My Samsung X600 was declared dead yesterday. I had taken it to the service center for what I thought was a routine battery change. However, it turned out that there was considerable water-logging in the phone and the circuits were FUBAR. The guy at the service center said that nothing can be done to save it.
The phone was “born” on the 7th of August 2004 when I won it for winning a quiz. The people at BBC World had organized this “launch quiz” as a build up to the impending University Challenge TV Quiz Show (in the very first episode of that quiz, we got mothered by IITM). Anyways, in this launch quiz, one team from Bangalore was to take on SPCE, the defending champions of the University Challenge.
We had maxed the prelims and qualified and then beaten SPCE in a nail-biting finish. Got this phone as booty. I now had a camera phone! I could peacefully put off my plans for buying a digi-cam! And the phone, too, was used liberally. Probably everyone in Section C of batch 2004-06 of IIMB was caught napping in class by this phone. It was also used to take many an incriminating photograph.
Tragedy, however, struck at Shivasamudram (bluff) where we went for our class picnic a few days after the phone was born. We had crossed the Cauvery on foot to reach an island in the middle of the river. The view of the falls from this island was simply breathtaking, with a rainbow to add color to the waterfall. Mine was the only camera to have reached the island (most people had left their cameras behind fearing damage and the one other normal camera which had tried to cross the river had drowned and gotten damaged).
Then, on the way back, shit happened. The level of water in the Cauvery had inexplicably risen since the time we’d crossed to the island. What was knee-high water earlier, was now waist high. The phone was in my jeans pocket and took the brunt of the water. It fell unconscious. Thankfully, it regained consciousness later after a day in the sun. However what I didn’t know was that irreversible damage had been caused to its health by this illness.
By the time the phone fell silent around June this year, I had somehow started hating it (it was tough to SMS from it; sometimes I couldn’t hear clearly; It was very fragile and would break open every time it fell; The ringtone was irritating). I borrowed my dad’s unused Nokia 3310 and consigned the samsung to the cupboard. Yeah, I did miss it when I wanted to take snaps, but that was about it. It had slipped away from my life as easily and effortlessly as it had come in.
The phone came out of the cupboard a couple of days ago when my mom asked me to get it repaired so that she could use it. And then, as luck would have it, it was declared “dead on arrival”. DOA these people call it.
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May its soul rust in peace.