Thursday 15 March 2018

you are running low on storage capacity

My intermittent cold has manifested itself in a new and unpleasant way, and migrated to my ear.  It was feeling slightly tender on Tuesday, a bit worse yesterday morning, and by yesterday evening I wouldn't have wanted the optician anywhere near it, so this morning I saw the nurse at the GP surgery, who pronounced it full of debris and prescribed antibiotic drops for the infection.  Rather confusingly, as both she and the pharmacist warned me, they are labelled as eye drops.  I wish spring would come, instead of more snow.

Meanwhile I am locked in a war of attrition with my phone, which periodically warns me that it is running low on memory and suggests deleting the apps I haven't used for three days.  No.  I only have about half a dozen apps that I downloaded myself, and I don't need to use them as often as twice a week, but I want them to be there for when I do use them.  I like to be able to read the Guardian online or play Sudoku if I am stuck waiting somewhere without a book.  I have the AA app installed in case I should break down, because it helps the rescue truck find your location.  I have a QR and barcode scanner loaded in case I should be in a museum that uses them, and the Art Fund app in case I should want to find a museum or gallery near me.  I have the National Rail app because I sometimes travel by train, although not every three days, and it might be useful to be able to look train times up.  And I have the Wittr app because it is fun, and the good doctors make a lot of money out of it.  OK, that's seven apps.

The apps that are really eating storage are not even the ones I chose to have, but the ones Samsung and Android foisted upon me and that I can't get rid of.  I don't want to listen to music or watch films or YouTube clips on my phone.  I don't take photographs.  I don't need Excel or Word or Powerpoint.  I don't want to Skype anybody: I'm sure my friends would be happy with a text.  I am certainly not going to risk buying anything on eBay, and have no idea what Hangouts even is.  The BBC weather is useful, although thinking about it perhaps I put that there.  I like being able to check my emails on the go because I am of the middle aged generation that uses email a lot and has not graduated to Snapchat or WhatsApp or whatever has replaced them by now in the affections of the young.  Google maps is jolly useful if I'm lost, and once in a while it's handy to be able to check things on the internet, but the phone is full of things I don't want or use, or at least not on my phone.

The other day it was badgering me to use Memo to keep track of lists and ideas.  For goodness sake, that's what the blank pages at the back of my diary and old shopping lists written on torn off pages of my Zen daily desk calendar are for.  The phone doesn't have enough memory space as it is, without my adding lists and ideas to it.

I suppose in due course I will end up having to buy a new and bigger phone, and I confidently predict that Google and Android will promptly think of new, memory hungry applications that fill it up again.

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