4 Years with a Samsung Galaxy S3 mini

It´s sounds a bit crazy for the lifetime of a smartphone nowadays, but I had my Samsung Galaxy S3 mini for almost 4 years and I changed it now to another phone. A look back.

After 1,5 years with a Samsung Galaxy S Plus which was actually my first smartphone at all, a change was needed, because the display had some scratches already for quite some time and the contract was about to expire and so it made sense to change.

Since I had a phone contract, I selected one of the cheapest options possible, the Galaxy S3 mini for one extra euro. Back on this day in 2013 I did not expect that I would still have it in Mid-2017.

And for some reason over all the years it just got one little almost not visible scratch, but I dropped multiple times, at least on 50 occasions... I did not count, it´s just a random number. How often did it end up under the bed, on the streets with the outer cover and the battery forcefully removed from the phone. And that at the three different continents and multiple countries.

I even lost it a few times: Last year for example, while hiking north of San Diego on some hills with warnings signs of snakes I noticed that my phone was no longer in my pocket. On my own I decided to walk the entire path back checking every corner. At a moment I almost came to a point where I thought I went past, I found it: Half covered in sand, but still running and not damaged.

In the same month a few weeks before while traveling through Canada and the United States the Pokémon GO hype started. And I wanted to be part of it. Unfortunately my phone was not ready: Android version too old and no Android 5 officially available, but I stayed confident and updated the phone to a Cyanogenmod with Android Lollipop (as you can read here). But only until September, I was obviously banned, could not login anymore with my email address - it was not available in PlayStore anyway, I needed to install it manually as an apk file.

But this upgrade to Android 5 gave the phone a new life. It ran faster and having a new GUI let me initially felt like I got a new phone. But then I already noticed: It needs a bit more of battery. 

Financially it was also a nice solution: I let my phone contract expire and switched back to prepaid including a little basic mobile data flatrate. For just a few euros a months it was a quite attractive solution to keep that phone for a while.

But now anno 2017, it got slower and the storage was more and more on the limit since the WhatsApp database and other apps where taking more and more space. After moving the Spain at the beginning of the year the bank there offered me a LG K5 for free. That´s why I switched phones a few days ago, moved every data and application to the new phone.

And that´s why the story of my Galaxy S3 mini now ends after 3 years and 11 months, after travelling to many countries around the world, joined me to the highest point of Spain, the Teide, got lost a few times, but nobody wanted to steal it... 

It still works and I will keep it - just in case.

LINE chat history to another device

Since it´s quite easy with WhatsApp to move the backup via cloud from one device to another the way for LINE is a bit different...

And in general it can become a bit more time-consuming - depending on how many chat partners you have in your history. 

But it´s not too difficult: You go on your old phone, open the first chat and select 'Chat settings' in the upper right of the screen.

Then select 'Back up chat history' and select 'All' (which includes also the media files) to backup the whole chat history with that contact in a zip file to send it to your email address.

Do that with all your LINE chats you want to save. Then use your new phone, install LINE, log in and verify your account. Now download all the chat history zip files from your mail account to your phone.

In the next step you open the first contact for a chat, go again to 'Chat settings', but this time you chose 'Import chat history'.

Initially I copied the files to the LINE folder on the phone, but there was no need. LINE gets the data also straight from the downloads folder (see screenshot).

Follow these steps now one chat by one to get everything back from your old device to your new device. 

Overall it´s a bit more work - but the result is as wished.

From a classic SIM to Micro SIM - and it worked!

After using a 'classic' SIM card for many years I reached a point where I had to switch to a phone which no longer supports big SIM cards. Here´s how it went...

With my old Samsung Galaxy S3 mini getting slower and the battery discharging quite quick the signs are clearly showing for a change to another phone. Which I got. From a bank. And even for free. It´s a LG K5 with two SIM slots. But more about that another time.

I was aware that it was possible to cut your SIM card to a smaller Micro SIM with a cutting template, but I never tried it before. Now, while being in Germany - in proximity to my service provider if anything goes wrong - I gave it a shot. 

I printed the template, cut the lines as suggested easily with a scissor. After the important cuts were done I switched to a nail file in order to make the card fit properly and getting the lines more accurately. Initially it did not work. Tried the file again and the card was in. I booted the LG phone and the PIN was requested! Great, it worked.

But for some reason mobile data did not really work, even after a few minutes. I mean the 'E' (edge) letter was seen at the top, so 'Data' was basically on. First I expected that may a part of the SIM got damaged. Or even the slot? I tried the second slot, issue the same. 
Refiled the SIM again a bit and put it back into the first one. Issue remained. But there was some data transferred, just a few MB, but opening Google and other sites ended in a timeout.

So what about the APN settings? They looked kinda old, so I checked for other settings for German T-Mobile:

Name: T-Mobile

APN: internet.t-mobile

User name: t-mobile

Password: tm

Changed the settings, rebooted. Waited a few minutes for changes to apply and then it worked. In hindsight, maybe the old settings would also have worked if I had waited a bit longer, but anyway:

The SIM card cut worked!