When tech is 'good enough' and why I have an 'old' phone

Robin Capper

Robin Capper

— 2 min read
image from rcd.typepad.com

Waking up at 01:00 Monday morning is a price you pay to watch (most) Formula 1 live in New Zealand. For me it means an early night, waking again and ten minutes on phone to review of social media, while making a coffee, before settling in for the 01:10 start. A recently that routine was interrupted by awaking to a phone stuck in a never-ending restart loop.

This wasn't a problem, it just meant I had to follow F1 Twitter on my Surface Book while Googling how to get a Samsung out of a boot loop. That turned out to be simple but none of the suggested easy fixes* resolved it. The nuclear option, master reset, did work and a combination of Samsung (phone settings) and Microsoft Cloud meant no data was lost, everything I needed easily restored.

I still have an ancient Samsung S7 Edge and it's good enough until I break it. I occasionally look at the market wondering what I would buy if forced. I haven't seen anything really compelling in the phone market, certainly nothing worth shelling out the dollars top end phones command**.

These two articles by @ChrisMatyszczyk, about not needing and buying a new phone struck a chord. In March Chris, review S20 in hand, suggests his wife upgrade her phone:

A Samsung Galaxy S7 user explains why she doesn't want the S20 | www.zdnet.com
Handset makers are constantly selling us on new phones. How and why do people resist?

Then in September watches her in store on a mission to upgrade to a new phone:

A Samsung user upgraded her Galaxy S7 and I'm stunned by her choice | www.zdnet.com
What difference can a Verizon store salesman make to a choice of upgrade? An enormous amount, as I just discovered when I watched a passionate Samsung user upgrade her phone.

I wonder if that will be me when the day comes...

* From The Droid Guy "How to fix Samsung Galaxy S7 that’s stuck in bootloop"

  • Step 1: Soft reset your Samsung Galaxy S7
  • Step 2: Find out if the Power key so damaged or just stuck
  • Step 3: Attempt to boot your phone in Safe mode
    • How to clear app cache and data on Galaxy S7
    • How to uninstall an app from the Galaxy S7
  • Step 4: Attempt to boot in Recovery mode
    • How to start Galaxy S7 in Recovery mode and wipe cache partition
    • How to do Master Reset on Galaxy S7

** I'd rather buy a phone and be free to change plans/companies than be locked into a contract so it's not just $X/month extra

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