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When the Mobile fails.... dependence is quite shocking...

I don’t believe that for an instant. Plenty of research showing the endurance on various surfaces.

Yep, but nothing showing actual transmission. I can’t be bothered to find it, but there was a recent study showing that transmission by contact was negligible.

LFMD, France

Peter wrote:

Plenty of research showing the endurance on various surfaces.

Yes. But that doesn’t mean that you can actually catch the disease that way and even if you can it doesn’t mean that the risk is more than negligible compared to being infected by droplets.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Thanks for all your inputs. Definitly worth looking into quite a few of those things.

My current status is, I am hoping to pick up a used 3 month old Note10 on Monday for a fraction of it’s original price as the owner upgraded to 5G, which, seeing the opposition we get from the tinfoilhat brigade in Switzerland, we won’t be needing outside main centers for years. The only thing I am not too keen on that one is that the display is only 6.4 inches vs 6.7 of the Note 10 plus, but the price is attractive. If I don’t stumble over something too good to miss, that will probably be it.

The “fake” chinese rubbish phone will get a place of honour once this is over, it literally saved me. I got all my communication restored throughout yesterday, SMS this morning. The only inconvenience I have right now is that the battery holds maximum for 5 hours and the thing is very slow. Connected to my phone charger in the car, it still looses power but less fast. It charges up on a regular charger in about 2 hours. It is workable for now.

Swisscom were extremely helpful in their shop and got SMS to work on it so all my SMS based services were restored. I also got a talking to by the technician about how to avoid being taken hostage by Samsung in such cases… basically he said all my data are safe in the Samsung Cloud but I will need to get another Samsung device to get it out. Hence I am browsing the 2nd hand market. All my photographs e.t.c. are on the SD card anyhow, so they are safe.

I will still give the Note 8 for analysis and have it checked over, as somehow the statement that the Mainboard just died is not quite something I am willing to believe in. Personally I think the battery got deep discharged and possibly there is a problem with the plug. I now got a wireless charger and tried to charge it, indications are ok, but the phone does not react. I got some more hints on how to try to revive it, otherwise it will got to the shop to see what actually is wrong with it. I actually found some beaten up exemplars with working mainboards, so I might pick one of those up and change the display (which is new) and battery over. This I should be able to get done in Bulgaria for a few levs.

I don’t really see how my case is a commercial for Apple. The situation there is exactly the same: Your backups are on Apple’s servers, so you need an Apple device to access them. Same on Samsung, your backups are in the Samsung Cloud so you need a Samsung device to access them. In neither case, you can move to Xiaomi or Huawai e.t.c without major hassle.

Huawai, I’d love to try it but as they don’t have Google on them, they are very restricted in use. I’d tend towards Xiaomi rather. My wife had a Redmi 3S and it was a great phone until it got soaked in coffee and it’s charging port broke. But in order to do that, i have to get away from Samsung for my backups and go somewhere, which is cross plattform, I suppose Google will be the easy answer to that. Will continue to educate myself.

What I also have decided is that I will have a 2ndary fully updated phone in the future, pretty much as I did with that Chinese phone but one which is as capable as the primary. So if one dies, move simcard and SD card over and be ready to go. I also got advised to do a Smart Switch backup regularly to the SD card. That way, if something goes wrong, I can immediately throw the SD card into another Samsung phone and restore everything.

I will also try to stay away from the Note series as it appears that those are known for this kind of thing. I do want wireless charging, so I can’t go the obvious way of the S10Lite, which my wife has and which is a great phone for half the price of a “full” S10 or S20. 5G for now is no issue for me though I might be tempted as some shops right now sell off the first S20 models at huge discounts as the Note 20’s have now appeared. Will have to ponder about this during the day.

For the banking and credit card verifications, I have chosen to use SMS verification exactly for the reason that SMS’s even work on old Nokias if they have to. Now that I know how to transfer SMS capability, this is quite easy to maintain.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

EuroFlyer wrote:

I am sorry for your difficulties.
Your post is the one of the best advertisement for Apple products I have seen for some time.

