When Your Smartphone Dies...

We can experience such strange problems in this technological world. Yesterday, my new smartphone died. The day before, it was working just fine. The next day I tried to turn it on and nothing. I was pretty sure it was charged up, but thought it might be a random battery draining. When I got back to my room (currently on Gran Canaria, an island in the Canary Islands), I tried to charge it, but nothing. No response any which way. It was completely defunct.

My first thought was to take the battery out and put it back in. But I couldn't figure out how to do that since it's new to me and there was no obvious battery slot on the back. I'm not super duper dependent on my phone yet, but the next day I was changing to another hostel that looked tricky to find and it would be a heck of a lot easier with the phone.

So the next morning I went to call T-Mobile with Skype, but saw that I didn't have any credit. I went through the process of adding $10 credit. But then strangely, it didn't show up in my account. I couldn't figure out what the problem was and finally I needed to get packed up and check out of my room. I would be finding the hostel the old-fashioned way. I got a map of the town of Las Palmas from the hotel front desk as I checked out.

I headed out and took a city bus. At least I knew which number bus to take. But I wasn't sure which stop to get off at. I showed the address to the driver, but he hadn't heard of the street the hostel was on. And I couldn't find it on the map as it was a tiny lane. I explained to him roughly where it was based on looking at directions online back in my room. He guessed at what might be the right stop, I got off, looked over the map again and found the street. Turned out it was nearby and I found the hostel pretty easily

Now, back to sorting out the problem with my phone. Eventually I figured out the issue with my Skype credit. Somehow, when adding the credit, I had mysteriously created a whole new Skype account unknowingly, with my same name and email address. It didn't have my profile photo, which finally clued me in to what was going on. Something to do with being logged into my Microsoft account. I could see the $10 credit on that account, but not on my other original account.

Eventually, I figured out that I could send my Skype credit to someone else. Aha! I would send it to myself. So I added my other self as a contact, accepted the contact request from me (obviously), and then sent myself the $10 credit. Then I "unfriended" myself (or whatever you call it on Skype), logged out of that account, logged back into my other one and voila, there was the $10, where it was supposed to be. Ay yi yi yi yi.

Okay, now to call T-Mobile. I gave them a call and they suggested (as I'd first thought) removing the battery, replacing it and then trying to start the phone. The customer service lady explained how to remove the backing. I took the battery out, put it back, hit the power button...and hell yeah, it turned on as normal. Back in business. And now I knew what to do the next time it happened.

I hung up, and then noticed that my Skype credit was still at exactly $10...Turns out I didn't need any credit to call a toll-free number.