Today my phone died.
Sort of.
When I went to bad last night my phone was on and charging as it normally does. This morning, I woke up about 6 o’clock which is also fairly normal. It frustrates me because I don’t really get up until 6:30. When I wake up 30 minutes early like that, I rarely fall back asleep (mostly because I am thinking about it and trying too hard).
This morning was slightly different because I did fall asleep during that time and woke up at 6:31. I have a clock that projects the time onto the ceiling so I don’t have to do anything more than look up. I knew there was a slight difference in the clock and my phone—which is also my alarm. So, I laid in bed waiting for the alarm to go off, but three minutes later it hadn’t.
That’s when I knew something was wrong.
I leaned over to the nightstand to collect my phone. I tried to turn it on but the screen remained black. Damn!
I jumped out of bed, ran to the living room and found the quick charger to connect my phone. Because the screen remained black, I figured something had happened during the night that had caused the battery not only to stop charging but also discharge any remaining power. I figured, if I plugged it in while I got in the shower and got ready it would have enough power to turn on when I was ready to leave.
Such was not the case.
I left home with my phone no closer to turning on than when I awoke half an hour earlier. I didn’t have time to check on solutions using my laptop because I needed to leave for work. I figured I would check when I got to work while I waited for AT&T to open.
Once I got to work, a quick Google search provided several suggested solutions based on what had happened. Luckily the second worked. Somehow the system had crashed in the night and caused the phone to shut down. Because the system regulates charging that function was also disabled. The system reboot brought my phone back up immediately with the system, data and apps all intact.
I couldn’t believe it. I honestly thought I was going to spend the morning at AT&T and trying to get them and Samsung to coordinate to get me a new phone ASAP.
I am grateful for the small miracles we often overlook. Obviously I am grateful my phone is back to normal and I didn’t have to spend half the day working correcting the issue along with potentially losing some data that wasn’t backed up. But I am also grateful for the small miracle of waking up at my regular time so I was able to get ready for and arrive at work on time this morning despite my phone crashing. I could have just as easily fallen back asleep and slept well past my alarm time and been late to work—still having to deal with the phone issues. That, however, was not the case and I am thankful for it.