(Web photo)
This wasn't the story I was planning to write today. My plan for these last few days on the road, now with family, was to start to review what I brought with me and its level usefulness.
In reality your phone and taking pictures was an important travel item I hadentvthought of.
I showed this picture of my Apple IPhone with the screen separating from the phone in a previous blog post. I planned to visit the Apple Store today to see what they recommended as the phone is my "everything". It's my phone, email device, text device, web browser, maps, weather, and the list goes on, but one important thing it is would be a camera.
(Web photo)
I headed over to the Columbia Mall just after noon having spent the morning with Manina and my granddaughters.
I walked into the Apple Store and was asked how I could be helped and I showed him the phone with the screen now almost totally off.
They typed in my information into an IPad and said I would get 3 texted messages. First will let me know I have checked in. The next will be head back to the store we are almost ready to take you. Last would be we will take you now.
I walked out of the store and got the first message as I briefly sat outside the store on a mall bench.
Within a couple more minutes I got my second message. I thought wow I'll be out of here fast.
45 minutes later still not getting the third message, I went in and spoke with the guy with the yellow covered iPad. The guy with the yellow pad coordinates the service assignments.
He says to me after checking his iPad that it will be 5 more minutes. A half hour later deciding to stand near him, I finally got someone to help me.
This is a good news / bad news story. It's good I'm near an Apple Store. The bad mews was they didn't manage customer expectations well out of the gate.
The good/bad continues
The man assigned to my case took my phone outback and came back with the screen totally separated.
He shows me that the Lithium Battery had swelled and he felt it was about to start on fire from the smell from the battery.
Wow! I just thought the screen was bent. Thinking back sleeping in the car I'm glad I had a smoke detector in it, although I have seen lithium batteries burn very fast.
He then tells me that they will replace the phone at no cost as it was less than 3 years old. That's good news.
Then the question "Is all your data backed up?"
Well, kinda/sorta I say. I have had to turn off iCloud back up of my pictures a long time ago, as I have too many pictures and I have had to delete some as I am bouncing at the end of my 32 Gb memory space. Also being on the road I am not near WIFI for any length of time on a regular basis to even install updates on a regular basis. My phone is waiting on 8.3.
I then give my typical complaint that there is a device for the IPhone to upload pictures from a memory card but no way to put pictures on a memory card.
I didnt want to walk away with the phone in pre flame mode as I don't want to start a fire in my son's home. I knew I could recover all my applications from my recent iCloud backup, although it will take awhile. I also knew I will loose all my photos. That is not good news.
At least there is good news that from writing this blog each day I have the history of my trip backed up on my blog post. So, I decided to just get it done and get the replacement phone.
The main way to back up your iPhone if you don't use the cloud is to plug it into a computer and run ITunes on the computer and connect the phone and back up the phone. I don't do this as it is just another thing to do and not easy to do on the road. This is why they have automatic cloud storage.
I walked out of the IPhone store with my phone working but because the data restore would not work it wasn't functioning. Both of us assumed my IPad back at my son's was tried to the Internet and preventing the restore working.
I came back to the house and got the restore to work after disconnecting the IPad WIFI. Eventually I worked on getting each application to work by finding the logon information. By the evening I was well back to my phone functioning the way I like.
So why not a separate camera?
I don't like carrying a separate camera device and it is a lot of extra work to get my daily pictures from the camera to the phone to the blog. It is so simple to just use the phone and already have the photos on the phone and just post them in the blog. With a phone it is easier to carry but a camera has no good way to carry on you.
For simplicity when I hike I clip my phone on the front backpack strap and it is easy accessible to check my trail status, mail, or just take a picture.
Also living in and out of the Prius just didn't want to carry anything that wasn't needed.
In the end the pictures are in my head as they are truely my memories. Think about all the slides I took years ago that sit in boxes with pictures of years gone by not seeing the light of day. I never look at them so would these pictures sit in my phone not deleting them for nostalgic reasons and end up with either paying for cloud storage the rest of my life or having them sit on a memory device.
What has become more important to me is the moment and for my travels we all have my blog as the history of my travels.
Brent
macaloney@hotmail.com
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