The Sad Saga Of The Phone

My Motorola Droid is defunct, and I now have a Samsung Transform courtesy of CREDO, my new phone company.

 

It wasn't a software issue. No amount of removing or reinstalling apps helped, and no factory reset -- despite the advice of the guy at the Verizon store, who said that that was what he did -- was going to fix it. I remember doing the factory reset and the phone came back on with the touchscreen already going haywire, my only consolation being the knowledge that the idiot who recommended it was eventually going to suffer as I did.

 

And it wasn't a "thin film of oil forming on the glass" either, though I did slavishly scrub the screen with rubbing alcohol, and swore like a good Pavlovian that I saw some improvement whenever I did it. What it was, was basically a design flaw: the "ribbon wire" from the screen runs too close to the phone earpiece, making the connections more than usually vulnerable to moisture and dirt through that nearby hole in the casing. When the connections got bad, the screen started going haywire. It took me forever to find the info online.

 

Since my phone was out of warranty and I didn't have insurance, and per my policy I couldn't get my free replacement phone until December, I was SOL at Verizon. I was looking at paying full retail for a replacement phone, like somewhere around $450 or a little more if I stuck with them. But as it happens, Anne has her phone through CREDO (formerly Working Assets), who channel some of their profits into progressive causes, and who had a deal where I'd get a new phone for $30 (and they'd buy out my old phone contract) if I signed up with their plan. So that's what I decided to do.

 

The setup: All of this was going on, phone misbehaving and me deciding, while Anne's big trip -- her solo bike trip to Knoxville, where our smartphones would be her only lifeline -- was getting closer. I thought the phone would make it, but it died and I ordered the new one just before she left... (She had email on her phone, so I stayed close to the computer for a few days, and my new phone arrived on her second day out, so things weren't too bad.)

 

So anyway, here I am with my new Samsung Transform, with about 3 weeks under my belt to figure it out. I think that it's a decent enough phone, but I think that the Droid (except for the fact that it crapped out) was a better phone, and more advanced in some ways. I've had three disappointments so far: the phone seems slower at times, there is no port of the Flash plugin for the Transform, and while the phone has a front and rear camera, Skype does not have video calls enabled on the transform. I can live with it all, live and learn.

 

In terms of my new phone company, I like CREDO so far. The network they use is really Sprint, and I found out the hard way that Vermont is Verizon Country -- we'll see how hard I got socked for roaming charges when my bill comes -- but otherwise my coverage has been fine.

 

The kicker: about two days after I got my new phone, Anne's phone fell and broke.