Another break from co-co, climate disaster and the colour of the wallpaper in No. 10. Relevant as the battery in my phone is dying and this is critical kit wot I use at least twice a month. However, upon enquiring as to getting a new battery I was informed it’d cost more than a new phone. You believe that? Wot do I know. Anyhoo, if I do go to get one, I plan on being a tad better prepared this time than I was back in 2007 as per below. Bet a bunch of you’ve ‘been there’ though...
Each year I say to myself this is the last yearly contract I'm having for a mobile phone. I've paid for this one, it works, so lets go pay-as-you- go. Then, at end of contract time, it's like some form of subliminal mind game kicks in, and it's off to the shop to see what's new. Totally automatic.
And there I was, at the counter. What do you ask for in a phone shop? A phone, right? That's what I thought. It don't work. The 16 year old sales person launched into what sounded like gibberish to me and all I picked up was that all the phones have ace cameras. I explained that I had a camera, thank you, and the idea of this shopping expedition was to purchase an item that would receive and send telephone calls. Again the 16 year old sales person launched into incomprehensible techno babble.
At this point I had to stop the 16 year old sales person, apologize and explain that I had foolishly left my Buck Rogers Decoder Ring at home and thus had not the foggiest idea what he was talking about.
I tried one more time asking for just a phone, nothing else, no WiFi, no G3, no WW2, GPS, no tele porting, no death ray just a phone. The result of this was the 16 year old sales person looking at me blankly, wondering why anyone would want only a phone and me looking at the 16 year old sales person blankly wondering why anyone would want to tele port to Venus by phone. Or by any other method come to that. No air there is there? For heavens sake!!
"If you don't take the full package you won't get your 200 free SMS's a month."
"I'll learn to live without them, thanks." said I, having no idea what I was going to have to learn to live without, but just working on the assumption that I had got this far without 200 free SMS's a month so it should be no problem now.
End result? They don't make phones any more so I settled for a multi-media this and that with the multi-media and all the ‘this and that’ disabled. A phone.
I did ask if I could keep the death ray but it seems you have to take the full multi-media and all the ‘this and that’ package to get the death ray. Would've been nice though...
By this time the 16 year old sales person had totally lost interest in me and had switched his attention to the next customer in line who he could sense would be more receptive to his techno babble. This being an 8 year old straight out of the tattoo and piercing parlour. Her boyfriend was a sight as well.
Quote;
"A boy can learn a lot from a dog; obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning round three times before lying down."
2 comments:
Mac,
I bought my phone from Tesco, sim free. When you have a contract, the phone is locked to that particular provider (EE, 3 etc.) so you can't use the phone on any other network by popping another sim card in. Sim free simply means that the phone is not locked to any network so you can swap the sim cards over to your hearts content.
Contracts are awful things, they look like you are getting the phone for free but in fact you are paying for the phone over the length of the contract. I run on Giffgaff and they do not do contracts, you just pick up a Giffgaff sim card from Tesco or similar and activate it online. I pay £6 per month and get unlimited call minutes and texts. When you activate the sim card you also set up an account and you can set this to automatically top up each month or pay whenever you need a month's use. You can go elsewhere any time you like.
An SMS is just a text (SMS = Short Message Service). There is also MMS (Multimedia Message Service) that your phone automatically uses if you attach a picture or video to a text. MMS is not part of the freebie package, so you would be charged on an individual basis.
You can buy a cheap, bare bones smartphone nowadays for as little as £24 that has a camera and sends pics/videos. I've personally found the camera in my phone to be very useful for describing jobs/problems concerning the house to tradesmen, and photographing documents for work. The picture quality exceeds that of my SLR camera, so that has been made redundant. At events like parties etc. I have the camera with me, without having to carry it around.
One way of making completely free calls, sending texts, MMS messages and making video calls for free is by installing Whatsapp on the phone, since the phone then uses my home wifi, instead of the phone network. I can only do these things at home though, where the phone is within range of the router, although I could do all of these things at work too, since I got my hands on the company's wifi login and password.
Ripper,
That post was first put together back in 2007 and I haven't move on too far from that.
I got a smartphone for something like £50 and, to show how heavily it's used, I top-up a tenner every three or four months, and it does all I need - which is very little now I'm retired.
For when I was in the world, Skype worked for me and is invaluable for my little nest of vipers for staying in contact with her family way over there.
She insisted on an iPhone by the way and I have no idea how they became the 'must have' bit o' kit...
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