Stumble It!
My POS Q has been reborn
So I’ve got a Motorola Q cell phone/PDA/paperweight that suddenly started working. I’ve had it for some time since I refuse to learn how to text with the number pad on a regular cell phone, and I do like to text Spouse to tell him the last place I was seen (in case of emergency). I send such enlightening missives as:
- On train – home soon.
- Left office. Safeway?
- At Metro Center. Have umbrella. Pasta?
Really, it’s pathetic. The top three inbound messages I’ve got saved now are:
- Toilet working.
- Home now. Need metro pickup?
- I think the dogs ate the post-it.
And we don’t even have dogs.
I wanted Verizon service because DC is Verizon-friendly and if you have to send any messages from the train, such as “metro is f$@*ed. Home whenev,” they’ve got the best service underground, and wound up with the Motorola Q. The familiar Windows interface was enticing, as was the price. At the end of the day Verizon paid me $10 to take it, through a series of workplace-related discounts.
The battery life is for crap – my phone lasts approximately one workday. I recharge it before leaving the office in case I encounter any delays on the way home. It’s appalling. I had Verizon replace it once, and then they told me something about it being a computer that drains batteries and that’s just the way it is. So I invested in chargers. And kvetched ceaslessly.
Weirdly, my phone is now holding a charge for more than five minutes. It’s currently been on for more than 36 hours and still has four bars (out of four). It’s usually been full-on dead for 24 hours at this point. This longevity is unprecedented.
I’m perplexed.
And suspicious.
Whatever caused this rejuvenation will almost certainly give me intractable cancer of the head. Was it a meteor like in that 80s movie, Maximum Overdrive, where all of the machines achieve sentience and become a marauding horde consumed with bloodlust? Was it the recent time change? Was it Obama? What the hell, Motorola?
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November 10th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
So, I have a theory on the Q. Perhaps Verizon pushed new PRL’s out to your phone, to tell your phone about some new tower they installed a block from your office/home. So now, your Q isn’t always on ’set the transmitter to 11′ all the time, thus saving you valuable electrons.
I now realize I may be leaving out some key info. A PRL is the file that tells your phone where to look for cell towers. When you have 1 bar of signal, your phone turns up its transmitter to max brain melting power so that it can talk to that cell tower in south Bethesda. (is there such a thing?) Anyway, now that you have a tower on your neighbor’s house, you phone can now turn down its transmitter to emit only tiny little peeps of signal. This saves tons of battery life.
Or, its the result of Q himself. John de Lancie just made an appearance on the show “The Unit”, so he seems to be back in town.