For the past six weeks, I have been having issues with my phone. Pressing the power button no longer has any effect, but my phone compensates for this by having the power button options menu pop up without warning multiple times a day.
It has turned off my alarm more a few occasions, causing me to sleep longer than intended. And it also causes videos to cut out.
Both of these issues are problematic. For one thing, if I sleep through my alarm then there is a good chance that I’m going to be late for work. For another thing, watching stupid videos on YouTube is probably about 95% of what I use my phone for.
When I got the phone almost four years ago, I had a feeling that it would be only a matter of time before I’d break something on it. This was due to the fact that the back is a smooth metallic surface that easily slips out of the hand. My solution to attach some gaffer tape to the back of it did what it needed to do and gave me some grip. Admittedly, most of my repair jobs involve gaffer tape.
But the phone’s slippery structure is not what led to the inevitable two cracks in the corners of the screen. That occurred when I was at Twickenham in 2018 to watch some rugby and I put my phone in what I thought was my pocket, only to stand up and soon realised that it wasn’t a pocket when my phone fell onto the concrete floor below. I then cracked the phone again in a different corner about an hour later. I performed a repair job that didn’t involve gaffer tape. Instead, I used the varnish that goes over paint to cover scratches on cars.
This held for a couple of years, but could only delay the inevitable malfunctioning that I’m fairly sure was when the phone got some water in when I was in Swansea in October.
Ever since then, I’ve been asked multiple times a day if I want to select Power Off, Restart, or Emergency Mode when I’ve just started watching a video about wrestling analysis, Easter Eggs in a Marvel Disney+ show, or something related to space travel. Sometimes the phone lets me think that the problem has been fixed and lets me actually watch most of a video, before cutting out close to the end. Other times, the phone just flashes repeatedly as if it’s some distress beacon. I swear I haven’t done anything.
I knew the time for a new phone was upon me. Fortunately, I found a phone of my dad’s that he’s not exactly using anymore. It’s actually a more recent model of my phone, which doesn’t feel quite right given that I’m a more recent model of him. But it does mean that the charger works and I can avoid buying a new phone for the foreseeable future.