I am not, by any definition, a technology geek. I can work with cars, appliances, carpentry and most bathroom cleaning supplies. My computer, on the other hand, only really gets used as a word processor/photo organizer/window to look at Facebook and YouTube.
But phones always get me excited. I have no use for most of the apps on any phone beyond calls and texts, but since the designs have moved away from the bricks of 10 years ago, I’ve been fascinated by them, even though I still can’t use a flip phone without fighting the urge to say “Captain’s log, stardate 224304…”
I’ve walked into cellular stores just to see what the new phones look like, an exercise that has gotten more exciting since the arrival of the next-generation touch screen phones like the iPhone and Droid. When photos of the lost 4G iPhone appeared online, I spent the better part of an hour studying them.
My new phone, however, is not an iPhone. It’s not even a touch screen. It’s a Samsung SGH-a777 Quad Band with a slide feature, MP3 player and green skin. I think it’s very cool, even if I can’t use it to make bird calls or store a fake lightsaber.
Before I got to play with the phone I had to charge it, which meant placing the battery inside. Most phone back covers either slide right off or have a small latch that hold the cover in place. The SGH-a777 has no latch, only a tiny arrow that has to be pressed down before the battery cover can be slid off. So, expecting no resistance, I pressed down and pushed the cover back.
It didn’t budge. I tried again, pushing a little harder. Still nothing. I used two fingers and pushed again. Both fingers slid the length of the phone, the cover not moving.
The popular definition of insanity means to perform the same action again and again while expecting a different reaction. The definition fails to mention that, sometimes, this does work, particularly in regard to difficult machines. Anyone who has ever had difficulty starting a lawn mower or tried to drive their car more than two miles with the gas light on can bear witness to this; begging and pleading with the machine and/or a higher power usually helps, too.
Not this time, however. What followed was a half-hour exercise in futility. Nothing could budge the battery cover off the phone. I pushed, pried, flicked, tapped and slapped the cover and got nothing. I dried my hands and tried again, only to be met with seemingly more resistance. I called my wife over to take a look at it and she tried, with no success.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “How hard can it be to take off a battery cover?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know it’s not supposed to be this hard.”
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2010.