Cell Phones

Is a dead cell phone battery a plausiable excuse these days?

Remember the days when kids and teenager’s excuses for not calling home were that they couldn’t find a phone anywhere or they didn’t have change to use a payphone? Well, those days a re long gone – do you know any kids who leave home without a cell phone nowadays?

Yet, there is one obstacle to their always-on, ever connected lives – the dreaded dead cell phone battery. It may be a real reason or just a convenient excuse, but either way, most parents would accept the dead cell phone battery as a reason for their kids not checking in provided it is a one time event.

Isn’t it amazing that with all the billions of dollars of technology behind the entire cellular phone grid, you can easily be locked out of the system by a mere dead battery?

Forgot your car charger before you left on that long road trip? You’re out of luck. Is the battery getting old and won’t hold a charge anymore? It might as well be 1985 because you won’t be using that cell phone.

What’s the worst time and/or place that your phone battery died?

· Was your boyfriend just about to propose long distance?
· Did your wife warn you not to dare to hang up on her again?
· Were you right in the middle of a multi-million dollar sales deal?
· Were you on the phone with AAA, just about to tell them where your car was broken down?
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If you travel outside the country, you may be thrilled to learn that your cell phone (depending on the carrier) may work in several places. You may be horrified though when you receive your next bill.

The rates for using your phone in foreign countries can cost up to 4 dollars a minute!

Don’t assume that because you have “free long distance” on your phone, then you’re covered when making calls out of the country. Many people think this is the case, but it’s not. What you have on your phone is domestic long distance and doesn’t apply when making international destination calls or when originating calls from international locations.

If you’ve been surprised by an unexpected phone bill after traveling, please share your story and help warn someone else.
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One of the best bargains in the cell phone industry is the “add a line” deals. (This is not an industry known for bargains so take advantage of one of these programs while you can.) Different carriers have different names for their programs.

Cingular calls theirs Family Talk. Verizon calls theirs Family Share Plans.

You get multiple phone lines and phone numbers, which share minutes all under one bill and for one price. Also, calls between or among those numbers are unlimited.

Why restrict yourself to only your family? Sign up for this deal with your best friend, too. You’d probably rather talk to him or her anyway!
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In these days of 800 minute per month plans and free nights & weekends, credit for dropped calls isn’t the same hot issue it used to be in the cell industry.

However, if any of you still have low usage plans or manage to burn through minutes faster than snow accumulates during a blizzard, then this is for you.

If you are paying for a call and it is interrupted by their poor service, you deserve compensation. Don’t be afraid to call the cell carrier’s customer service line and ask for the credit. (God knows they won’t offer it on their own!) They have no problem charging you for every little thing; you should have no problem demanding that they provide service worthy of the money you pay.

Do you use the Internet and data access features of your cell phone? (Do you even know if your cell phone has such features?)

You can check your e-mail, sign into IM, and check local movie times. Some sites have special configurations and URL for people surfing on devices other than PC’s. Of course, the screen is so much smaller and you might be paying by the downloaded KB so you wouldn’t want large graphics like you might when surfing at home.

As these services and our phones get more sophisticated, everything will improve. Imagine it’s the night before a special occasion and as you are stuck on an hour-long train ride, you realize you forgot to purchase a gift for a special occasion. You can now do those things over the phone via voice, but imagine how much better it would be if you could surf the web right from your phone and actually see all the items in a company’s catalog, just like at home.
Have you used your phone yet to surf the Internet or do you prefer a dedicated device such as a Blackberry or Treo?
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Remember back in Novemeber 2003 when wireless local number portability was introduced? People were predicting the downfall of cell phone companies and that the rates would drop considerably because of the increased competition due to the fact that subscribers would be much more likely to switch companies when their contracts expired. Another prediction was that cell phone customer service would improve dramatically because cell phone companies would invest the money needed to improve the customer service experience in order to retain customers.

Of course, none of that has happened! Cell phone prices are still high and cell phone customer service is just as bad as ever.

Now that it is has been four and half years, have you ever switched carriers and taken your phone number with you? If so, was it worth the switch?

Can you believe an LG cell phone went through the wash, (literally)?

There is so much negativity surrounding cell phones that I thought it would be nice to start this blog category off with some positive news and praise for a particular model. (Don’t worry; we can all rant and rave about various cellular frustrations in future posts!)

At the time it happened, in my household, we had two LG cell phones for a little over a year. One day, one of them went through the wash! (To protect the guilty and innocent alike, the perpetrator of this deed will not be revealed. However, I will say, it wasn’t I.) When I say, “went through the wash,” I don’t mean got dropped into the basin and noticed before the water was turned on. Oh, no, I mean it was left in the jeans pocket and went through the entire wash cycle in which it was completely submerged for fifteen minutes in water and detergent, then spun around, rinsed, and spun some more.

Only pure luck kept it from being put in the dryer. There were too many clothes to fit well in the dryer so half the load was put on top of the dryer while the rest were drying in it. The cell phone was found in the pocket at that point in the next-to-be-dried pile.

The next dreaded step was attempting to make a call. Amazingly, the phone still worked! The ringer didn’t sound quite right and the screen was blurry, but the call went through. We removed the battery and found only a drop or two of water inside and let it dry out for a day. The sound and screen are back to normal. It’s now as good as new.

Who knew that it could stand up to such harsh conditions? I feel like I should add a disclaimer: Don’t try this at home.

What’s your amazing story of cell phone survival? Please include the model type so other readers can research it further if they like.
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Readers, I am introducing another new category to the Someone Elses’s Kids Blog today. It is going to be devoted to discussion of cell phones. (Don’t worry, parents, I haven’t forgotten about you. There will be entries specifically dealing with issues about kids and cell phones.)

Cellular phones are such a good topic to discuss. Besides computers, I can’t think of another item that has so invaded our lives and become ubiquitous over the past ten to fifteen years.

In fact, let’s go back fifteen years to 1993. Most people did not even have cell phones. Wealthy people had what they called “car phones” or “mobile phones.” (In the UK, that or simply “mobile” are the preferred terms to this day.)

The car phones were just like house phones. There was a base unit with a handset and a cord. The only people I knew who had them owned a high end Cadillac and a Mercedes.

Then in the mid-90’s, the next innovation was the bag phone. Again, there was a base unit with an antenna and a corded handset, but the difference is that it didn’t have to be tied to the car (literally). The unit was in a shoulder bag and you could take it around with you. That was the first kind of cell phone I bought.

I really only got it for emergencies because it was kind of ridiculous to lug that phone around everywhere. Also, in addition to the monthly fee, it cost .23 a minute to use. You can imagine it was not for idle chatter.

In the late 90’s, I moved on to the original Motorola Flip Phone. I think it was model 550 or DC550 or something like that. It was the first realistically portable cell I had phone since it didn’t require its own mini backpack or shoulder bag. Still, in comparison to today’s phones, the battery on that Motorola Flip was at least three times the size and weight what the entire phone would be now.

I liked that original flip phone so much that I kept it well past its prime. My friends made fun of it every time they saw it! Typical jibes were, “That thing belongs in a museum,” and “Were you raising dinosaurs as pets when you bought that thing.”

I didn’t replace it until 2004, long past when every one else had moved on to cell phones that could easily fit in the palm of your hand. (What made it even crazier that part of my job at the time was overseeing the contracts and relationship between cell phone companies and a huge corporation. The contracts included about two thousand cell phone lines. I used to show the reps my old phone to prove that I wasn’t impressed with new technology just because it was new.)

I definitely made a good choice when I switched to the smaller phone in 2004. At that time I bought an LG model. Read the next entry in this category to find out what happened with that phone.