Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Blowing bubbles

A little bit of excitement over my holiday break popped up the Saturday before Christmas, as my phone, while functioning perfectly well as a mini-computer, simply stopped being able to receive or make phone calls.

Call me old fashioned, but I do use my smart phone as a telephone. Quite often, in fact, as I have not had a land line for at least the last six years.

Let me reiterate the timing. No phone service, so a need to visit the phone place three days before Christmas.

Have I mentioned I'm crowd-phobic, and I absolutely hate waiting?

I toddled off to the new US Cellular store just down the road (as opposed to the one where I bought the phone, half an hour away on the other side of town), armed with a book and a grim determination to get.the.problem.solved.

Short story: somehow, the phone had stopped recognizing the cell towers, so had no signal at all - the tech fixed it in less than two minutes.

The rest of the story: I'd been planning to upgrade the phone sometime in February anyway, so I asked how much it would take to upgrade me to a Galaxy S III. The price was reasonable, so...

I love my phone. The 4G is fast, the battery life great, the reception is clear. There is one thing, however, that makes me just a little bit crazy (and is actually the point of this post).

There doesn't seem to be any way to turn off notifications that are not missed call or text notifications. Twitter, Facebook, the built-in apps on the phone I don't use - doesn't matter, the little bubbles blurp any time there is an update related to me. If I turn off notifications, the phone will not sound when a text is received.

This is coming to a head today, as a bunch of wonderful, kind friends are sending birthday wishes on my Facebook wall. The little blurp sounds every.single.time someone posts on the wall.

Now, I love my friends, but at my rapidly advancing age, the road from reasonable to crazy is pretty short. I'm going to turn the volume all the way down; if you are trying to reach me today, be aware it may be a while before I get back to you.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I know how do turn off notifications :)

Diane said...

So do I, but I want them turned off ONLY on FB and Twitter - not on voicemails and missed calls. (I have no idea why, but I sometimes miss the call itself, but hear the notification that a VM was left)

Unknown said...

I know here to turn of app specific notifications :P

Diane said...

Yay! Pretty please send me a FB mesasge with step by step?!