My phone died on me two weeks back. It was a Samsung SGH N200. Actually it is still breathing its last few breaths. I wish it would just die completely and save me the torture of having to see my precious, sleek, 5 year loyal gadget with a flip, trying to come to life and giving me some futile hope. At the end of which, it just hangs itself to death again! Talk of atrocities. All this when I had some grand plans for it. Oh yes, I was planning to buy a new phone and stash this one away. For the kids (whenever they happen), would have played with an age old gadget and still found it nice, sleek and working (like I played with my dad’s Sony walkman which was one big box too heavy to be lifted. BUT it still works.)

It all happened one fine day when one felt the urge to go for a morning walk. Now such days are rare but not that rare to make one completely out of practice in terms of holding the mobile in question, house keys (as big as ones hand) and mp3 player (half the size of a credit card) – all in one hand, while shutting the door. Suddenly before I knew what fate had struck me with, my cellphone slipped and fell out of my grip. The keys could have fallen too (the fools) and no harm would have been done to anyone. But then the mp3 player could have fallen too and the hard disk inside it would have crashed and that would have been the end of another gadget (just a baby compared to the phone). Glad it didn’t.

My poor phone had fallen a couple of times earlier too. But it had always taken such falls in its stride and continued working fine. Not even a chip off the old block. But this day was destined to be different. After the fall, I quickly picked it up and verified that it was working fine. It was only later that I saw that the clock had frozen in time and the phone had hanged itself! Well at least it worked as a onetime stopwatch for my walk. Some optimism I have. Bah.

I tried everything I could to revive it. I even managed to make a couple of calls which was a very very very difficult thing to do considering that it just hanged (at random points of time during switching it on). But in the end, it just wouldn’t work without hanging at some point or the other of its operation. Being without a phone was some sort of a nightmare. I was not reachable nor could I make any calls. Besides that my contacts were in the phone even if I needed the numbers to use with a landline. Before any smartass points out, well yeah, the SIM card could be used in other phones but what abt the contacts which were in the phone memory?

In desperation I ultimately took it to several repair shops. Most ppl just gave up (saying that it’s like an old body now – medicine is no use anymore). Ultimately I landed in a shop where the guy was at least willing to look at it. He looked no less than a witch doctor himself. He checked the batteries and then without even asking me or giving me a warning, hard reset the phone! I lost all my contacts permanently (the most important ones were in fact in the phone and not SIM). When I stopped him, he just told me the stupid fact which he had supposedly assumed – that they are all in the SIM. Dumbass. All my passwords/PIN’s etc were in the phone as well!

Well, now I have another phone. The Motorola C168 (I am strictly against Nokia). This happens to be a temporary saviour which I bought the next day, so that I could use it for 2-3 weeks during which I plan which next flip phone to buy. After I buy another one, I would transfer it to my mom who anyway needs an upgrade of a phone. Her Nokia (torch wala) hangs too, right from the day it has been bought and replaced and even had its firmware upgraded. Only the frequency of this habit (hanging – do they make some sadistic phones or what?) is quite low. The new fella has all the usual frills. Polyphonic ring tones, colour display, MMS, GPRS and an FM radio to boot. The battery life is as good as Nokia. It supports 600 phone book entries and 200 SMS entries (which is much more than counterpart Nokias). All this in just 2990/-. What more could one want!