Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 1164
So...I dropped my phone again. What can I say? Being naturally clumsy is a family trait. And while it can be argued that it wasn't that had a fall, it was still a fall and apparently, this was enough to exploit the circular crack on one side of the screen to create a line across to the other side. So it seems that this thing is going to go at any moment - or at least spiderweb or whatever you want to call it. And given that I'm flying for a work trip on Sunday, the notion of having a phone on the brink has been troubling.
Last week I laid out the pros and cons of different phones and such and concluded that I should at least wait for my Globe contract to come up for renewal before making a decision. But the latest crack and the sense of things getting worse pushed me to come to a decision on things sooner rather than later.
Today after work Tobie and I trekked to Market! Market! before our weekly grocery run to get the phone assessed. The different phone repair shops and stalls all said the same thing - that a replacement screen would cost upwards of P18k and they'd need a few weeks to order the piece first before they can do anything about it. This felt like a bad deal given (1) they're not official repair folk and yet (2) they're all quoting a cost for the screen that is higher than what Samsung recommends as SRP for this sort of thing. And I've already had this screen replaced once and only got a good 6 months out of it, so it feels like replacing it again is a question of diminishing returns.
Plus it turns out that the only official Samsung Service Centers are located at either SM Megamall or SM Mall of Asia - both of which feel rather far from where we live, especially with my flight on Sunday acting as a scheduling constraint.
So we swung by the Samsung store once we got back to SM Aura and I took the chance to actually test out the different S23 phones in order to make a more informed decision. After my pros and cons list, I've come to accept that a Samsung phone is still the smarter choice versus the current Pixel 7 line given my specific needs.
What I had not anticipated was realizing that maybe I didn't need to push all the way for the top-of-the-line S23 Ultra and perhaps the S23+ is going to be sufficient for my needs. The Ultra felt uncomfortably big in my hand and I'm not sure if I'm a good candidate for needing a S-Pen. The S23+ is closer in size to my S21+ but has a better camera system versus my current phone. The only thing I seem to lose out on versus the Ultra is 10x optical zoom, which I don't think I'll need all that much. Admittedly. 3x and 2x zoom are way more important to me given this is zoom I default to when recording the O Divas whenever they perform in the VIP areas at the sides of O Bar.
I almost bought a phone right then and there but mainly paused when they explained the trade-in offer and how it might be able to save me a good chunk of money. I won't surrender my current phone just yet, but I do have my older S8, which has been acting as a waiting-in-the-wings backup phone without getting any actual usage. I recognize that even with the discounts, the S23+ is still quite an expensive phone and I've already ordered what promises to be a more rugged phone case than my current Rhinoshield in the hopes that I get this to last a lot longer than this one.
Check back tomorrow to find out whether or not I actually get a new phone already.
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