I wonder why you think that. The reports of similar problems with Apple products are legion on the internet, with their charging plugs especially infamous.

I am very happy for never having owned a single Apple product in my life.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

Never put all your eggs in one basket.

Have a crappy phone with your password and ID stuff on the side as standby.

Also, use the 3-2-1 backup rule.

  • 3 copies of your data
  • 2 different media
  • 1 copy off-site

Also, don’t use SMS for authentication / identification.

I was amazed how easy it was to move my phone number to another operator without having to provide any proof of identification, quite scary actually, they will do anything in their power to get you as a customer.

Last Edited by Dimme at 18 Sep 19:16
ESME, ESMS

How was it done?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Just to pick up on one thing that was mentioned

Currently I see a £45 (was £30) limit on contactless with a card, and £150 (determined empirically) on contactless with a phone.

I believe any limit would be set by the vendor, and IME most do not have limits set. I paid a 5 figure amount with my watch recently (I had my card as well, but wanted to try it) much to the amusement of the salesperson.

I carry a credit and debit card from separate issuers with me, but I would say I actually take them out of my wallet maybe once every few months and use my phone/watch any other times.

United Kingdom

Dimme wrote:

Have a crappy phone with your password and ID stuff on the side as standby.

I have those and I have a crappy phone :) despite it giving me some grief over the days, it will get a place of dry storage and honour after my “new” Note 8 is in commission (it’s been restoring data from the Samsung cloud for the last several hours and is at about 30% now) . The password file is of course saved in different places.

The bigger problem are apps which connect with your credit cards for 2 step authorisation, some via SMS (solved) others via proprietory apps which need to be set up. The latter I did not even attempt to set up on the intermediate phone, as it takes more time than 2 days of use are worth. Will see how it works once the new phone is working.

The 2nd hand Note8 is still far away from being finished. Once the restore is done, the Samsung updates will have to follow, the phone is with Android 7 at the moment but will need to update to Android 9 eventually. So probably I will still get the Note 10 I can take on Monday (3 months old, owner upgraded to 10 plus and 5G) which is up to date and then transfer with Smart switch. So the Note 8will be my new backup.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 19 Sep 08:18
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Day 2 of installing the Note8. Lesson learnt: Getting a 4 year old phone will mean to install updates one by one since the phone was first released on the market. All in all, 35 if my count is right, each of which takes about 30 minutes. Add to that, one of them about half ways point had an UI update, after which all the Samsung apps must be updated too, another hour. Just installed this one now, another 14 updates to go.

Wonder why they never thought of getting a collective update for everything… this takes a lot of time.

what worked really well was the backup restore from the Samsung Cloud as well as the re-import of contacts e.t.c. from Google.

The strategy seems very clear: Samsung tries hard to get rid of older phones which have more than about 3 years on them. If they go as far as they did with the Note4 which was killed in most cases with an update, I hope not.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Samsung tries hard to get rid of older phones which have more than about 3 years on them

This happens with both IOS and Android. An older IOS device cannot be upgraded to a later OS version. And many apps require the later OS. I found this with Foreflight for example. In the end, the old Ipad becomes useless, except as a simple web browser to kick around the house.

But the batteries, which are mostly not economically serviceable, also lose capacity. When I look at why I upgraded various devices, it was mostly due to (a) mechanical damage and (b) the battery lasting barely a day.

At any given price level, the internals looks more or less identical regardless of the OS.

It is also worth noting that “security issues” supposedly associated with not being able to apply the latest OS upgrade are mostly bunk. IOS and Android devices run apps in a “compartment” and it is difficult to spread a virus the way it is trivially done under Windows and the various versions of Unix (Linux, OSX, etc). The risk of running some old IOS or Android device is minimal, especially as the only way in is going to be via www or email, not by inserting infected storage media or via a local LAN.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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