New phone battery

[Count Steer]

Need a new battery in my phone. Will probably take it into the local independent phone shop (where I bought it from - second hand). Should I remove any personal data+sign out of everything like Gmail etc first? Obvs it needs a code to access it normally but I assume that's pretty easy to bypass by connecting via the USB port.

Thoughts?

[Horse]

Leave RTTL logged in, we'll all say Hi to Mr Fixit.


PS what phone and how much for the battery? This one needs charging twice a day.

[Mussels]

Access via USB port is only possible if you specifically enable it in developer mode, I'm assuming it's Android and they got locked down years ago.
Now everything is stored in the cloud I find a factory reset isn't the pain it used to be so if you have sensitive stuff on there it might be worth doing. I don't think there shop will need to log into it to change the battery, so it's should be safe as long as you don't have an obvious pin number.

[Count Steer]

Leave RTTL logged in, we'll all say Hi to Mr Fixit.


PS what phone and how much for the battery? This one needs charging twice a day.

It's a Samsung 'something or other', basically we only ever buy 'last years models' - wife got her 'new' one from giffgaff. I haven't priced up the battery and it's probably time to think about upgrading but I don't want a larger phone and it's a bit of a faff. Only charging once a day and switching it off at night (it's Bluetooth-ed to an environment monitor so that's a drain)...it just used to be much better.

I'll pop in later and ask how much...Will report back.

[KungFooBob]

Some handsets never go back together properly once they been unglued to replace the battery. no matter how good the person doing it is. Especially if it's a water/splash proof one.

[Count Steer]

Access via USB port is only possible if you specifically enable it in developer mode, I'm assuming it's Android and they got locked down years ago.
Now everything is stored in the cloud I find a factory reset isn't the pain it used to be so if you have sensitive stuff on there it might be worth doing. I don't think there shop will need to log into it to change the battery, so it's should be safe as long as you don't have an obvious pin number.

Thanks. I did several factory resets on my old tablet as it started to limp along under the strain of software upgrades and it was quite good to tidy accumulated stuff up every so often. I don't store much apart from photos + a few docs in the cloud. Probably need to do more as I'm running a few synchronised things across my new tablet and phone and worry a bit if they get deleted on one they'll disappear on the other. Hopefully there'll be some warning.

Will probably need to unsynch before clearing down and swapping the phone - and/or moving stuff to the cloud. Also, probably, got too many cloud options - got stuff on MS and Google but lots of docs are Samsung notes and they'd be easiest to do on the Samsung cloud.

(I probably need to get a bit more clued up on this stuff, I tend to get as far as 'that works, it'll do' and lose interest. )

[Count Steer]

Some handsets never go back together properly once they been unglued to replace the battery. no matter how good the person doing it is. Especially if it's a water/splash proof one.

Supposedly this has already been done once. They claim they put new batteries in every s/h phone they sell. (Whether they do if the phone is only 12 months old is another question - but the battery life was tip top when I got it but I've had it a while now).

[Count Steer]

Leave RTTL logged in, we'll all say Hi to Mr Fixit.


PS what phone and how much for the battery? This one needs charging twice a day.

Hi Hoss, it's a Samsung S9 and they wanted £60 to replace the battery. I think the usual, reliable chap that works there has gone so I didn't take the new one up on it (didn't fill me with confidence). There's a new, smarter place nearby, I'll ask in there but I may as well put £60 towards another not-quite-new phone. Or possibly new-but--not-latest-model - they seem to be almost good value compared with the silly new prices.

Samsung Galaxy S10 or Note10 (refurbed) = £299 even the Z Flip 3 5G (Refurb, like new) = £449...if a folding phone floats one's boat. (All on giffgaff..you have to take a £10 SIM deal but can cancel it anytime. The missus just transferred her old O2 number to the new giffgaff account...they're owned by Telefonica/O2 anyway).

[Horse]

S9 here too Currently on a sim only deal.


Most of the time I'm close to a charger (whether mains, car, power bank, or other USB, so not urgent. But worth considering in the future.

[KungFooBob]

I've been on Giffgaff for about a decade.

The wife is on O2. So I get to compare. There's obvious deference's between the handsets, hers is an iphone 8 and mine a Chinese Android, but she does get faster data and in more places than me (even on my previous handset which was a Samsung). I suspect O2 slow down GG users a little, kind of a tax on being a cheap arse.

[Horse]

she does get faster data and in more places

I'm on Vodafone. Even 3 miles from their world HQ (on the edge of our town) it can be a struggle to get a phone signal, let alone data.

[scottyuk]

Battery : When I've done it I've back the phone up and done a factory reset. Some of it is security but some of it helps to refresh the phone when you restore it and let it pull down the apps fresh. It's almost like we used to defrag hard disks.

I've just moved to O2 : £6/month for unlimited calls, etc inc EU roaming and 5Gb of data. Not bad however because I've got Virgin broadband that jumps up to a 10G data allowance, roaming then includes US and Oz (amongst others) plus my home broadband speed doubled. I'm very happy with that deal.

