Apocalypse almost

[free_radical]

Cell phone stoped working,
showed msg Emergy calls only,

Couldnt call my provider as I have only mobile and no landline.

Call 911 ask if theres some city wide power shortage that would affect mobile network,,no theres not.

Had to go shoping so stoped at Home depot to use the public phone land line,doesnt exist anymore all were removed last year !

Went to Superstore no land lines either,wtf!?

Luckily there was mobile phone booth so ask them for advice,they call my number and says it doesnt exist,my phone doesnt even ring.

Drive to the mall where Virgin mobile my provider has a booth,
They have no clue whats wrong either..
use their phone to call main ofice and after good 45 minutes wait reach the tech help,
Says shut the phone take out Sim card put back in restart,
phone works again just fine,,

Live and learn
Was lucky this didnt hapen while travelin someplace far off road,would be long walk home not much fun in winter tho

[SAR_Tracker]

DW did a system update to her Android Trac-Fone the other day, when she was out of town of course, and had the same problem. Finally took it to Walmart (where we bought them) and the tech there did the same thing - pulled the simcard, put it back in, and VIOLA!

[Gdetrailer]

free radical wrote:
Cell phone stoped working,
showed msg Emergy calls only,

Couldnt call my provider as I have only mobile and no landline.

Call 911 ask if theres some city wide power shortage that would affect mobile network,,no theres not.

Had to go shoping so stoped at Home depot to use the public phone land line,doesnt exist anymore all were removed last year !

Went to Superstore no land lines either,wtf!?

Luckily there was mobile phone booth so ask them for advice,they call my number and says it doesnt exist,my phone doesnt even ring.

Drive to the mall where Virgin mobile my provider has a booth,
They have no clue whats wrong either..
use their phone to call main ofice and after good 45 minutes wait reach the tech help,
Says shut the phone take out Sim card put back in restart,
phone works again just fine,,

Live and learn
Was lucky this didnt hapen while travelin someplace far off road,would be long walk home not much fun in winter tho

SIM issue is what came to mind when I first read your post.

As a FYI, when the phone is unable to read/access the SIM card, it will go into "Emergency" mode.

Emergency mode only allows you to contact 911 system.

As you found out the "fix" is reminiscent of the old Atari/Nintendo game systems where you have to pull the cartridge and reseat it (folks would blow on the cartridge and put back in and it worked giving birth to that myth)..

So much "advanced" electronics and it is crippled by a lousy electrical connection :M

Sometimes this doesn't work due to SIM getting corrupted or failure and vendor will have to issue new SIM for your phone.. The bad thing often your contact list may also be on the SIM so make sure it is backing up to the cloud or make a manual backup to a SD card.

Newer phones can be real frustrating in the fact that you can only gain access to SIM and SD slots using a tiny "pin", don't lose that pin and find a place to carry it..

[BobsYourUncle]

free, what part of Canada are you in?

I had exactly the same problem yesterday. I am in Calgary with Telus.

I was in the middle of a call to BC and the call suddenly ended. I couldn't call back for a couple minutes, managed to get through again, finished the call and then got what you described.
Emergency Calls Only.
I rebooted the phone several times to no avail.

Then it would flip in and out of service, and I got a further message on the screen, with an alert tone every time, something about No data available or similar message. This went on and off at least a couple dozen times.

After a while it cleared up and went back to normal again.

Then a strange one, last night after dinner I noticed my battery was at 53%. Ok, normal. Phone was acting strange so I rebooted it again. When it started back up, the phone got hot and the battery plummeted to 2%. What the ??....
53 to 2% in less than 10 minutes.
By the time I made it to my charger, it hit zero and shut off.

Weird...

Mine is a Samsung S7 - Android. What's yours?

[valhalla360]

free radical wrote:
What bugs me why they scrapped all public phones?

Are you paying for the installation and upkeep of tens of thousands of phones across the country that will sit unused?

[valhalla360]

free radical wrote:
Was lucky this didnt hapen while travelin someplace far off road,would be long walk home not much fun in winter tho

30-40yrs ago what did you do when you went into the back country?

FYI - if the Cellular SIM gets shut down, swing by some place with wifi and you can get communications.

[jorbill2or]

Exactly, even the homeless have cell phones. Nobody uses or in the younger crowd even knows how to use a “pay “ phone. Why would anybody keep a unused device in service? Very few stagecoaches left also 😉

[bucky]

For the past many years only drug dealers and marital cheaters used pay phones. Vandalism played a part as well.

[gbopp]

free radical wrote:
What bugs me why they scrapped all public phones?

Because everyone has a cell phone. When was the last time you used a public pay phone?

[free_radical]

I have two phones but carry only one,good thing is even without working sim card you can still call 911,so no big deal really,just slightly inconvenient,all this tech is great when it works,but when it stops its pita,,lol

Ive heard a story about homeles dude sleeping in the bushes and strong wind droped a tree on him and luckily he had old flip phone so called 911 and got saved,,911 works even without any phone contract.

What bugs me why they scrapped all public phones?

[Old-Biscuit]

Are you 'solo"?

We have 2 cells phones so odds of one failing is less of a problem
*Unless system wide outage