phone died...

[VJ]

Another day, another piece of hardware died... This time it is my phone's turn, a Samsung A50 which froze and gave a black screen. Following internet advice, I managed to first get a charging logo (not the normal one, but a circle with a lighting bolt) and next to get it to start booting. But it halts in the bootscreen. Internet tells me it is either the battery (very possible, it already had issues and sometimes the phone died without warning at 15% battery) or the mainboard. If it is the battery, I probably will get it fixed, as it could replace my back-up phone (which I use for my Belgian number) - an old LG K8 whose battery does not even last half a day (but I rarely take it with me).

But looking at phones now... there is not much choice! Apple, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Google and then a whole bunch of Chinese brands. I have nothing against the Chinese brands, but am a bit weary about support or updates. Apple and Google are expensive, and now that the current generation of Apple moved to USB-C, there is little point in considering an older model.

My plan is to have my current A50 fixed (if it is the battery) and hope that there will be something on black Friday or in the time leading up to it. I know there were nice promotions for Samsungs a month ago, so I'm a bit unlucky with that... I would still get a new phone in relative short term, so I can use the (fixed) A50 to upgrade the backup phone. Question is of course what if it is not the battery... :ermmm: No upgrade for the back-up phone seems the most likely effect.
I am surprised to see that the Samsung A54 has no headphone socket anymore, and that the Sony Xperia 10V is outperformed by the Samsung A34 in almost all specifications... (I don't like the Motorola interface, my inlaws have Motorolas and it seems chaotic to me compared to the Samsung UI, probably a matter of what you are used to and taste ).

We'll have to see... Of course it fails on a Saturday evening; the earliest I can go to a fixing point is Tuesday.

[UtwigMU]

If you want jack, there is high end-ish Sony Experia V.

I have Samsung A52 and new Nokia 3310 (just serves as SMS authentication token and a phone for a walk). I'm considering getting A54 and then making A52 a backup/alternate. Apart from not having a phone jack the A54 and A52 are not that different.

[VJ]

My A50 may have gotten back to life! I plugged it in this morning and it seems to show the normal battery charging logo for a switched off phone (with percentage). I'll let it charge for now, before trying to boot it. If it boots, it means it very likely is a battery issue (relatively cheap fix) and it would allow me to copy all data (some photos, nothing important but if I have a chance to recover them... )

The lack of a jack on the A54 is not a dealbreaker either, although I used it sometimes to connect a headset for meetings (my bluetooth headset is over the ear and does not look so nice on video conferences). But the A54 got heavy: 200g ! Almost 50g more than my A50 which is not that much smaller or so. Not that those are phones that you can stuff in a pocket anyway, but still.

The Sony's look nice but quickly get more expensive, especially when compare specs. Google Pixel is of course still an option, as I believe they should have quite good update-support... but I try to minimize my integration with Google Services and assume that that will be more difficult to do with the Pixel. So I feel a bit without options.... I remember there used to be so many options in mobile phones, from form factors to brands... A bit a shame that variety got lost...

[UtwigMU]

I feel like capitalism is failing. In watches you have quartz, mechanical, exotic, smart, ranging from inexpensive to ultra luxury.

With phones and cars all have display only (no analog speedo and rev counter or hardware home button) and no jack (except Sony).

[VJ]

I managed a bit more with the A50, but it is rather bad news... It is stuck in a reboot loop. I can get it to boot in the recovery mode, and get to the log files. The error it throws is something I found online, which happens to people that updated the firmware (mine is stock, last updated in march or so), there does not seem to be a definite solution. In recovery mode I can wipe the cache partition (one solution to the reboot loop), repair apps (another solution, available on Samsungs), but it does not solve the issue. The remaining options are to put the firmware on it (it has the latest stock firmware, I already know the phone connects to Android Debug Bridge, which allows updating - I just need to download the firmware file) - this should not delete data, or do a full reset which deletes data... I write it is rather bad news as it seems to decrease the change of the battery being the cause of the issues.

Tomorrow or the day after I'll try to go to a service point and see if they can answer anything. I don't want to send the phone out for service as then I'm 100% sure the data will be gone; I'd rather talk to the guy who does the service. If I don't like what I hear, I'll probably go with the firmware update route, and see if that fixes it.

With all the current importance attached to the phone, a colleague started wondering if he should not have a phone to leave at home which is used as the typical device to access bank or two factor authentication, and use a phone without all that to walk around: much less of a problem if you loose the phone or drop it or whatever. And actually, I've discovered that my watch has a nice functionality: if the paired phone is connected to internet, and the watch connects to a wifi network that gives it internet, you can call and send/receive messages! I discovered it when I forgot my phone at home, and my watch connected to the wifi at work. A shame there is no portable small phone-like device that can offer the same functionality as the watch but with a bigger screen and e.g. 4/5G: loose that device and all you have to do is revoke the paring from the phone, which is safe at home. No data risks at all.

