So why was I threatening to throw it out the window a few days ago?
The answer: Techno-work... The added work that comes with technology. The added time it takes to figure out just how to make all this cool fancy stuff actually work. The irritation when it doesn't work. The frustration of trying to figure out why it doesn't work and how to get it working. The delight when you think you have your problem solved, only to find out that it still doesn't work. The discovery that the planned obsolescence of the device is shorter than your your learning curve to actually operate it.
Who has time for that?
Who has the skills and patience for that?
Not me. I was the one threatening to throw it out the window, remember?
It started with my nearly new, smarter than me phone trying to automatically update. I received the error message "Insufficient storage available." Not just once, but about twenty times, locking up my
ability to use the device. Frantically I searched (and eventually found) where I could turn off the automatic update so that I could complete the task of finding a recipe for that night's dinner. Once dinner was underway, I decided to look into why I had insufficient space on my phone to do simple updates. Other tasks were put on the back burner.
At first I was baffled. I had no videos. There were not too many photos, were there? Could I have too many documents? I spent about an hour making sure my photos and important documents had backed up on my cloud, then deleted all the non-essential files. To make a clean sweep of things, I restarted my phone, then tentatively tried updating one app manually.
There it was, that nasty storage space message once more. And apparently I had accidentally triggered the auto-update thingy, cause now my phone was trying to update all the apps. In addition to the storage message, I now had a message that "Some Apps may not respond due to storage issues." Seemed like I had made it worse. Well, that would have to wait till after dinner. After I did the tasks I had put off while I was clearing my phone.
So much later, in the time I would have normally been kicking back and relaxing, I went back to the task of fixing the issues on my phone. Techno-work! Once more I cleared all the photos and documents. I googled the issue on my computer (I read this article by IT World and it helped me learn what could be causing the problem and how to fix it. Staying away from the more scary technical issues at the end of the article, I started with taking a good look at my apps. While I did not have that many that I loaded on my phone (there were quite a few useless ones that came pre-loaded on my phone that I could not uninstall), some of the ones I like to use are evidently pretty darn big. So I learned how to move my apps (or at least part of my apps) to my large SD card, which was sitting in my phone, pretty much empty. I also dumped some of the apps that I really did not need, or could easily access and use on the internet, like Twitter.
After completing this work (I think it took waaayyyy longer than it should have) I once more restarted my phone, crossed my fingers, said a quick prayer, and tried updating an app. This time I managed NOT to auto-update all the apps. After holding my breath for about two minutes, the app updated. Living dangerously, I updated all the apps I use. Unable to hold my breath for the length of time it would take my phone to complete this task, I went and had dessert. When I returned....
Everything was updated. No error messages.
YAY!
Next I took the time to make sure that all my photos were being saved on the SD card, not my phone's internal memory. I also checked my settings to ensure that my auto-back up features were activated.
Having completed all these tasks, I now wanted to see if I could load an app onto the phone that I really wanted, the cool new Project Color app from Home Depot. I am getting ready to repaint a room and I wanted to be able to play with colors on the walls and this app lets you paint the walls in a picture of your actual room. Mom had it on her phone and it was loads of fun, not to mention helpful. But I digress. Could I actually load an app on my previously storage-strained phone?
I said a prayer once more, entered the Google Play Store, and typed in my desired app. With baited breath, I pressed the install button...
It worked. The app installed.
I was happy with my phone once more. Which was a good thing as I had no intention of buying a new phone. Moreover, my phone works well with the Google apps that both my daughter and myself use heavily (and with which I am familiar) and plays well with our computer/tv equipment at home. My husband, however, was a little more tentative about my victory. He has been an iPhone user for several years with limited issues and was now moving to an Android based phone. Was he going to suddenly start having issues? Was this an Android problem alone?
Informally I asked a few of my friends who used iPhones to see if storage issues existed outside the Android world. I received varying answers. Most did not experience storage issues that I did. But those persons who encountered storage issues had a large number of videos and photos on their phone or used many of the the types of apps that I do. Those that did not encounter storage problems, either were not heavy users of their phones in the way that I used my phone or regularly replaced their phones with newer ones. As a rule, issue free friends generally had more expensive models than what I would be willing to pay for a phone. Some just had better technology savvy than I.
A quick check on the internet revealed articles like this one from October 2015 - iPhone storage full? posted on Know Your Mobile that talked about how to free up storage space on an iPhone. By the number of articles my search pulled up, it became clear that storage issues were not isolated to Android phones. However, since iPhones do typically come with more GB space than many Android models, the problem of storage may arise less frequently for most users.
To allay the fears of my husband, we added a micro SD card with 64GB to his phone (something you cannot do with a similarly priced iPhone) and I began teaching him the connectivity that he can enjoy at home.
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| Micro SD card already out of package and in the phone! |
He is catching on quick and I have no doubt that with some Techno-work he will soon be passing me in his phone user abilities. The biggest stumbling block to enjoying his phone immediately is the learning curve to use a device that is different than the one he had previously. Will he be able to master the Techno-work involved to operate such a useful piece of technology?
We shall see if he threatens to throw it out the window.
Now if I could just figure out how to change and save my favorite channels on the remote to the new tv....wait, is that an on-line manual? Do I have time for this?
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