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New toy
I think I posted a while back that my plan was to get a new phone this year. In past years, I’ve always gone for the year old models but this year my plan was to buy the latest model. I waited, sometimes patiently, for Apple to announce their new phones. There really weren’t many secrets on it since almost everything had been leaked ahead of time.
My resolve was to get a new phone with these new releases but when the time came I started wavering a bit. Part of me thought maybe I should stick it out another year and wait for the next models. Apple is likely to release 5G phones and a few other changes are expected to fall more in line with other similarly priced phones. I even considered getting the low-end model this time but then there were concerns about the resolution which is actually worse than my old phone.
On Friday, I had to take Lego Lover to an appointment in West Perth so we walked into the city proper and met the Scientist for lunch. After eating we walked across the street to the Apple store. We’d been watching it while eating outside and the lines weren’t a big deal at this point. Lego Lover wouldn’t go into the store so the Scientist waited with him outside while I went into check out the new models. It was crowded but honestly not really much worse than usual. They had several tables with the phones displayed so I checked out the low end model and it fit in my hand nicely. But I knew from early on the screen just wasn’t going to do it. It just looked rather flat. I went on to look at the Pro model and it was lovely but it was kind of small. When I was younger this wouldn’t have been an issue but my eyes like the larger screens now. I tried out the Pro Max and it felt similar to my old phone. It was kind of a no-brainer and I went back outside to the lines to put in my order. That led me back inside to wait for the next available Apple person to assist me. It was all stream-lined and went pretty smoothly. They had older model phones off to the side to try out. I was met by a few store people who were just almost over-the-top gung ho about the new phones. Before I knew it, I was at the front and was being assisted and then I had this fancy black box in my bag and was walking out. It didn’t take too long at all.
We had a few other things to do then we came home by bus and once I was settled in at home, I opened my new box. This just reminded me there are people who unbox new items on Youtube, which I find kind of hilarious. I could have had my new phone set up in store but I am quite okay to do it myself. Once I plugged it in, it was smooth sailing. I will say the process is really easy these days if you have another Apple product. It just gets the information and transfers it over. It then was able to transfer my files from my old phone. The biggest time waiting was for all my apps to download and even that goes quicker now we have the faster NBN access that goes at higher speeds.
I ordered a case online that night and the next day I ended up buying another one to use in the meantime. This is the down side of buying brand new because in the past I was able to get a cheap case easily. I spent more than I normally would have but also got a protective film put on. I spent far less for the case this time than last even though it’s the same company (Spigen) that makes it.
As for the phone to use, it’s been a dream so far. I’m still getting used to the slight differences to the screen but it’s all been pretty good. I finally tried out the fancy camera yesterday and it was brilliant to use. I’m amazed at the quality of the images shown and will definitely be making more use of this camera.
The other cool thing is I can use the Qi charger that the Scientist uses for his Samsung phone.
I will add that the guy that helped me in store also mentioned an update to the WatchOs and I updated it on Saturday. There’s now a noise level sensor you can turn on to see how loud it is where you are. It can remain on all the time but I don’t really see much point of it and turned it off that night. It’s kind of neat but I find it kind of a weird addition to go on about like the Apple store dude did. :D
With the phone camera I took a new photo of the Scientist and now have it as my watch face. It came out really well. :)
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Phones
It’s been almost four years since my current phone model was released and I suspect the support for it is going to be severely limited soon. In the past, I’ve waited for the price to go down on a model before taking the plunge but it seems this isn’t really all that cost effective if I’m buying a new phone more often. This is probably truer now that the phones are getting even more expensive.
I’m going to wait for the next models to be released later this year and I guess I’ll be taking the plunge and investing in one with hopes it will last four years instead of three. But I will admit it’s really frustrating to find it’s costing so much more than it did in the past to keep connected.
Speaking of my phone, it started doing something that is kind of worrying the other day. I’d been playing music in the car with it and found the device was quite hot by the time I disconnected it. Normally playing music takes very little power and reduced the charge very little. This time it had been significantly depleted within a short time. Later on I noticed it was dropping the charge 10-20% within a few minutes. Fortunately this hasn’t happened again but this was the sort of activity I had on the previous phone before it died less than a year ago. (Fortunately Apple replaced the device at no charge.)
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Problem solved
Back in August or maybe September, I bought an iPhone. I’d been waiting for prices to drop on old models when the new ones were announced so I grabbed the model I wanted when this happened. For the most part I’ve been really happy with the phone. I went back to Apple due to my past investment. (I wanted to stick with Windows but there has been less and less support in the past year so I decided to jump back sooner than later.)
There was one problem that happened right from the start when I transferred my data from the old iPhone to the new one. My music did not sync properly and some albums had tracks missing and some tracks played other songs, even for those few tracks I have from the iTunes store. I’d been trying to fix the problem for some time but had had no success. I finally did some real searching on it and found a fix and tried that but it didn’t work. In the midst of this I reset my desktop os due to ongoing problems which may or may not have contributed (I know now this didn’t have any connection). I also deleted all the music I’d been keeping on the hard drive. Over the years music directory had become quite a mess and I thought somewhere in there was yet another iTunes file that I had overlooked. Getting rid of all of it seemed a good idea no matter what. Well the reset didn’t make any difference and the deletion of songs didn’t effect any changes when I added music back again.
I went back to my searching and found so-called fixes on the Apple discussion boards. I again tried all the steps included and reset my phone one more time. This time it worked so I was able to stop pulling out my hair over this issue. Plus my music directory is nice and tidy now that everything is consistent. I still have a lot of music to add back to the directory and then to my phone but I can actually listen to full albums without a problem now.
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Time speeding past
I just realized it’s now been a couple weeks since I last posted and it hardly seems like that at all. Must be the rush of the season this year.
As of this weekend I became the owner of an iPhone on a postpaid plan. Turns out it is more cost effective to go this route than to buy it outright and pay for phone recharges. Plus I get a data allowance each month. Anyway, it’s been interesting to learn my way through the use of the phone. Except I have made a complete phone call as yet. Just checked it would ring through when I dialled. So far I have mostly used the camera with a couple of apps that I found. I’m having the most fun with the hipstamatic app, which uses filter to give photos a retro look. There are different “lenses” and “film” to try out on the app and you can shake the device to get random options with some interesting results. One benefit of this phone is it’s unlikely I would find myself with a dead battery as I tended to keep the iPod touch charged pretty easily. This does, however, go through the battery much faster and I will have to make sure I charge it daily. I suspect there is still a lot to learn about the features on this, since it’s markedly different from the ancient iPod touch.
I had a freaky alert go off on my phone and iPad at midnight yesterday. It tried to persuade me that my recently deceased grandma had a birthday the next day. That would have been fine except her birthday was at the end of October. And my calendar has that listed twice (Outlook reinstall/sync issue). And there was definitely no alert about her birthday then. Or anyone else’s birthday for that matter. I have looked through all my calendars on the computer and can find no evidence elsewhere of this “event”. I’m sure I didn’t get an alert for this last year either. Anyway, I will just think of this as that freaky birthday alert and it will most likely remain a mystery.
I’m still awaiting my mammogram results from almost two weeks ago. I’m supposed to have them by tomorrow so hopefully I will find them in the mailbox next time the mail arrives. I must admit to being a tad bit anxious at lack of news but my more rational side believes I would have been contacted by phone by now had there been any issues. Hopefully will be able to put my mind at ease when the mail next arrives.
I’m sure I had something else to say but honestly can’t recall. Must mean it’s too late to be up writing and I should get to sleep soon.