Phone Trouble

On Sunday night, my phone started acting up. It seemed to automatically open apps and press buttons beyond my control. By Monday morning, I had figured out that the swipe up function of my iPhone was not working anymore, and by noon I had narrowed down the issue to a desensitized lowest strip of the touch screen.

An image popped up in my head of my 1.5 yo running around with my phone and tapping the screen to see a picture of her big brother and a baby over and over again. “See baby, see baby”. She had my phone for less than a minute. But she was extremely skilled at breaking things in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Bummer. The swipe up function is fairly crucial on the iPhone 12. But I figured this could be an opportunity to use my phone less. A natural experiment to see if that would improve my productivity. The limited touch screen function certainly cut my phone time use in half. My phone had turned into a reactive device - I could open any messages or emails being sent to me and answer them, but I was not able to open my phone.

An odd sense of relief fell over me. This was amazing. No more opening Facebook and scrolling through messages or ads I wasn’t interested in. No more compulsive checking of my calendar to see upcoming meetings that I was already aware of. And no more checking the Fitbit app to inform me of how well I had slept that night.

By 11am on Monday, I finished half of the tasks for the day, plus three small chores I had postponed since last week. It felt like being on steroids (although admittedly I don’t know how that feels). I had even emailed an insurance company for a quote on home insurance (something I should have done a year ago), and scheduled an appointment with the Genius Bar for the next day.

The next day, the Genius Bar expert confirmed my diagnosis. The lowest strip of my touch screen was not responsive anymore. She showed me how to change the settings so that I had an alternative, floating home button on my screen that can be dragged anywhere. “This might help you for the time being, but you might want to book the repair”, she said. “It is a bit over $300 for a new touchscreen”. I looked at the number on the screen of her IPad. “Well, I’m not sure”, I replied. “I can get everywhere I need to with this floating home button”. “But it is quite cumbersome”, she rebutted. “You have to constantly find it and hit it, instead of moving more seamlessly from app to app”. “That sounds perfect to me”, I replied. “The more cumbersome, the better. It will help me not to check the nothingness on Facebook, or the things in my calendar I already know”. She was too nice to further question my answer.

The week after, my phone sent me my screen time stats. It was down 48% from last week. It had been an exceptionally productive week at work.