This week someone asked for assistance with their flip phone. They thought it wasn’t charging and they couldn’t call out on it. Rarely do I work with these types of phones since almost all my clients have smartphones. I started investigating the problems and asking the user about the charging. The user had the phone connected to a charger overnight and the charge indicator was at full charge. The user had just used it for 10 minutes talking to someone who called them so I assumed the battery and charging system was fine.
Now I wanted to try calling someone on it. I tried all sorts of things and never could get it to dial-out. I couldn’t even access the Contacts to make a call from there. I wanted to power it down so I held the power button down for a long time and nothing happened. The printed manual was available so i read it and the correct shut-down procedure was followed and now I knew the phone was in a weird electronic state.
The user never has shut it down and powered back up, The battery was removed after the case was pried off and I left it out for a few minutes. I re-installed the battery back in the phone and the cover was secured. Once it powered on, The phone could call out and access the contact list. I showed the user how to shut down the phone and they were relieved to have the phone back in working order.