What did you say?

Samsung Galaxy J7 Crown

My son showed me how the volume control on my smart phone works today. I'd never bothered about the volume before, it always just worked. But today my phone is sitting in the dash and it's making this funny noise. Why's it making that noise? Because it's vibrating, it's vibrating because someone is calling you. Why isn't it ringing? Because you turned the volume down. I didn't turn the volume down! Yes, you did. You see this long button on the side? You press one end and it turns the volume up, press the other end and it turns the volume down. Well, sure, that's what you told me, but what's that got to do with the ringer? [frown] You mean the volume control controls the ring volume as well? Well, that's dumb. The volume control should be for music (which is irrelevant for me because I don't use my phone to listen to music because I don't have headphones and the USB link to my car stereo doesn't work). [continuous low level grumbling and cursing ending with this post]. Yes, this paragraph is a condensed version of a conversation. You can assign the speaking roles as you see fit.

OK, fine, the volume bar controls the ringer volume as well as other volumes. I wonder if it controls the telephone volume as well, and does the phone keep separate volume levels for the phone for hold-it-to-your ear mode and speaker mode (which I use the heck out of), or does it only have a rule to convert from one to the other and so when you change the volume in one mode, it changes the volume in the other mode as well? It might do that in a really old cell phone, but I bet they keep the levels independent.

I really like speaker mode. I get someone on the phone who wants to talk for longer than 30 seconds and my hand starts to cramp up if I have to hold it to my ear. Speaker phone works and it works well. Clear enough for me. And if my wife is with me she can hear the whole conversation so I don't have replay the whole thing from memory.

The speech-to-text function is also really nice. I'm not going to use that itty-bitty keyboard if I can help it, and I'm not going to leave voice messages. If you don't answer, I'll send you a text. I'll record the text using the speech-to-text function. Likewise, I haven't enabled my voice mail. We still have voice mail on our land line, which is actually a cell phone, but it still works with our cordless phones. I wonder how long we've had them. Better not guess, might jinx myself. Reminds me that plastics and electronics are constantly improving in strength and reliability.

My Tracfone cut me off in the middle of a call last week and then wouldn't let me make any other calls. Checked my account online (using my computer, which has a FULL SIZE keyboard) and found I had run out of minutes. Bought some time with my credit card and 30 seconds later my phone was back in business. That was pretty phenomenal.