You can't teach a cell phone to swim
Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 09:10AM According to the CTIA , there were 219.4 million cell phone users as of midyear in 2006. That equates to 72% of the total population of the United States. 8.4 of U.S. households use cell phones as their only telephone system. Cell phone users also used 857 billion MOUs (minutes of use) in the first six months of 2006. That’s up 27% from first half of 2005. Text messaging during the first half of 2006 equaled 64.8 billion. That is up 98.8% from 32.6 billion in first six months of 2005. 911 calls equal 240,000 a day. - excerpt from Wireless Quick Facts on the CTIA website -
Cell phones have become a way of life for Americans. We use them to talk to our family and friends, our colleagues, and our business acquaintances. They are convenient. They give us a false sense of security. But, recently they have become a security risk to airline travelers. We provide our children with them so that they can keep in touch with us and us with them. Our parents have them but don’t know what to do with all the features. We have them and most of us don’t utilize all the features either, but we seldom volunteer that information to others, especially our parents. We stress if we don’t have our cell phone with us. We worry about our cell phones getting lost, stolen, or damaged. Cell phones have become our addiction. We want them to live forever, which is why I thought that my cell phone just might be able to survive a plunge in the water.
I found out recently how much I was dependent on my cell phone when it got damaged beyond repair. Like so many other people, my phone plunged in to a sink full of water. And being a conscientious person, I donated my previous phone to the Verizon rep when he asked me if I would donate my phone so it could be used by battered women to dial 911. So, when my new phone died, I had no phone left to use for myself. I was up the creek without a paddle, so to speak. Now, I couldn’t even dial 911 if I needed to.
As a seasoned internet user, my first thought was to search the Internet for a fix. I was desperate for some magical spell that would resolve my problem of having a 3 month old Motorola Razr V3m dead cell phone. I searched the net in desperation of finding a quick fix for it and came away with some hope. Some Razr phone users said there’s came back to life after a few days, others said a few weeks. Their main recommendation was to let it dry in the sun for 24 hours and remove the battery as soon as you pull it out of the water. They also said DO NOT TRY TO USE IT until you have let it dry out thoroughly or you will fry the components in it. Unfortunately, I didn’t start researching the net about the subject until I had already tried to revive it by trying to get it turned back on. It’s a natural instinct, I think, to try it one more time when that happens. It’s like when your car won’t start. You have to turn the key one more time. Or when your computer won’t start, you keep trying to get it to start. I think it’s human nature not to give up right off the bat.
In any case, after a week of following the advice of those who had “been there, done that” before, I said goodbye to my Razr, along with all of the phone numbers, music, and pictures I had stored on it. sniff…sniff ***Click on the thumbnail picture to see a picture of what my phone looks like posthumously and see if you know the answer to the question in the pic. If you don’t know the answer, I’ll let you know at the end of this posting. :)
Being the child of a man who despises buying insurance except for his motor vehicles and his home, I opted not to buy the phone insurance from Verizon, when I got my Razr. I’d owned a cell phone for 4 years before that and never needed it, so I pushed fate and said “no thanks” when the salesman asked me if I wanted “the insurance”. On the day my phone drowned, I lived to regret that decision. When you see your cell phone plunge in to water, it is a surreal experience. It appears to fall in slow motion and you find yourself grasping for it before realizing that your reaction time is seldom quicker than the force of gravity. So, you scoop it up and immediately look at it to see “if it’s alright”. It’s like pulling someone out of pool, you are hoping that they are still breathing. If they’re not, you try your best to save them, unfortunately it doesn’t always work. Unlike people, most cell phones merely have to plunge in to water for seconds before they die. Thank God, humans are made sturdier than cell phones!
So, I found myself without a working phone and without insurance that would cover a replacement. According to Verizon representatives, my phone would have been covered for water damage, although I think there is a $50 charge to get a replacement phone. When I told the Verizon rep that the “word” on the internet is that water damage is not covered, he said “it IS with Verizon”. Being skeptical about insurance (thanks Dad), I also asked the Verizon customer rep online if insurance did indeed cover water damage. She, known as Cassandra, told me that it was. Cassandra was the same person I got to chat with online at Verizon the last time. Hmmm…. a coincidence? Or is Cassandra the code name at Verizon for any phone sales rep at Verizon? Hmmm.
