Why Does Technology Hate Me?

I think I've had it with Samsung, Android or maybe just technology overall.

Today while I was in Hamilton picking blueberries, my phone (Galaxy S3 for anyone wanting to know) gave me some notification about my microSD card being disconnected/dismounted, and I didn't really think much of it, as it happened once or twice with my previous phone (Galaxy S2) and I just had to restart my phone for everything to be fine.

I restarted my S3, but to no avail! My phone didn't even recognise that there was a microSD card in it! I tried taking the card out, wiping it, blowing the slot, leaving the phone turned off for a while, and still nothing!

Tonight I put the card into my laptop to make sure it wasn't the card's problem, and it was working fine! I'll have to try put another microSD into my phone to make sure it is my phone's problem.

This isn't the first problem I've had with this phone since I bought it earlier last year. Let's see..

1. The LED light wouldn't switch off, so I had to send it back to Samsung to get it fixed. I didn't get my phone back for three weeks because Warehouse Stationery didn't send it off straight away.
2. When I received my phone back from them, my 'home' button was stiffer than it was before. I've been tempted to return it to get it fixed again, but I'm a little weary of how long it will take.
3. I kept getting pop-up boxes telling me that some Samsung service had ended. Fortunately that stopped after I upgraded to Jelly Bean
3. I upgraded my phone software to Android Jelly Bean, and now my phone is extremely laggy! The camera would also keep crashing too, telling me that it failed to record! I probably should have done a clean install.

Along with this,

- my very first phone the Sony Ericsson K800i joystick button wouldn't allow me to scroll down, which meant I'd have to scroll to the top of the menu and then come back up the menu from the bottom.
- my HTC Desire began looping the start-up screen.
- my Samsung Galaxy S2 kept freezing, with a Samsung service fail pop-up box constantly appearing after I updated to Gingerbread.

Don't get me started on laptops as well! I just upgraded my Sony Vaio to Windows 8, only to find it plagued with these little problems, such as the cursor jumping around as I typed. I called Sony, only to discover I wasn't meant to do a fresh install of Windows 8, but was meant to upgrade my laptop via their Vaio Utility software. In the end I had to install each driver one by one, and then was met with even more problems after when I was told my battery might have problems! Fortunately people on the net had faced this problem before and provided a workaround.

Is it just me, or do I attract problems?

Let There be Internet!

I finally managed to get mobile internet going on my phone six months after buying it, and in the end it wasn't my phone or my problem at all, but Vodafone's!

I rang up technical support and got someone from New Zealand at the other end. I explained the situation to him and straight away he offered to email me the APN settings to follow. I immediately told him I had already tried that! 

He then put me on hold for five minutes.

When he returned, he asked me to try connect on my phone and you won't believe how I felt when I saw it connected!

I tried to ask him what went wrong and he told me some settings weren't correct at their end! I had been thinking it was my problem all this time! 

He asked me if there was anything he could help me with before hanging up on me abruptly! He wasn't exactly the friendliest person to talk to. I was hoping he would have felt sympathetic and give me some sort of compensation for not being able to connect for several months!

Mobile Internet Horror

I've had a long and frustrating experience trying to get my phone to connect to Vodafone's mobile internet ever since I first bought it!

I bought my phone earlier in the year, but soon discovered that while I could access the net on my phone via WiFi, I couldn't do so via the 3G mobile internet, despite using the settings on the Vodafone website. I managed to find settings that would let me connect to WAP but not mobile internet, so my apps couldn't connect to the internet!

I tried contacting Vodafone and they just referred me to the same page on their website with the settings I had already tried! I tried ringing technical support as well and got someone from Egypt and they gave me pretty much the same advice. I also emailed the shop I bought the phone from and they gave me the same settings.

At this point I gave up and tried to make peace with the fact that I wouldn't be able to use the internet on this phone, and would eventually have to buy another phone sooner than I would have liked.

It was only recently after someone suggested I go back to the shop I bought the phone from, so I replied to them saying the settings didn't work. They told me I should hard reset my phone, then try the settings, so that's what I did and it still didn't work!

I then tried something I probably should've started right at the beginning - isolate the problem. I put in a 2 degrees sim card and it connected to the internet perfectly fine. Next I tried a Vodafone sim card and it also worked fine with the settings that didn't work for my Vodafone sim card, and it also worked fine!

I rang Vodafone again and they said maybe my sim card was old, and that I should go into a shop and ask to transfer my number to a new sim card. I did that today (which cost me $30!). Guess what? It didn't work!

I rang Vodafone AGAIN, and this time the lady told me it might take up to 24 hours. I'll have to wait and see, but I'm not holding out hope!

The Hello Count (Updated)

I have grown to absolutely hate the song 'Hello' by Martin Solveig & Dragonette, especially since they seem to play it constantly on the radio! It's driving me so insane I'm ready to self-medicate myself!

At work we're tuned to The Edge, and I thought I'd start a tally of just how many times it's played this week, and will keep this post updated!

Monday: 3
Tuesday: 2

For those of you who don't know which song I'm talking about, here it is. Knock yourself out...

Know Your Product, Vodafone Customer Service

This afternoon I rang up Vodafone to ask them whether it was possible for them to enable my phone to do Hotlink, as I had seen a Vodafone staff member being able to do it on one of their forums. I was surprised I was able to talk to someone within a few minutes of calling, but even more surprised by the service I received.

When I asked the customer service representative (who had a slight American accent and sounded like he wasn't from this country) about enabling Hotlink, he told me I'd have to contact the handset manufacturer (HTC) and offered to give me the company's website and phone number.

I asked him if there was anything he could do though, since Hotlink was a service provided by Vodafone. Now this was what caught me by surprise. He asked me what Hotlinking was! I would've thought he would have known what products and services the company he worked for sold/provided! I then proceeded to explain to him what Hotlink was.

He then told me that Vodafone didn't manufacture the handsets (obviously) and told me he could provide me with HTC's website, phone number and the Vodafone website. I let him continue to give me the details for HTC. I then asked him whether there was a specific page on the Vodafone website that could help me, as I was already on the site. That's when he told me I should be able to find it somewhere.

Thank goodness calls to customer service don't cost a dollar anymore, because that call definitely wasn't worth one dollar!