When technology leaves you all....bleurgh!

There are times when I find the technology I need to live life in the 21st century leaves me with feelings of anger and ire that simply do not fit my daily, calm, tranquil life. For example, the mobile phone. For nearly 20 years, I walked around with my phone pretty much taped to my ear. To the point that, one Christmas, my kids´present to me was an extra large fat elastic band to keep it there more easily!

After Nokia lost the plot, from around 2006 I had an HTC M3100 (aka Hermes/Tytn) and whilst it resembled a small brick, the functionality offered still seems to escape Apple in 2016. Eventually, willing to give Nokia a second chance, I ended up with a Nokia N97 (dreadful phone, didn´t even deserve the name) and then due to an emergency, I got on the iPhone bandwagon when the Nokia gave up the ghost less than 6 months after its acquisition.

How I wish I never had. I know many love iPhones and all that, but my experience was sufficient that I actually gave up even having a phone at all for 2+ years. And what an absolute delight that was!

It took little effort to find a house to rent where I could guarantee NO mobile coverage at all - highlighting the lies we are told about ubiquitous coverage by mobile telcos and governments alike - and I ventured into a blissful couple of years where I could choose when people contacted me, no more support calls in the middle of the night, and the best part, no mobile bills.

Then, due to work commitments and travel that required at least some semblance of contact with the real world, I was given an iPhone again. It was lying around in an office drawer after the company upgraded all of the staff to iPhone 5, so I got it. From day one - and I know you should not look a gift horse in the mouth - it has driven me spare. It is prehistoric.

1. No manner of changing the battery which goes from 25-28% to zero and shuts down in approx 2 mins. Almost every other mobile phone on the market ever has permitted you to change the battery yourself without requiring a new handset. This is a level of built-in obsolence that defies belief tbh. And I worry about those who probably end up recycling the handsets, probably using toxic chemicals, unprotected, in countries where the idea of owning an iPhone may only ever be a dream.

2. Constantly declaring - No memory available - and nowhere to stick a memory card. It is all well and good to say, "Sync with your icloud account to free up space" but you should not have to a) use up huge quantities of expensive mobile data just to get a working phone again because you have taken a few photos b) have to trudge around looking for a wifi connection - we do NOT all live in the land of Starbucks on every corner and/or c) need to be tethered to a PC to get the damned thing to work again. It is a mobile device - the clue is in the name! What actually is Apple´s problem with providing a SD slot??? Simply aesthetics? The truth is that the sodding thing is so slim, it is actually quite hard to take a photo one-handed, for instance, and an extra few mm to make room for useful items like SD cards, headphone sockets (and how I miss my HTC stylus!) actually would not go amiss ergonomically.

3. A confusing choice of in-built apps which are mostly non-useful and impossible to remove vs the logical and useful features which have to be downloaded, usually from third party providers, and now, almost always, bloated with unnecessary code and bugs, (creating problem no 2 constantly) and with in-app purchases that pop up constantly like a hard-sell salesman chasing you down every aisle in a store.

4. Simple features, such as a small button on the side of the handset to record the call you are on - incredibly useful when someone is giving you directions and you know you are going to forget them as soon as you hang up - through to a hard keypad - very useful when the screen decides that today is a dark grey or black day, or the touch keyboard decides that is in an unresponsive mood. Look, I feel like that too sometimes, but a moody mobile, I can do without. And please, don´t tell me to take it to an Apple store. Last time I succumbed to that reasoning, it was a 5 hour journey driving, and then 3 hours faffing around in the store with some geek Genius, who struggled to solve the problem anyway.

5. Yeah, yeah, you can tell me a hundred times that the iThing works well with Windows but many times, it only does that if you have got Apple features all over your PC eg iTunes etc. And boy, do I hate iTunes. I have gone from having a great selection of music whilst I wandered around on my HTC to absolutely nothing on my phone because the stupid system will not let me access my various libraries to put the music I WANT on the device without risking deleting everything from my libraries. And yes, that has happened to me and I lost YEARS of music. So now, I just don´t bother with podcasts, music etc on my iThing because I cannot afford to lose the music I have managed to acquire since that disastrous event. And as for trying to copy a selection of photos from iThing to Windows----don´t even make me go there. Why is there not a simple File Explorer for your PC to iPhone? What is the problem with allowing me to see the files on my own device that I HAVE PUT THERE?

6. I am not a technophobe in any way shape or form but I simply do not have time, patience or even the will any longer to try to resolve problems which should not even occur.

The reason for this post is that the iThing today decided that it was SOOOOOO full that even sending a message was beyond it. There are barely any apps left on it after I have deleted everything I can, no music, only the odd photo, so presumably, somewhere in its innards, there are 100s of temp files or something eating what little memory it left the factory with. I do not wish to sit here, tethered to my PC, screaming at the screen and the device, "Why can´t it be logical or easy?". I can´t upgrade it to the latest iOS because...yeah, correct...insufficient memory!

Hard reset? Return to factory default? No. Window. Out. Into the rain and cold, where it belongs.

My next communications device will coo gently and eat seed.

/rant