Mobile &@(!*^£ phones.

[Workingman]

Week last Friday I had had enough. My not-so-old Moto e7 was draining the battery in six to seven hours - fully charged to flat at light speed. I mean it was worse than an iPhone(!), turned off this and that, did a reset and so on, to no avail. Cure: put the SIM in an older phone and see how that goes.

The SIM was a nano one and the old phone was a bigger micro one. Find an old micro SIM, pop out the nano bit and slot in the working nano SIM - or not. I broke it. No working phones and it's the weekend.

Monday ordered a new SIM, no problem. Tuesday it arrived, then the fun started... The SIM was seen by the phone but after activation I had no network. I spent hours, literally, on chat and online and nothing was working. Eventually we agreed that I should get some SIMs from other networks and try them. I did, for £1.50.

Wednesday, both Vodafone and ASDA SIMs were seen and gave me network coverage, but I wanted to keep my SMARTY account, so back to chat. Everything looked fine their end and the SIM was 'seen' at my end but no network. Let's try a new SIM.

New SIM arrives late Friday afternoon and I have the same problems, but by the time I have discovered all this their office is closed for the weekend.

Today I went back to chat and to cut a long story we were all scratching our heads and getting nowhere, so I / we gave up.

I am now with ASDA on my older phone and my number should be transferred by Wednesday, but what a palaver!

[Suff]

That's a pain WM.

Makes you wonder if they locked the sim to your phone? Do you have adaptor sets? I have a few, from full sized to nano and nano to micro. I've used them from time to time until my sim size for my phones stabilised.

The other option would have been to get an adapter kit, pop out the nano sim, enable it in the phone that works, put it in the adapter on the older phone and try it.

I had a look at replacing the battery. Lots of screws but it's mainly clip on covers. I have several kits to open phones with the right screwdrivers so it's not an issue for me. It looks like the E7 battery price is around £15.

Last year my battery on my Mi Max 3 did the same thing. I sourced a new one £20, opened the phone and changed it. Instant good battery again. Three weeks ago my Type-C charge port started rejecting the cable, it was becoming almost impossible to charge. €8 for a new port, two screws to open the case, pop the screen, 8 screws to get at the battery to disconnect it and peel off the old one, fitted the new one, works like a new phone.

Neither of our phones are glued. My new Poco F3 is glued together. When that starts to fail I'll need to send it away to get it fixed.

Another thought was that your old phone couldn't work in the network mode that your sim was set to?? But everything has been 4g for so long I couldn't think what that could be.

[Workingman]

I have the adapter kits, but sausage fingers, hence the broken SIM.

Another thought was that your old phone couldn't work in the network mode that your sim was set to?? But everything has been 4g for so long I couldn't think what that could be.

That's what we thought. The old phone is 4G and 4G LTE but SMARTY piggybacks on Three and they are heavily into 5G.

[Suff]

I have the adapter kits, but sausage fingers, hence the broken SIM.

I have broken more than my fair share of hardware recently. One of which cost me over €500 to rectify.

[Workingman]

We have lost them Suff, time for bed.

[cromwell]

I broke my old mobile in hospital. I'd been operated on and had texted family to let them know it had all gone OK. Fell asleep with the mobile on my chest... it fell off. Smashed good and proper. Ah well, I needed a new one anyhow.

[Suff]

Ah, yes, sleek sexy "fragile" phones. Best put in huge ugly invulnerable cases.