Shopping List
Seen on a discarded yellow Post-It Note on the sidewalk this morning:
Your guess is as good as mine.
* * *
I solved my cell phone mystery today.
First, the mystery: About every three days or so, I'd pull my cell phone out of my pants pocket to call someone and find that it had completely powered off. The first time this happened I thought the battery had died, so I waited until I got home and charged it there. On subsequent occurrences (at least one of which was on a fresh charge, so I knew it wasn't the battery), I tried turning it back on, and when that wasn't successful, removing the battery for a moment, and then putting it back and turning the phone on, which worked.
So, today, I was sitting on a conference call and pulled my phone out of my pocket to discover that it had happened again. I sat there fiddling with it, and was suddenly struck with a theory. This phone has a charging cradle instead of a cable, and so that the cradle works, the battery has a row of three small copper contacts on the outside. I began wondering what would happen if something metal, like, say, pocket change or house keys, were to short out the contacts on the battery. A single penny had no effect, since there seems to be a tiny ridge of plastic between the electrodes to prevent just this problem, but using two pennies, I managed to complete a circuit between two of the contacts, and, what do you know, the phone immediately went blank. I imagine there's some kind of breaker mechanism in the battery that causes this to happen (better than letting the battery totally discharge, I admit).
Anyway, I'm not sure what to do about the problem.
Yes, there are the obvious answers, like don't keep your phone in the same pocket as your change, or don't keep it in your pocket at all, but I'm too much a creature of habit for either of those. I'll figure something out.
key(carpet)
brains!!!
lettuce
Your guess is as good as mine.
* * *
I solved my cell phone mystery today.
First, the mystery: About every three days or so, I'd pull my cell phone out of my pants pocket to call someone and find that it had completely powered off. The first time this happened I thought the battery had died, so I waited until I got home and charged it there. On subsequent occurrences (at least one of which was on a fresh charge, so I knew it wasn't the battery), I tried turning it back on, and when that wasn't successful, removing the battery for a moment, and then putting it back and turning the phone on, which worked.
So, today, I was sitting on a conference call and pulled my phone out of my pocket to discover that it had happened again. I sat there fiddling with it, and was suddenly struck with a theory. This phone has a charging cradle instead of a cable, and so that the cradle works, the battery has a row of three small copper contacts on the outside. I began wondering what would happen if something metal, like, say, pocket change or house keys, were to short out the contacts on the battery. A single penny had no effect, since there seems to be a tiny ridge of plastic between the electrodes to prevent just this problem, but using two pennies, I managed to complete a circuit between two of the contacts, and, what do you know, the phone immediately went blank. I imagine there's some kind of breaker mechanism in the battery that causes this to happen (better than letting the battery totally discharge, I admit).
Anyway, I'm not sure what to do about the problem.
Yes, there are the obvious answers, like don't keep your phone in the same pocket as your change, or don't keep it in your pocket at all, but I'm too much a creature of habit for either of those. I'll figure something out.