new phone

I’ve had my current phone, a Samsung Galazy S7, for a bit over 4 years, two on full contract, two on SIM only.  I have been thinking for a while about replacing it, because its light sensor has been getting dodgy (clogged with pocket lint, I think, as it improves if I use an air blower on it), and the wifi keeps dropping out.

Anyway, today it bricked.  It said something like “UI app stopped”, and nothing would restart it.  So, off to Carphone Warehouse, to get a new phone.  (This was my first foray into a big shop for over a year!)  A very helpful sales assistant and I chatted about phones through our masks.  He quickly ascertained I didn’t want anything fancy, or Apple, or large, but did want a reasonable camera.  This left the Pixel 4a as about the only option.

That made decision making easy, and it's absolutely fine.  It’s pretty basic (which I wanted).  It does waste some screen real estate with a Google search bar that can’t be removed.  It’s about the same size as my previous phone, but much lighter (I keep checking my pocket, thinking I’ve forgotten it), with more memory, more data, and a relatively cheap monthly contract.  I wonder how long this one will last?

My data and apps transfered across really smoothly.  But I will have to get a bunch of new charging cables, as I move from proprietary Samsung ones to standard USB-C.

Oh, and it has a sensible alarm clock, where you can make the alarm get slowly louder (functionality annoyingly removed from my previous phone).  It doesn’t have the gentle Angel’s Feather sound, but Rolling Fog is a suitable replacement.  So tomorrow morning I should be woken gently, at least.