[Count Steer]

Battery : When I've done it I've back the phone up and done a factory reset. Some of it is security but some of it helps to refresh the phone when you restore it and let it pull down the apps fresh. It's almost like we used to defrag hard disks.

I've just moved to O2 : £6/month for unlimited calls, etc inc EU roaming and 5Gb of data. Not bad however because I've got Virgin broadband that jumps up to a 10G data allowance, roaming then includes US and Oz (amongst others) plus my home broadband speed doubled. I'm very happy with that deal.

I'd probably do that. As you say it's good to do a bit of housekeeping every so often. Must be a fair few things I've got that never get used.

Off at a tangent but I note that some apps I've previously used and then loaded again on the latest tech aren't the same. I loaded the weather app I use on someone's new phone and on a new tablet. Whereas my old app is fine the other is loaded with ads - enough to make it unusable. One (wi-fi analysis) app just wouldn't work on newer tech. I guess they tweak newer versions for later platforms and don't do anything to the old ones or don't update old ones so they don't work properly on later platforms. Whatever, it seems like when you install some android apps it checks your android version and chooses which version to load automatically. Is that likely?

[Count Steer]

I've been on Giffgaff for about a decade.

The wife is on O2. So I get to compare. There's obvious deference's between the handsets, hers is an iphone 8 and mine a Chinese Android, but she does get faster data and in more places than me (even on my previous handset which was a Samsung). I suspect O2 slow down GG users a little, kind of a tax on being a cheap arse.

Ooh. I'll have to check. I'd have said her giffgaff service is better than my O2 but assumed her bigger phone has a better aerial. I'm on an S9, I think hers is S10. It's definitely bigger/better!

[Mussels]

Leave RTTL logged in, we'll all say Hi to Mr Fixit.


PS what phone and how much for the battery? This one needs charging twice a day.

Hi Hoss, it's a Samsung S9 and they wanted £60 to replace the battery. I think the usual, reliable chap that works there has gone so I didn't take the new one up on it (didn't fill me with confidence). There's a new, smarter place nearby, I'll ask in there but I may as well put £60 towards another not-quite-new phone. Or possibly new-but--not-latest-model - they seem to be almost good value compared with the silly new prices.

Samsung Galaxy S10 or Note10 (refurbed) = £299 even the Z Flip 3 5G (Refurb, like new) = £449...if a folding phone floats one's boat. (All on giffgaff..you have to take a £10 SIM deal but can cancel it anytime. The missus just transferred her old O2 number to the new giffgaff account...they're owned by Telefonica/O2 anyway).

I used to buy flagship phones but recently they seem to have stagnated and not much better than standard ones, certainly not good enough to justify over double the price.
This time I went for a new Samsung M52 for £340, I'm not a fan of the Samsung UI but the M series has less of their software. A big selling point for me was they (mostly) aren't made in China. It has all the features and performance I want, why buy bigger?

[Count Steer]

Leave RTTL logged in, we'll all say Hi to Mr Fixit.


PS what phone and how much for the battery? This one needs charging twice a day.

Hi Hoss, it's a Samsung S9 and they wanted £60 to replace the battery. I think the usual, reliable chap that works there has gone so I didn't take the new one up on it (didn't fill me with confidence). There's a new, smarter place nearby, I'll ask in there but I may as well put £60 towards another not-quite-new phone. Or possibly new-but--not-latest-model - they seem to be almost good value compared with the silly new prices.

Samsung Galaxy S10 or Note10 (refurbed) = £299 even the Z Flip 3 5G (Refurb, like new) = £449...if a folding phone floats one's boat. (All on giffgaff..you have to take a £10 SIM deal but can cancel it anytime. The missus just transferred her old O2 number to the new giffgaff account...they're owned by Telefonica/O2 anyway).

I used to buy flagship phones but recently they seem to have stagnated and not much better than standard ones, certainly not good enough to justify over double the price.
This time I went for a new Samsung M52 for £340, I'm not a fan of the Samsung UI but the M series has less of their software. A big selling point for me was they (mostly) aren't made in China. It has all the features and performance I want, why buy bigger?

I'll bear that one in mind. It looks absolutely fine for what I need. Not bothered about whizzy camera stuff etc.

Yeah. Samsung software and all the pre-installed stuff you can't dump. At least I've managed to shove Bixby into an electronic box and thrown the key away).

Actually I'm currently on a Samsung Tab S7 FE tablet and it does seem to have far less pre-installed junk on it than the phone. Maybe it all just sits there sulking - some of it's in deep sleep so doesn't even update. I do like the Smart Things connectivity though.

[A_morti]

My Samsung A5 2017 got to about 4 years old before the battery was no longer tolerable.

Considering its overall condition is "OKish" I was going to replace the battery. Then I stumbled on the fact you can get a NIB one on eBay for ~£75, and almost did that.

Instead I decided on a new S20FE (last year's model, the S21FE just launched) at somewhere around half price on Amazon.de (355€ = £306).

There's always a deal to be had on phones especially if you don't want an iPhone, but it's rarely to be found at the local emporium.