In any case, I resigned myself to the fact that I now had to buy another cell phone. Being a person with alot of eBay experience, I thought I’d get a “deal” by buying it from an eBayer. What I found were phones that were almost as much as what Verizon was selling them for. I’d maybe save $30 by buying a phone from an eBay seller. Then I thought, what if the phone doesn’t work when I get it? What if Verizon won’t activate it? It was back to researching cell phones on the net. My next thought was that I would buy it from an online store, who would surely sell it to me cheaper than Verizon would. Wrong. After browsing through a slew of links in Google, I found that most links were for phones with prices for those opening new Verizon accounts. Finding phones for an existing customer was a near impossibility. My cell phone addiction was apparent. I needed a phone with all the bells and whistles I had with my Razr phone but I didn’t want to pay full price if I didn’t have to.
If I had gotten the insurance plan on the phone for $5.99 a month, I’d have been able to get a new phone for $50. If I had only known then what I know now. The cheapest phone that Verizon sells is $129 and as you might imagine that is just a basic phone. I don’t even know if it had a speaker phone capacity on it. The highest priced phones can run well over $500. After a week with no phone (I like 18% of Americans use my cell phone as my main phone), I had to bite the bullet and buy a new phone for $300 with a car charger included in that price. After all, I’ve got to take my cell phone in the car with me and it needs to be working “just in case” I need to call someone or they want to call me. But, that is a topic that would involve an article dedicated just to that, so I’ll not go in to that here. Oh! Before I forget! The reason there is a red dot on my phone is because it got wet. When the phone is new and dry, the dot is white. It’s a way for technicians to detect if the phone has been damaged by water! Clever, huh?
This time around I opted for an LG VX8300 phone and bought it directly from Verizon. I am awaiting its arrival like the birth of a new baby. Ah yes, I think I am fully addicted to cell phone technology. And despite dad’s philosophy about insurance, I purchased the insurance plan with it. As you might suspect, I researched which phones could be used with Verizon’s cell phone service. Verizon uses a signal technology called CDMA. I never realized that there were different signal technologies before I started looking in to replacing my phone. Interesting. I’ve included more information about signal technology at the end of this article, if like me, you weren’t aware of it either.
Anyway, I decided to go with the LG VX8300 after reading user reports on CNET. If users were happy or unhappy with the phone, they would certainly trash its reputation or hail its praises, I figured. You can read what I read about the Razr and the LG VX8300 by clicking on the links that follow. Be aware that the cell phone prices quoted at the bottom or the ratings pages are with a NEW service with Verizon. Trust me. If you are an existing customer who wants to stay with Verizon, you’ll have to jiggle that piggy bank some more. But, getting back to how I made my buying decision, I looked at CNET’s reviews and found out that the average rating for the LG VX8300 was 8 out of 10 from 86 users. and an average user rating for the Razr I had drowned stood at 6.4 out of 10 from 66 users. As they say, “wish I’d known then what I know now”. Lesson learned. Actually, I learned several lessons and gained valuable information from my experience in thinking my cell phone could swim. I’ll keep you posted on the arrival of my new cell phone. In the meantime, I’ll be eyeing every FedEx, DHL, and UPS truck that drives in my vicinity with eager anticipation that their truck contains my new LG VX8300! :)
Drying out a wet cell phone information
More information about cell phone signal technology:
Other phone companies use GSM, TDMA, or iDen. If you have a T-Mobile, Cingular, or recent new M-mode type service with AT&T, then you have GSM service. International travelers should be aware that ” Although the US and Canada have some GSM service (in the US, offered by T-mobile and Cingular (including the former AT&T), in Canada, by Microcell/Fido and Rogers/AT&T) most cellphone service is of a different type (CDMA or TDMA, or, in Nextel’s case, iDEN) and a different frequency as well!” - The Travel Insider -
Want more information about cell phones?
Read more about the advantage of a GSM phone service from The Travel Insider
except from The Travel Insider - For most of us, as soon as we leave North America, our cellphone switches from being an essential business tool to a useless piece of junk, due to incompatibilities between the American cellphone system and the GSM system almost universally adopted elsewhere in the world.
Read more about how cell phones work - from the website “How Stuff Works”
Have you ever wondered how a cell phone works? What makes it different from a regular phone? What do all those terms like PCS, GSM, CDMA and TDMA mean? In this article, we will discuss the technology behind cell phones so that you can see how amazing they really are.
Timeline of cellular phone technology
It all started in 1876 with Alexander Graham Bell who was followed by Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, in 1895 when he proved the feasibility of radio communications by sending and receiving the first radio signal. Four years later, Marconi flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel. Read about cellular technology from it’s beginning to 2004 at the CTIA website.
The Lighter Side of Cell Phones? Watch a video!
Dawn Turner
Blog Management and Development
The SearchLogix Group
Reader Comments (2)
www.cashformsartphones.com