General News
25 April, 2026
Phones not always so smart
LAST week in the ‘Goss’ I featured a couple of the options available to get help with our technical devices such as smartphones, tablets and iPads.
This is good news, as most of these now essential parts of our daily life do not generally come with a manual.
There is, of course good old Google to help, but then the individuals needing the most help are probably likely to not be the most proficient on their preferred ‘search engine’.
Apart from the nagging problems of usernames and unknown passwords, as discussed last week, there is also the threat of damaging devices, due to a drop, getting wet or worse.
Apart from relying on these pieces of glass to make phone calls, send vital emails or have that crucial ‘Facetime’ meeting, scarily there are so many other reasons why people are now relying on the small instrument in their pocket or handbag.
Be it a cracked screen, wet charger port or swollen battery, these small handheld computers are great when they work and a potential disaster when they have, as described online the ‘black screen of death’.
Supposedly modern phones are supposed to be waterproof, but let’s be honest, with holes for the microphone, ear speaker, loudspeaker and charging area, it’s probably unlikely.
In fact, Apple was fined nearly $AUD17 million by the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) in November 2020 for misleading claims regarding the water resistance of its iPhones.
These days it is not unusual for people to carry their whole life on their phone and, while we are encouraged to save everything in ‘the cloud’, often at a cost, information such your 100 contacts, 5000 photos of recent holidays and loved ones, pets etc. can easily be lost forever.
But it gets worse. Let’s now escalate the problem with a scenario where somebody is on holiday in our beautiful region. Their phone accidentally slips into the Coral Sea while on a day’s fishing and everything is on it – flight itinerary, the ability to pay for anything, make phone calls, even that early morning call for the airport trip was set up as an alarm.
While your ‘stuff’ is hopefully in the cloud, the whole experience can put a real damper on your much awaited holiday.
Buying a replacement phone may be the immediate problem, when as mentioned before, all of your bank cards are now on your phone … which is at the bottom of the sea.
My recommendation is to take a real paper copy of all of your travel details and take a least one real bank card, just in case the unthinkable happens … and it does.
I had considered including the topic of potential scams now often occurring on devices such as smartphones. Sadly, this is a situation where people lose thousands of dollars by trusting an unknown link or caller. I thought it best to leave that for a future ‘Goss’ so as not to exhaust us all too much in one week.
All considered, I am off to spend some quality time not staring at my phone, so for now it’s Gazza signing out.
Send your stories to gazza@cairnslocalnews.com.au
