A week long challenge

 February 19, 2021

Last Friday, the delivery truck arrived with a small package addressed to Momma.  She said it was late in the day and she was too tired to deal with it.  She thought it would be best to wait until she felt fresh and empowered the next day.  Dad said,  "Well, let me just open it and charge it so IT will also have some 'power' tomorrow."

What arrived, you ask?

 Well, let me lay some background.  Momma finally gave up on trying to use the 'Connect Clip' with her hearing aids to allow the phone to be heard directly in her ears by bluetoothing to the hearing aids. 

It seems the microphone part of the connect clip would fail and the person calling her would say,  "I can't make out what you are saying."  Ah ha!!  So now they know what Momma struggles with when on the phone!!  After burning through 3 Connect Clips, it was time to dig deeper in the pocketbook, store up a boat load of patience for the learning curve that needed to take place, and swap out the andriod phone for an i-phone.

  The iphone will blue tooth phone sounds directly to the hearing aids without needing the intermediary Connect Clip device.  And the sounds tranfer so quickly without a delay that you don't have to search for a long, drawn out sound to use.  You can even hear the quick click of the camera shutter.  Wow!  Impressive!!

Now we all know that a new phone always comes with a learning curve as well as the challenge of transferring data so you don't have to start from scratch with all those contacts and photos, etc.  Surprisingly enough, the process has gotten simpler over time and with a couple of clicks and by holding the phones together, MOST data, apps, etc magically appear on the new instrument.  Even when going to an iphone operating system from an andriod.  

Notice the word MOST.  The contact swap over was hit and miss.  Patience needed here.  Every contact had to be verified/checked out and corrected. And of course the android uses a first name alphabetizing system while the iphone uses a last name system.  Just adds to the confusion and increases the challenge level.   You really don't have any idea how many people you know until you begin straightening out your contact list!!  

Needless to say, all that interaction with the new phone had a draining effect on the battery.  Not to fret.  Momma just put the phone in its new charging cradle for the night and never gave it a second thought. 

Of course Dad got right to work as soon as the charger arrived and built a shelf for the charger to sit on...designed with percision .... notched out for the cords to lay flat

and stained to match the wood on the end table.

Well, the next morning there was a surprise in store.  23% battery left.        W H A T?????  You mean it didn't charge?  But in the box was a shiny white coiled cable....just a cable.  What do you do with the end that isn't plugged into the phone?  It's an 'odd' size for this household's equipment.  After a brief web search, it was discovered that Apple no longer was including the 'brick' for charging. 

Just use your apple tablet (if you happen to have one) or purchase the new USB-C brick for $20.    It would have been nice if they had clued us in on the lack of a brick in the box when the phone was purchased.  But then, we had purchased this marvelous charging craddle that was suppose to handle the charging.  WRONG

Well, it's a Sunday.  The phone is getting ready to die with less than 20% battery and the cradle charger isn't performing.  Verizon opens at 11 but....does anyone who REALLY knows anything work on a Sunday?  But then, it is Valentine's Day.  Did I mention that this Valentine's present keeps on providing challenges?  Maybe someone with knowledge will be at the store!?!

Momma said her agent was a 'true techie'....talked fast, moved quickly and used his thumbs to interact with the phone.  The charging issue turned out to be a phone case issue...even though she had tried removing the case at home to see if she could get the charger to communicate with the phone.  Go figure.  Techie got the phone to charge without the secret compartment case that totally interferred with the functioning of the cradle charger. 

And he quietly said, "If you don't want to spend too much money, you might do better getting a case somewhere other than here."  A bit of honesty!!  So a 'USB-C' brick was purchased to give the phone it's needed energy boost with visions of a new case in the future.

Now you might think everything was hunky dory but alas, the learning curve had just begun. The face recognition doesn't know you with a mask in place.  But you can set up more than one face.  So, don the mask and try to save the face recognition with mask on.  Yes, I'm aware that my face is obstructed but can't you overcome that? No??  Oh well, there is always the backup code to use. 

 Gestures on the iphone don't produce the same effects on an andriod and visa versa.   But the widgets on the iphone totally rock with stackable widgets.  Too cool.  Gives you accessibility to many icons using limited home screen space.  

Just tapping on the clock will lead you to the alarm setting screen.  After trying out various sounds for Dad and me....no way can Momma hear any alarms because she doesn't sleep with her hearing aids...we set the alarm to go off in one minute to try it out.  WHAT????  One loud bleep and then the sound is so soft that even my keen ears had issues.  Are you suppose to pop awake with just one quick bleep?  Now this mystery only took more than two days to solve.  After days of playing around with setting the alarm,  three times the alarm kept ringing loudly and that was when the pattern began to emerge.  If you touch the phone, the alarm goes soft.  If the phone is sitting anywhere but in your hand, the bleeps are loud and strong...until you lay a hand on the phone.  It's a cool feature once you figure out what is happening.  So this morning, I was able to hear the strong, loud alarm ring and I ran into the bedroom, put my front paws on Momma's side of the bed and nudged her awake.  I'll bet you didn't know I can act as a service dog!!  I ALWAYS take a toy with me so after she gets done petting me, I make her toss my toy to be sure she stays awake.  For some reason Momma and Dad seem to like early morning appointments and they have had a few of those lately so I've been getting a work out.  Dad says I have to earn my keep.  And here I thought giving him the sad eye look with my one brown eye and one blue eye was all it took.  

The internet has lots of good information.  Momma wanted to be able to put an icon to call Dad right on the homescreen.  I mean, she had it on her android so surely you can do it on the iphone.  Now this one would never have been figured out without the internet search results shedding light on the process for setting that up.  The only hitch was, she could follow all the steps right down to the preview successfully,  but then the 'attach to home screen' selection button didn't appear.  Sometimes you just have to walk away and revisit later.  Solution,  don't begin the process using Chrome..use Safari and all works as promised!  It still winds up being a two click to call process (only one click needed for android)  but it is definitely quicker than pulling up Favorites and calling from there.

So it has taken a week to personalize the new phone, discovering and using the proper iphone gestures.  Now if we could just figure out how to say out loud "navigate to....address" and have google maps open up and lead the way, Momma will be smiling once again.  Siri isn't as helpful.....yet.  But with persistence I'm sure it will happen.  Sometimes it just takes time to figure out the right gesture or word pattern to make it all happen.  More research needed.

I have to admit, I'm a bit jealous of all this time spent bonding with a new phone.  It's cutting into MY quality interaction time.  Momma better figure all this out quickly so we can get back to a heavy on play and ball tossing schedule!!  I gave her a week.  Next week is ALL MINE!

I'm Chloe