Just a tip for my friends that may be buying an electronic device. Whatever you buy, might have an extended warranty and extended tech support plan. Some of these can be nice and some are not. But, you need to understand your options.
IPhone has a extended warranty, & extended support package that you must buy within 60 days of the original purchase. I was told this on the 65th day, and I’m really upset by that. So, learn from my mistake(s).
https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone.html
Another learning experience was that my Android phone suddenly started requiring that I enter a password that no one knew. This happened the night before I was flying to America and I could not take it into the Samsung shop, three hours away by bus, because I had a flight to catch.
I spent hours on the phone with support in Turkey. I spent hours on the phone when I got to the US, with American support. I spent hours driving to several different brick-and-mortar places in Washington DC, and probably used up over 25% of my very limited time in America, with absolutely no improvement, and I got to pay for parking in several of those places.
It was still broken when I got ready to fly to Trinidad, and since it appeared that it was going to be necessary to return to Turkey to have any hope of repair, which would not be for many months, I bought a brand-new iPhone in Washington DC.
Immediately after I arrived in Trinidad, Robn took me to a Samsung repair place that was on the bus ride from the airport to the marina. I told the man in the shop the story and 10 seconds later he had it working. So, I just needed to bring my phone to Trinidad and they fixed it instantly.
There is a somewhat secret process of holding down certain buttons as you start the phone, and it reboots to the, ‘straight out-of-the-box configuration.’ I could have had the phone working in less than a minute of when it originally froze up on me. However, NOT ONE Samsung tech person had told me about it, or even acknowledge that it’s a possibility. Logically, some, or even most of them had no idea about it either. However, it seems inconceivable that with all the calls that I made that not one person told me how to fix it. What else have they not told us?
Once you know what to look for, there are many websites that explain the process. But, one must carefully follow the instructions, or it might be possible to permanently ruin the phone. So, make absolutely sure that you know what you’re doing.
As an example, if you reading some webpage about this sort of thing on your device, be aware that at least some of the webpages that tell you how to unlock your phone, do irreparable damage to the phone’s firmware.
That is NOT the case at all with the special reboot that was done on my phone. I’m just saying that some of the instructions that you find on the Internet are seriously dangerous. Be careful. Cross check it six ways to Sunday.
Everyone knows that Windows hardware and software is riddled with problems. Many people have assured me that Apple products are SUPER reliable and trouble-free. That has not been Robn’s experience, and I’ve helped her with several of these issues.
Happily, they have all been resolved much more easily than the nightmare I went through. But, she has had to reboot using the iPad version of this, ‘take it back to the out-of-the-box experience,’ several times. I think Apple is definitely better than Windows, but that is faint praise.
I hope that none of you ever need to know the above information. But, if you do, I hope I’ve helped. Just be super careful if you have to do these secret reboots. It would probably be safest, to take it to a professional, who is trained and practiced for that particular item.
Dave & Robn
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