I had to get a new smartphone this week, because my old iPhone 4S went kaput. Even though people consider the 4S to be “old”, my phone is only a little over 2 years old. I guess it’s just bad luck, or Apple’s build quality isn’t all it’s made out to be. My iPhone worked perfectly fine until it suddenly froze, and I had to turn the screen off with the reset combination. Then the phone couldn’t be turned on, reset, or restored. Brought it to a local Apple Store, and they said it’s probably a hardware failure, and at this point it isn’t worth spending $200 to fix it.
My cell phone contract was up anyways, so the day after the iPhone died, I went to local AT&T store and got a LG G3 Vigor. I got an Android device because I wanted to change, and the iPhone breaking after 2 years only made the decision more justified. The Vigor is one of the cheaper smartphones AT&T had, but not the cheapest one. I’m not into chasing the latest and greatest, so I wasn’t going to pony up for the iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy S 5 and such. Now that I think about it though, I probably should have done some more homework before getting the phone, since the specs on the LG aren’t that great for the price they charge. If I wanted more bang for my bucks, I should have ordered a LG/Google Nexus 5 or tried to get one of those Oneplus One invites, but when I was at the store all I wanted was to walk out with a working phone. Since I don’t have a landline, not having my cellphone made me feel a little vulnerable since I couldn’t call anyone in case I got into trouble.
The LG G3 Vigor is a decent enough phone though. It’s the smaller cousin to the LG G3, which is LG’s flagship phone. The hardware is cut down, but the Vigor has the same design except it’s a little smaller. After a week of usage, everything seems fine, and it’s snappy with the apps. The form factor is pretty good, and 5 inches is not too big. As long as the phone is quick and responsive for daily tasks and taking pictures, I am satisfied. My eyes aren’t really good enough to tell the difference between 1280 x 720 vs 1920 x 1080 on a 5 inch screen, and I don’t play any 3D games on the phone, so a mid-range smart phone is good enough for my purposes. The only thing I’m a little concerned about is that the phone only has 8 GB of storage, but I can always buy a micro SD card to add storage, and micro SD cards are getting cheaper everyday.
So below are pictures of my new phone. I bought a case off of eBay, and it’s pretty nice as it provides protection and kickstand that works in both landscape and portrait orientations. The pics are a bit blurry since I had to take them with my laptop’s webcam.
Hopefully my new smartphone will last a lot longer than my iPhone. It’s probably not worth it to pay to get the iPhone fixed, but I might take it apart myself to see if anything can be done to revive it. I could always give the 4S to my mom if I can fix it. This episode of the phone dying also taught me a lesson of backing up my phone contacts. I didn’t back up my contacts on the iPhone, so I had to ask various friends and relatives for their numbers again and build the list manually. I’ll be sure to back up my contact list and any other important data on my phone periodically now.
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