It had locked up solid earlier in the year with a scary looking warning icon (see below) and all usual combinations of reset button presses didn’t work for shit.
The volume up/down buttons were behaving strange as well – I feared it had landed on the deck at work one too many times and was kaputt (this is an occupational hazard with any mobile I get as I have to make test phone calls whilst checking phone circuits in the bowels of comms rooms and take pictures of equipment that regularly ends up installed in unusual and awkward locations)
I had a backup phone so I pulled the SIM and put the 930 aside but this was annoying as the camera on the other phone (a cheaper Windows phone) isn’t half as good and it is slower – the Nokia 930 was also one of the last decent Nokia/Windows phones before MS decided to screw things up even more.
I find Android phones to be laggy (both the phone and the camera) as well as a privacy/security nightmare and can’t afford an Iphone (they are also less physically robust)- a few years previously I’ve already managed to knacker a supposedly “indestructible” Android device!
I managed though to pop the back off the 930 to check if the plastic bit of the volume/up down buttons was not fouled by anything and correctly pressing on the miniature microswitches and then replace the cover (not so easy compared to other such devices as its not made to be easily removable) – plugged it into the charger (as the accu would of course be stone dead after 3 months not in use); this time round there was no lightning flash but an odd flashing pattern of the “home” icon at the bottom (perhaps signifying a hard reset) and then a message that it had no SIM but 112 calls would work; cancelling this came up with my normal set of icons..
So I put the SIM back in and everything seems to be working again raaa (was impressed that all my Microsoft Office 365 accounts for work just resynced automaticallly once I corrected the device time and date)
this is the error symbol I had on the phone before (not the actual phone, got this off a web search)
haven’t had the chance to properly test the camera with “prettier” pictures as it is already dark and I this was the first thing I could find to photograph but it seems to be working well 🙂
IMO its worrying that all the global tech manufacturers have become so dependent on advertising revenue gathered from users personal data and the constant expectation end users willl upgrade devices within as little as two years, as increasingly all this is doing is devouring more scare resources whilst delivering gadgets that might slightly have more features but are less reliable!
Getting back to the repaired 930; yesterday at work I realised the camera was hunting for ages to get focus. I rarely use flash (LED or conventional) with any camera if there is any chance of a reasonable shot with available light; so didn’t initially realise the white LED on the back for the flash and focus assist lamp wasn’t working!
I therefore had to pop the back off the damn thing again; and discovered it not only contains the NFC antenna in the back panel (I had spotted this and the corresponding metal strips that should be touching against the circuit board pads on the panel but also 2 x white LEDs (which I initiallly mistook for something to do with wireless charging, that I never used anyway as it didn’t work straight).
So I had to carefully bend the strips on the phone circuit board so they made better contact (like adjusting battery clips on 1980s equipment but 20 times more fiddly) and replace the back cover yet again (according to the Nokia service manual you are actually supposed to replace the NFC antenna and possibly the LED rather than reuse them!). Thankfully the LED now works again (and even NFC which is another feature I hardly ever use either).
Unfortunately I can’t upload any pics of this operation as I didn’t have any other devices with a decent enough camera to do so, but this picture is taken with the repaired phone using the flash. And there are reasons why the stuff below is still made in the 21st century and very popular; it can be a more reliable method of information storage than modern digital devices :laugh_at:
@Garoldeep Singh 985616 wrote:
Old writing ink, made from nut is it not? you best have a quill and well for this :laugh_at:
I do actually have a number of old style steel dip pens and India/China ink, but these are not convenient to use when on the move. To get quills (not impossible round here) I would either have to ride 10km to the other side of town where my friends farm is; or if sourcing them from the field on my way to work I need to tell the goose man first (so I don’t get 999 called on me by random folk thinking I am rustling his poultry for the Chinese takeaway).
In either case I would still have to befriend the geese first to avoid being goosed when I enter their space (which can be the greatest challenge).
The above is a 21st century version of iron-gall ink; that does not clog up or corrode modern fountain pens 🙂
A few weeks ago I had to spend several hours in a basement plant room in high summer where every piece of metal in there is solidly bonded to protective earth so no mobile phone, laptop or anything else that requires wireless comms will work correctly (which is why I designed the water flow alarm to use old style relay switched signalling and an analogue phone dialler). To correctly calibrate the flow meter alarm settings (and avoid being distracted by tech acting up) I literally had to sit there and watch the display and write down the figures by hand.
This is one reason why I sometimes use these old methods – also Murphy’s law tends to ensure that your notes on occasion end up on the floor underneath a high pressure valve where the pipe joints are slowly making water (not enough for a major flood but enough to make a small pool of water on the floor) and even in office spaces I have at least once accidentally upset a drink on the desk. Few mobile phones or portable storage devices or the data contained on them would survive 30 seconds under running water 😉
