Staying Fully Charged

I demand perfect performance from my technology.

I’ll never forget the time my cell phone died while on a trip. I was traveling with a friend in China. My friend didn’t speak Chinese, and was depending on me to navigate. About half an hour before our train was to depart for the trip back, I glanced at my phone’s battery indicator, and was shocked to see it was at 6%. In China, if you don’t have a cell phone, you are severely handicapped. You can’t order tickets online, you can’t call a car, you can’t check on the status of your train. It’s a big problem.

Now, there are many possible reasons why my cell phone battery suddenly developed a charge problem. Maybe it was just old (it wasn’t). Or it could have been because earlier in the day, we happened to visit a park that overlooks a military base, and I happened to have seen some stuff that the Chinese military probably wouldn’t want a foreigner to see, especially a foreigner with my job. I promise that I’m not a spy, but that’s a hard sell to certain governments that have trust issues. China is (in)famous for electronic eavesdropping, and they’re really, really good at it. So I’m fairly convinced that my phone was infected with some malware, and even wiping the phone and reinstalling everything couldn’t disinfect it.

Anyway.

The experience of being electronically cut off from the world was pretty annoying, and I vowed never to be stuck in that situation again. Now, every time I travel, I carry my phone charger and a battery, which the Chinese call a “fill electricity treasure.” I’m love my Anker fill-electricity-treasure: it’s cheap, small, light, and can charge my phone at least twice. Because of that experience, I have never been caught without a fully-charged phone…

…except for that time last year when I was in the press van on a mountain in Vietnam, waiting for a certain cabinet member to visit a certain world leader, and I realized that I forgot my battery back at the hotel, and my phone battery was down to 12%, and the reporter in the van needed to file a story and needed my phone’s Internet connection. After a stressful 20 minutes, he managed to file his story, and my phone still had 2% charge, so all was well.

I really need to remember to bring my battery with me at ALL times.

I love my current phone, it’s a real workhorse, and 100% reliable. But it’s more than two years old, and I use it a LOT. A few weeks ago, the battery started draining quickly. The diagnostics showed that it was only holding 84% of its original charge. Since I demand perfection (from everything but myself, apparently), it was clear that it was time for a new phone or a new battery.

I got a recommendation for a cell phone store in town that replaces iPhone batteries. I contacted them, and they offered to come to my place and replace the battery. Said it would take five minutes, and cost about $30.

Gotta love Vietnamese customer service. Sign me up!

The guy arrived an hour late, and had to go back to his shop because he brought the screwdriver for the iPhone 6, and I have an iPhone 7, and apparently the screws are a different size. But within two hours (not five minutes), I had a new phone battery. I waited for a few weeks before I declared the operation a success. But indeed the battery is holding a charge, everything seems to work just fine, and if I am ever again caught without a fully-charged phone, it will be my own fault, not my phone’s.

And no sign of spyware. Yet…

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