/Movie obsession at the time (like when I had Avengers Age of Ultron songs as every notification).

Well, I was starting to become one of those people in the second group - who would hang on to their phone until it wouldn't power up anymore.  But I was soon finding my personal phone to be more of a problem.

I had one of the original Samsung Note Edge phones.  And, at the time, it was a great phone because it was the latest in Samsung's technology.  Until a few months later when they came out with the next version of the Edge and they kind of forgot about the original Edge.

Over the past several months my phone battery has been less and less efficient.  I could barely get through a work day without my phone going down to 30-40%, and that was with me just keeping the phone next to me on my desk.  Forget it if I had to send my sister a text message or call my mom.  When I got home my phone went right on my charger (thank goodness for fast charging!) and by 8:30pm or so, I'd take the phone off...only to have it down to 60-70% at 11pm.

If that wasn't enough, the length of time for me to do anything with the phone was killing me.  When I put my niece to bed at night when both her parents are out or working, she likes to make a video to say "good night" to them.  So I put her in her bed under her covers. Then press my camera button and wait for the camera to open up.  Then I had to press a button to change to video, which would take even more time - up to a minute.  Meanwhile, my niece has started and stopped her "good night" speech about 10 times because it's taking so long.  Finally we get the video recorded and she wants to see it.  Wait for another minute or two because that's how long it took to get to the gallery to play the video.

And forget trying to quickly call someone.  To call home, I would press the phone button and wait a minute.  Then I'd press the quick contacts button and wait another minute.  Finally I'd press the contact button I had set up for home and wait another minute for it to connect and (hopefully) start ringing.  You might say, just dial your home number!!  And I would.  Except I would press where a number was, and it would sometimes record the number and sometimes not.  You should see some of the almost attempts to dial my home number only to have something that is not even close to my home number.  I am glad I didn't have to call 911 or the police or something!

So it was time to get a new phone and deal with the hassle of getting a new phone.

Problem #1 - Not every phone has a micro-SD card slot anymore.  It used to be a small percentage of phones that only had internal storage.  Now it seems the stats are the opposite.  At any rate, I had somewhat recently purchased a 30GB mini-SD card to hold all my pictures and videos from my phone.  I like the option  of a micro-SD card (or something similar) because then you're not saving photos and other things right to the phone's hard drive.  Save the phone's hard drive for apps and stuff.  (haha!) 

So it took a bit of research on Verizon's site but I finally found a phone that would fit my needs, the LG V10.

And my phone arrived Monday.

Problem #2 - It uses a micro-SIM card for the 4G LTE network.  My past personal phones had used a regular-sized SIM card for the same thing.  So in my previous phone upgrades, I just had to move the SIM card from one phone to the other - at least to get phone-based stuff working, like calling someone.

Problem #3 - Verizon sent instructions to start my new phone that basically said to put the battery in, charge the phone, and then power it up and follow the instructions to set up the new phone.  Simple enough.  But the phone had no idea who I was, what my phone number was, or that I was a Verizon customer.  Because the SIM card with all my information from my old phone didn't fit into my new phone.

I wound up setting up WiFi first, which was helpful because as soon as the phone turned on and I connected to the Google account I use for all my phone stuff, it started to download my previously owned apps.  But I then used my iPad to search for a number to activate my phone and finally a half hour after I started, I could make calls with my phone.

The easiest parts were my contacts and the apps.  Because I back my contacts up to Verizon's Cloud, all that stuff got put onto my phone when I reconnected to Verizon Cloud via the WiFi.  And all my apps got installed because I connected with my Google account.

But if I ever have to go through a tough activation process again....

It all would've been easier if the right instructions were put with my new phone.  Then I wouldn't have gotten so frustrated.



Oh, and by the way, I was able to use my phone yesterday pretty regularly and by 11pm was down to 30%.  No recharges at work or home necessary.  And though I thought I would miss seeing notifications on the Edge screen, I don't.  Because to make the edge screen work you still had to press a button on the phone to light the edge up.  The V10 has a second screen that is dimly lit at the top, but it shows if you have any notifications, like a text message or missed call, plus while the phone is locked you can also access a quick memo, flashlight, phone, and camera - without having to unlock the phone.  And fun fact.  The power button and volume keys are on the back of the phone, under the camera lens.  A rather convenient place to have them.  Now if only I would stop pressing the camera lens and getting fingerprints all over it when I am trying to look at my screen.....

Happy New Year!

Well, it's 5 days into the new year and so far every time I've had to write a date, I've remembered that it is 2016 and not 2015.  So that's a good thing......

So I won't say that I'm making a resolution to post more on this blog, because it seems 9 times out of 10 resolutions fail by the end of January.  However I will say that I hope to be able to post more on this blog.

I think part of the problem is that I feel like when I write here, I have to write a lot.  And sometimes I have a lot to say.  But sometimes I want to just say a few things and I keep it inside because I don't think to write it out here and it's too many characters for Twitter.

So I guess you could say my thought is that I will try to share things more often.  And we'll see how that goes.