First World Problems: New Phones

There is a lot of suffering in the world: War, famine, drought, ruthless dictators, whatever.  Rough stuff….

But, that’s not what’s bugging me right now. Here’s my problem:  Have you bought a new phone lately?

Phones get old for a lot of reasons.  Usually, it is battery related.  Replacing the battery is not possible as a user.  You need a technician.  I have vivid memories of taking my daughter’s Iphone for a battery swap at the Apple Store.  After a few hours in the back room, they came out and announced they’d broken the phone and did not have a replacement and the phone was no longer under warranty.  We were basically dead in the water and I ended up buying her a new iPhone for way more money than I expected.  I complained and put up a fuss, but the bottom line was: She needed a functioning phone to survive.  That was a lot of years ago, but the memory is vivid.  If you take your phone to get a battery swap, you may end up with a dead phone.  There’s a lot of valuable stuff on my phone.  Yes, it is all backed up with DropBox and OneDrive… I think… I’m not really sure.  So…to quote Clint Eastwood:  “Do you feel lucky?”

So, flash forward to this month.  My Samsung Phone has been with me for several years and is still rather capable.  But, there are problems:  The battery is fading and on its last legs.  It has also gotten kind of flaky.  Runkeeper doesn’t run as expected.  People have trouble understanding me when I am using the phone.  Connectivity has gotten terrible, even though I am just a mile from the center of town.  The smaller screen is harder to work with.  The phone often just doesn’t ring when people call.  People leave messages but I don’t know the messages exist. It doesn’t have 5G, as if I know whether that even matters.  Yes, the camera is still darn good.  Yes, I love that it has a headphone jack and MicroSD card slot.  It has a lot of memory. It doesn’t seem to run slowly.  But, it needs to be reliable.  It’s part of my job, meaning its continuing function is literally a matter of life and death.  So I opted to buy a new phone with more features and a bit bigger screen.  I stayed in the Samsung ecosystem. Before I hit the BUY NOW button, I gasped. I was spending way too much money!  I did it anyway…

Upgrading a phone to a newer model is always a bit of a nightmare.  I have to admit, Samsung’s app did a good job of transferring my stuff to the new phone.  Everyone had told me such a thing should not prompt dread.  “They’ve come a long way!” says my computer knowledgeable son.  After about two hours and two more false starts (Samsung kept trying to install updates which killed the transfer process), it appeared I miraculously had my old phone in a new body.

Except… I didn’t.

First:  How many usernames and passwords does your current phone hold and effortlessly allow you to sign into your apps.  Answer:  A LOT!  MORE THAN YOU THINK!

During the process, I am reassured Samsung and Google have saved my sign in credentials and are automatically adding them back.

Except… They aren’t.

No, you need to manually enter them all yourself.   You do remember where you scribbled them on a scratch piece of paper several years ago, right?  OF COURSE NOT!!!!

Except…. It gets worse.

You’re a doctor.  Doctors have all sorts of confidential stuff on their phones.  You need to access hospital records on your computer with extra factor identification, using your phone and a special app.  You need to order controlled substances in a way that won’t let your staff run a drug distribution ring.  There are special communication apps like TigerConnect.  You do remember how you set those up, right?  If not, be confident your hospital/computer tech support also has no recollection of how to move these to a new phone.  Your EMR has buried the prescription module info in an impossible to access document somewhere.  You remember that email you got in 2016 telling you how to set up some of the stuff?  DuoConnect?  Why doesn’t it work anymore? Why is Google Authenticator no longer letting me enter into the hospital EMR?

WHY DOESN’T ANYTHING WORK ANYMORE???!!!???  HOW AM I GOING TO SEE PATIENTS IN AN HOUR?!?!?!?

Follow-up:  A week of effort has passed.  My new phone seems to be hooked up and working. I can get into the different programs I need.  There are still problems with Audible and Kindle.  I can’t find the book I was reading and the Audible book is on the wrong chapter.  Oh, well.

I look at my new phone.  It looks exactly like my old phone, except the old phone takes headphones with a headphone jack and fits into my pocket easier.  The new phone has enough camera lenses to … uh…I’m not sure what it does differently.

Why did I upgrade my phone?  What was I thinking?

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