Be prepared!

Readers who regularly dip into these chronicles will recall that last year I decided not to renew my soon-to-end BT Broadband contract, nor to continue paying for a landline. 

I was facing a price hike if I renewed my Broadband with BT. I could have looked at other providers, and there were plenty of cheaper deals around. But in fact I wanted to go completely wireless. 

When away in the caravan, I relied on my mobile phone, using 4G (or in theory 5G if available). If I needed a larger screen for photo work, or for blogging, or for streaming TV (live or catch-up), then I just tethered the laptop to the phone with WiFi or a USB cable. Easy-peasy. And I proposed to do exactly the same at home.

And it has worked. It's passed the test of time. It's become routine. Very manageably so.

I believe that going wireless is better in every way than having a physical landline connection that rain can flood, and rats can gnaw, and tinkering BT Openreach engineers can accidentally sever, or sneakily power down a bit to cope with local demand. It's a smug feeling, seeing Openreach vans everywhere, and knowing that it's all nothing to do with me now. Nor do I feel I have to pay attention to the governments' oft-expressed wish to have almost everyone in the country, no matter where they live, physically wired up to Broadband. I don't want it. When BT knock on my door to offer a fibre connection right into my home - coming soon, I should think - I shall turn them down, even if it's free. (But I don't think it will be) 

I'm glad to say that although I expected many a sharp intake of breath, nobody has actually taken me aside and tried to deter me from doing without a landline and Home Broadband. 'Is this wise?' I anticipated hearing. Or 'Is it a really good idea to rely on a single source for your Internet?' Or 'What will you do if weather conditions reduce the Mobile Internet signal to uselessness?' And similar objections. They did not come. (Mind you, even if there were no pursed lips, nobody else wanted to give up the insurance policy of having a landline to fall back on, and Home Broadband as well as Mobile Broadband)

Perhaps I'm perceived as a person who acts sensibly, and weighs things up properly - most likely using a spreadsheet! - and giving all the pros and cons proper consideration. So that, despite appearances, I'm not really being wayward or foolish. Or (more likely, this) I'm seen as a person who will have her way regardless, and is stubborn in the face of all counter-arguments. 

Well, what I've done is (at the present time) somewhat radical, although not at all unique. 

This post is therefore coming to you from a tethered laptop. I pay £20 a month to EE for 160GB of 4G/5G data monthly, and in 2021 - and maybe for a while ahead - that's a perfectly reasonable deal. 160GB is more than I'm ever likely to need, but if there were a spate of watchable things over Christmas, I could binge and not worry about running out of data. 

But I'm now going to tell you about an incident that tripped me up, and revealed that my 4G-only scheme is not risk-free. 

It was 3rd June. That morning I left the CAMC site at Nunnykirk in Northumberland, and towed the caravan to their site at Sandringham in Norfolk. Despite being deep in the empty Northumbrian countryside, and set in a valley bottom, the Nunnykirk site had good 4G. So I was able to use my mobile phone for all the usual stuff over breakfast. In fact, I used Mobile Internet to install a dozen app upgrades on the phone, as well as checking the laptop for any Windows updates. Then I played music on the phone - Bluetoothing it to my JBL speaker - while I cleaned my teeth and washed the Melford visage and other parts. All went normally. But when turning off the Bluetooth, the screen on my phone froze. The phone wasn't dead, but the touchscreen wasn't working, and I couldn't unlock it to sort it out. 

Ah. What does one do when faced with a frozen phone screen? A combination of buttons has to be pressed for a few seconds, and then the phone resets. But this hadn't happened ever before on Prudence, my current phone (a Samsung Galaxy S20+), and I didn't know exactly what to do. The buttons were different from those on my last phone, Tigerlily (a Samsung Galaxy S8+). I tried a few guesses, but no joy. Either I pressed the wrong button - or buttons - or didn't hold them down long enough.  

I couldn't turn the phone off and then on again. Nor carry out a reset. The on-screen reset button wouldn't respond to my finger-prods.

What about sliding out the SIM card tray, then pushing it in again? Prepared for all kinds of disasters, I had brought along the steel pin that opens the tray. Maybe taking both the SIM card and the microSD card out, and then putting them in again, might help. But it didn't. I noticed however that breaking the mobile signal provoked a text from EE. So the phone was still able to receive messages. And soon there was a growing collection of emails and texts. The icons showed on the lock screen, but I couldn't read any of them.   

What had happened? Had one of the app upgrades introduced a problem? It seemed unlikely. None of my installed apps were silly ones that might disrupt the smooth working of my phone. But I couldn't check this until I got the phone working again. Maybe the Music app had malfunctioned. But again, until I could make the touchscreen responsive again, I wouldn't be able to investigate.