I agree on the capitalism failing here... There were such nice concepts (one company had all the data/intelligence in a watch, and then cheap external wireless displays the size of phones or tablets to facilitate the use of the watch. Or accessories such as a small bluetooth handset with a display, sufficient to make/receive calls and read messages and leave the phone in your pocket (I have a Nokia HS12w which gets in that direction, its successor even had a bigger colour screen - ok, can be done with many smartwatches, but it is not that comfortable to talk to a watch - I've done it ). But no phones with keyboards (e.g. shaped like those UMPC of the old days - Psion or so), original shapes (a bit returning with folding phones), decent optical zoom lenses, ... Quite a boring market actually... Unihertz makes the smallest android phones, and they are tiny. But why does it have to be an unknown Chinese brand that pulls it of? Where are the successors to the LG Wing (second small display) ? The Surface Duo (dual screen)? The YottaPhone (e-ink back)? HTC (don't remember the model, which had a dualboot between XP and Windows mobile, sharing the data)? The Xperia X Compact? Xperia X10 Mini Pro (ultra-compact with physical keyboard)? The whole range of flip-twist Nokias? And what about other OS? Now it is Android or iOS... The smartwatch market is going the same way, with everything non-apple seemingly moving towards google for touchscreen watches (still a few notable exceptions such as Garmin or Polar) - I already started looking as my Tizen based Samsung watch is starting to have problems with lasting a whole day when it is even slightly used. Seems like an equally frustrating endeavor..

Edit: the more I search for a phone, the more depressing it gets. It is all so uniform, with differences in relatively small hardware things - the basic possibilities of all of them is the same (apart from e.g. DEX functionality on Samsung S-series, a pen, or something like that). Just the cpu, memory, display and battery are different. Support is always a bit of a gamble, my A50 got 3 years of updates (2 android versions), now Samsung specifies up to 4 android updates for some devices. Up to... which does not mean anything. And the sad thing is: I don't think that a new model will give me a better experience than my 4 year old model: everything went fast and smooth, yet I will have to spend more and get less (no charger in the box, no headphones, ... I could just get a Samsung A14, which is performance-wise comparable to my 4 year old A50 but with latest Android version - that performance now gets risky regarding longevity even if it gets the updates (but of course this model won't get 4 updates). And that would be the lowest range phone in the A series, the A34 costs more than double and is the dreadfully close to the A54 (in Poland). Up to this A50, I generally always felt that my next phone was a genuine improvement over my previous phone. Ok, I always bought a new one when the old one did not manage either due to memory or cpu - this is actually the first time a phone fails on me in such a sudden way - but that also was after around 3-5 years, so not that far of in terms of time. It seems that phones to some extent have reached the pc level: not much innovation and much less of an incentive to upgrade. I see my own 20+ year mobile phone evolution as going from mid-range (Siemens S35) to high-end (Nokia 6260, HTC TyTN, X10 mini pro) to low-mid-range (LG K8, Samsung A50) - there were more inbetween, but those just seem to confirm the pattern.

[VJ]

I took the A50 to a service point, where they run free diagnostics... After a few hours, they told me it was fixed: it was enough to hard-reset it by disconnecting the battery from the mainboard. Coming home, it died again. Luckily they give a 3 month warranty on repairs, so I went back... They checked and noticed that some soldered connection disconnected, so it was fixed again. I went home and managed to copy everything I wanted before I died again the same evening. So I went back and gave the phone again... When they did not call after a few hours, I went their and managed to talk to the guy who does the repairs. He is puzzled and would love to figure out the cause: he says it looks bad on them that they claim it is fixed when a few hours later it turns out it is not. So he would like to keep the phone for a bit longer, to wait a longer time to see if it will suddenly die again.

Apparently, the A50 is quite modular: at the service point they can disconnect cameras and other stuff, and the phone still works (minimal setup is battery+mainboard+display). He suspects some small overvoltage or other issue somewhere in one of the devices, which in turn triggers a safety mechanism that blocks the phone, and would like to find the cause: he feels that if a phone can still work (even e.g. without cameras) it is better to have it as a spare or so than to throw it out. I tend to agree with him there, so let's see how it plays out. I already paid for the first fixing and won't have to pay for his time spent on it, so I'm happy to let him continue (and I'm ok with having paid as I got my data back).

Either way, I'll get a new phone (waiting for black Friday promotions, which usually are quite good here in Poland and start already some weeks before), but it would be nice if that old A50 could be my backup with my Belgian number, better than the LG I currently use.

One suggestion for backup that I've just discovered - I don't like the cloud backups: Syncthing. It allows you to synchronize folders between devices that run the software, and it exists for Android as well (apart from almost all PC platforms). Guess what I'll set up when I have a new phone....

[VJ]

If anybody is looking: Samsung seems to have great promotions in Europe, a bit dependent on the country, but with quite large cashbacks and discounts for additional combination purchases.

I'm now looking to also replace my smartwatch (battery is dying after a few hours) and a combination of a phone (A34 5g), smartwatch (Galaxy Watch 5 Pro) and headset (Galaxy Buds FE - the phone lacks a 3.5mm jack) results in an almost 50% discount (including cashbacks) for the whole lot in Poland. So not a bad combo... The promotion lasts till next week.