Day 699 – Phone trouble

My Sony XZ Premium is 5 years old and in phone years, that makes it 100 years old. I’m sure that you can do the rudimentary calculation to switch between actual years and phone years, despite it being a concept I just made up. Anyway, as with many things 100 years old, my Sony XZ Premium is struggling a bit with getting things done, it’s running out of energy and it’s not always able to connect wirelessly to my car anymore.

Sadly, its life is nearly at an end.

I’m not one for paying our local cellphone companies through the nose (or any other orifice) for the privilege of buying a new phone through them, so I’m looking to buy a handset outright and just lob my existing SIM card into it.

First thought, (obviously) a new Sony, but then I saw the price. I know that this switch was going to be expensive, but that was clearly (a long way) out of reach. Samsung doesn’t interest me, Huawei is a no go and I would rather be strung up by cheese wire around my nether regions than ever own an iPhone.

Not even joking.

Suddenly, the playing field is narrowed somewhat. The Google Pixel 6 Pro seemed to be an obvious choice, but The Guru reports some nasty bugs, even though we’re several months down the line from its launch.

And so, with limited time in which to get this organised, I are back to the drawing board. Am I looking at the Poco F3 (another The Guru suggestion) or a more basic Sony?

For me, the camera is probably the most important part of the whole phone, and the Pixel wins hands down on that, but there’s no use in having a great camera and getting great images when you can’t access them because the fingerprint sensor doesn’t work. But then is there any point in having easy access to your images, only to realise that they’re all rather crap?

Ugh. Such an important decision and nothing is jumping out to assist me.

Model T

The decision has been made. I am leaving the yellow brand and heading red. In fact, as of this morning, I’ve already gone red. And not just with anger at the yellow brand.

Anger because the yellow brand made it extremely difficult to port my number, repeatedly suggesting that it was a huge hassle and that I’d probably be better off sticking with them. But I didn’t want to do that, so I’m leaving my number with them as well. Apart from anything else, it should cut down on the nuisance calls. The incoming ones anyway – I’ll still be making just as many as before.

I’ve had nothing but excellent service from Vodacom with my tablet, so I’ve decided to trust them with my cellphone contract as well. And things got off to an wonderful start with Nicole from their Canal Walk store giving me faultless service and an in-stock handset this morning. Kaboom!

My last 3 phones have all been Sony Ericssons and generally I’ve been hugely happy with them. Sony has now dropped Ericsson, but by all accounts they’re still making great phones, suggesting that Ericsson was probably just along for the ride anyway. After much research and many sleepless nights (the latter more to do with my kids than any cellphone-related troubles) I finally decided on this baby:

Behold: The Sony Xperia T

Isn’t she gorgeous?

Her vital statistics make awesome reading, with a 13MP camera, HD video thanks to the Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine and a rather nippy dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU.

I’ll obviously do a full review on here once I’ve played a bit and seen how things go. But apparently, it’s the phone that James Bond uses in Skyfall, so it must be good. And have lasers or something.

Oh, and I’ll also be keeping an eye on how much difficulty (or joy) changing one’s cell number after 6 years can cause. I’m intrigued to see whether it’s a liberating or encumbering experience.

Right, now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play.