Phone blues
Well, seems like my cell phone is officially dead - the (admittedly one) place I went to tried replacing the flex cable (I get the feeling that's the mobile phone equivalent of rebooting a computer to fix it), but as I expected, that didn't fix anything. They feel it's the PCB itself, which makes some sense for a sudden double change in behaviour - first having extremely faint display (which sometimes suddenly worked in full, unless and until I wiggled the keyboard slider) but which booted, as the POST sound and double buzz told me; then a few days later, only a bit of backlight would show, even in complete darkness, and no sound or vibration anymore.
(This started Dec 5, the day after I arrived in Chicago for a con, where staying in contact with some people would have been really, really nice. Also nice would have been the repair shop calling me with any news, including that it was unrepairable, but instead I had to phone five times and finally talking to the tech who gave me the news - and to his credit, will make a note that I don't have to pay the $35 ausculting fee due to this lack of communication.)
I found a Toronto Amazon seller that has new ones for $200 - not a bad price for a full three years' use - but they say it's unlocked. The question I ask from more knowledgeable people, is: does Bell support unlocked phones? I do have a pay-as-you-go plan (a sort of mistake to switch from a billing plan, as I realised when I could not use a US data plan at said con - but then again, I now haven't paid $150 with no phone to access said service), if that is important.
Also, I'm curious - where are all SMS kept? On the phone itself (and thus now lost for me), or on the micro-SD card? Someone told me on the SIM card, but I thought those were ROM chips... also, space issues. So when I eventually get a new phone, put in my SD and SIM cards, and turn it on, all the text messages will download, but will that be all I have? I expect the contacts are all saved on the googlemail account... This would have been interesting considering that the repair shop said (much, much too late - as in last week) that they could give me a loaner phone, but I wasn't sure if I wanted all my texts on that machine if it wasn't portable. Also, leery of all kinds of things done that might stay there as an imprint of my activities.)
(This started Dec 5, the day after I arrived in Chicago for a con, where staying in contact with some people would have been really, really nice. Also nice would have been the repair shop calling me with any news, including that it was unrepairable, but instead I had to phone five times and finally talking to the tech who gave me the news - and to his credit, will make a note that I don't have to pay the $35 ausculting fee due to this lack of communication.)
I found a Toronto Amazon seller that has new ones for $200 - not a bad price for a full three years' use - but they say it's unlocked. The question I ask from more knowledgeable people, is: does Bell support unlocked phones? I do have a pay-as-you-go plan (a sort of mistake to switch from a billing plan, as I realised when I could not use a US data plan at said con - but then again, I now haven't paid $150 with no phone to access said service), if that is important.
Also, I'm curious - where are all SMS kept? On the phone itself (and thus now lost for me), or on the micro-SD card? Someone told me on the SIM card, but I thought those were ROM chips... also, space issues. So when I eventually get a new phone, put in my SD and SIM cards, and turn it on, all the text messages will download, but will that be all I have? I expect the contacts are all saved on the googlemail account... This would have been interesting considering that the repair shop said (much, much too late - as in last week) that they could give me a loaner phone, but I wasn't sure if I wanted all my texts on that machine if it wasn't portable. Also, leery of all kinds of things done that might stay there as an imprint of my activities.)