While I travelled south on the A1, and then onto the A17, I kept checking to see whether the touchscreen was back to normal. But each time I was disappointed. There were now more messages waiting to be read, but I couldn't do anything about that yet. 

I thought of nuclear options. The boredom of the tedious A17 encouraged such thoughts.

Should I assume that Prudence had effectively died, and buy a new phone? What, so soon? And what a hole it would make in this year's savings, if it were another Galaxy - no doubt the S21 Ultra. And even if I bit the bullet, and bought a replacement, I might have all kinds of set-up issues that I wouldn't be able to solve while still on holiday. It was never so simple as just popping in the SIM I already had. I would take Prudence's demise up with John Lewis, and might get lucky with a refund, but what a palaver. 

What about taking the SIM and microSD out again, and performing a factory reset? But how did you do that on a Galaxy S20+? 

Cooler thinking prevailed. I decided that once ensconced at Sandringham, I would visit the EE shop in nearby King's Lynn and get them to do an ordinary reset for me. If that achieved nothing, then a factory reset. And if Prudence was completely kaput, then at least I'd be in a good place to purchase a new phone while still on holiday, possibly with a 'manager's deal' if I pressed for one. For several practical reasons, I couldn't possibly wait till I got back home. For instance, I needed to phone about getting my second Covid-19 jab arranged. And I needed Mobile Internet to pay the Dart Charge on the M25. Indeed, I needed a working phone to pay for everything! (Although I could resort to using my pristine credit card, rather than Google Pay; and possibly I could use notes and coin...) 

Then I had another thought. I could buy a week's Club WiFi at the Sandringham site. That ought to be installable from my laptop, if I enabled it for WiFi. I could pay with my credit card, and once I had Club WiFi set up and connected, I could easily Google the right method for resetting my phone. 

That last idea proved to be a good one. I did look up the right method, and it worked. A simple reset was the only thing required. Prudence was alive and kicking again. 

A big sigh of relief!  

I was, however, out of pocket to the tune of £11. That's what a week's Club WiFi costs. And it was barely powerful enough for a few Google searches and reading my emails. It wouldn't cope with photos. I was pitched too far from the site's WiFi mast. I didn't use it again. The feeble 4G service was in fact marginally better. 

I suppose I could have sought out some place to tap into public WiFi, and in that way avoid paying an extra £11 to the Club. But for security reasons, I normally steer well clear of all forms of public WiFi, free or paid for. That's why it didn't come straight to mind at the time.

Prudence hasn't faltered since. 

I never did discover what had caused the touchscreen to freeze. I quickly checked through the recently-updated apps but they were all solid apps that had never given trouble before, nor since. I am forced to suspect a rare and transient problem with either the Music app (but it's one of Samsung's, so it should be bulletproof) or with Bluetooth. Who knows. I have anyway made a careful note for the future of how to reset Prudence if her screen ever freezes again - and I've put that note in Dropbox and on the laptop. (Not on the phone, of course!)

I am mightily relieved that I didn't have to take any those nuclear options! Bother and financial damage sidestepped. 

Here's the rub, though. A frozen mobile phone instantly deprived me of the Internet. I was that vulnerable to a loss of service. 

It may not happen again, but it obviously could. And I'd be in the same predicament if my phone were snatched from my hand by a thief, or I dropped it into the sea, or into a fire, or I accidentally trod on it at home. The remedy will always involve trouble, inconvenience and expense. I need to consider the risks. I don't think they are alarming, but they exist. 

So I am telling myself: be prepared for next time. A friend has suggested keeping a cheap standby phone charged up and always handy, on a bargain-basement data contract. It's a good idea, although it's one more device to maintain. And it's something that may never be needed, now that I've learned how to reset Prudence - resetting usually being a good fix for anything that ever goes wrong. 

I think that for me 'be prepared' means having a strategy to fall back on, if a reset isn't possible or doesn't work. It depends on several factors, but chiefly on how old the misbehaving phone is. For instance, I'd replace an old phone that had gone wrong without hesitation, skipping any solution-finding and just enjoying having the very latest model sooner than expected. If on holiday, it would simply take a trip to a city shop next morning, and a swap-in of existing SIM and memory cards. If at home, I would use my laptop to order online, using a friend's WiFi, and then get the replacement device next day by courier. Either way, only a small gap in Internet access. The decision might well be harder for a newer phone that was misbehaving, as it would involve 'wasting' some of the money spent on buying it not very long before. Precisely my situation with Prudence. An easier decision to make, though, if the latest model had an important edge.