I’ve had a few problems with my current phone, a Sony Ericsson Z750, over the past few months. It started when I would try to make a call and it wouldn’t ring, it just sat there silently displaying the text “Calling whoever…”. I would hang up, try again, and it would usually work. It later proceeded to the weirdness of starting to ring when calling someone, then would suddenly stop ringing with a depressing BE-BOOP! sound, dumping me back to the main screen. So I’d try again… That problem would repeat itself many times before finally connecting me to a person; I blamed it on AT&T’s shoddy network, but who knows.

More recently, the phone would cut out audio on my end when I was talking with someone. I would keep talking to them, asking “hello? hello?”, but it was dead silent on my end. The phone would vibrate once (its “death rattle”, I decided), the screen would go completely black, and I’d just shut the phone in disgust. A couple minutes later, the phone would come back, the outside display once again showing the time, the inside screen no longer black. It would take it a bit for the bars to come back, and then I would call the person back and find that they had been able to hear me the whole time, had been talking, and I had just been unable to hear them. Not cool. This seemed to happen with a frequency of every other call I made or received, and I was no longer chalking it up to AT&T’s network.

Last night, I talked with Jon on the phone for a while before we each [voluntarily] hung up. He had recommended I watch this YouTube video, so I proceeded to do so, speakers turned up, phone nearby on the coffee table. Jon apparently tried to call me back three times, the first time failing somehow, but the second time he seemed to be connected… He heard music in the background and he heard me cough, but I didn’t respond. Now I didn’t respond because I never answered the phone, it was still by my feet on the table, shut (it’s a flip phone). He disconnected and called me back a third time, and this time it rang as expected and I answered. He told me what had just happened, I confirmed I was watching the music video and had possibly coughed. Yeah… Kinda creepy. No one likes the feeling of being spied on by their technology.

So I dug around last night and my phone was upgradeable through AT&T’s site. I ended up buying a refurbished Samsung Magnet for $10, though it did require I extend my contract again. *shrug* Everyone I talk to uses AT&T, and I haven’t been impressed with some of the policies (Verizon) or coverage (T-Mobile) of other companies, so I’m not too bothered by sticking with AT&T. When I get the phone in, I’ll take photos and post on here.