Szajsung

Never ever before, during almost six years of blogging, hasn’t my temptation to commit my thoughts to the blog had to be suppressed by auto-censorship. No matter how preposterously it sounds, self-imposed constraints are the price to pay to stay in the charmed circle. The heading of his post could have contained idioms such as “to throw in the towel”, “put oneself out of misery”. Some of you are able to read between the lines, however haphazard visitors are quite likely to be kept guessing and may it stay so.

It is Scatts who excels at writing rants over crappy customer service, breaking down brand new cars or defective electronic devices. He has a gift of depicting his tribulations in amusing and quaint way. I do not wish to take away the primacy in grumbling he undoubtedly deserves. I need to get off my chest how irritating Szajsung Galaksi Srent might be.

From the word go… I actually don’t need a company mobile phone. Back at the Employer’s I didn’t have one and held dear being deprived of such perk. Many times I had to use my private phone to handle work-related stuff and my private number was spread around the company, but I always had the right (hardly ever exercised) not to pick up the phone when I was off work. At the New Factory everyone can theoretically expect to reach me at any time and it’s a nuisance.

I actually should be contented. The limit for private calls and text messages and 2GB data transfer package could easily allow me to give up on the private phone (something I won’t do since private stuff and work need to be separated) and actually the opportunity to check something online, such as timetable or tram route, is immensely useful. I also appreciate built-in GPS which consumes little data transfer. It all comes in handy and is convenient, but…

1/ GPS can locate you well, but before the phone finds your location, it needs to spend between two and five minutes searching, not very practical when you’re short of time.

2/ Despite running on 4G/LTE Internet connection, pages in the web browser load more slowly than with my shitty 3G Cyfrowy Polsat modem plugged to my laptop.

3/ The cell phone switches between “silent”, “vibration” and “sound” modes at its own discretion. Consequently either I do not know the phone is ringing or the ringtone, resembling flushing a toilet (called ‘waterfall’), resounds at least appropriate moments.

4/ Whenever I shake the phone (and screen is unlocked), it asks me to set up the starting display. It is quite bothersome and if I put the handset to the pocket or lay it somewhere, I need to do it gently, otherwise the request pops up.

5/ I have absolutely no idea why it randomly chooses what to display after unlocking or after entering the menu.

6/ The prediction mode does more harm than good in assisting writing. I eventually turned it off, since after the phone guessed a word, making the handset change its mind required too much effort.

7/ Due to restrictions, I haven’t downloaded any applications, so memory and operating system of the phone are nearly empty and despite this the phone tends to think very slowly and sometimes simply crashes and I need to wait a few minutes before the device comes back to life.

Besides, it’s a quite fancy device. Everyone in the office has the same model of Szajsung and almost everyone whines about its ample shortcomings. There is a rule that you should not look gift horse in a mouth, therefore maybe the rant is out of place. I don’t wish to blame the corporation which has equipped its staff in such devices, as they’ve done it in good faith and it was probably the best model they’ve negotiated with the telecom operator at reasonable price. It’s rather about the producer, opinions on whose products vary considerably, but the term “Szajsung” repeats disturbingly often.

The other story is that myself I can do nothing about faults of the phone, because it is not my property. I can of course report defects to the sourcing department, setting a huge bureaucratic machine in motion and embarking on more trouble than it’s worth. One workmate’s Szajsung totally broke down and he went through veritable hell to have it repaired… Shit happens, but the future seems bright anyway ;-)

For the record – today temperature topped over +19C, one could bask in the rays of autumnal sun in the afternoon. Although the weather is to break soon, October 2014 stands a chance of going down as one of the warmest in history of measurements. Until yesterday, average temperature was +12.7C. It eventually will be lower, but so far it beats October 2000 when temperature over the whole month averaged out +11.6C, but falls short of October 1907, the warmest since records began, when average temperature stood at +12.9C. May the warmth stay with us long!