I’ve had two cases recently where a device I have continues to work perfectly in every way, except for its primary purpose.
Last year, my camera, a Canon EOS M50, was experiencing occasional glitches, but I learned to live with them. Then one day, while out solo shooting birds at Piper Spit, it stopped taking photos. It would act like it was taking a photo, but would not actually finish the job.
I went through its settings and everything on the camera–including shooting and recording video–worked perfectly. It just stopped taking photos.
I ended up getting a new camera. It takes photos.
The other happened just recently. My iPhone 12 has occasionally sent a call directly to voicemail for no apparent reason. Now it rotates through several behaviours:
- Call immediately goes to voicemail, I get alerted to a “missed call.”
- Phone rings, I pick up, but the time on the call stays at 0:00. The person calling goes straight to voicemail.
- Best of all, sometimes the phone doesn’t alert me to a call at all, not even putting a missed call in the call history.
- What it doesn’t do: Actually allow me to take a phone call. I can still make calls without issue.
I did a cursory search on this and found a “Telus neighbourhoods” thread with dozens of replies reporting the same issue–but on every make and model of phone under the sun, both Android and iPhone. A multitude of “Changing this one random setting fixed it for me!” posts suggest the problem likely comes and goes based on the whims of the Telus network. It’s possible getting a new phone wouldn’t even solve the issue.
For now, I’m giving it time to see if it goes away (I did update and reboot my phone, as well as twiddle the dial on a few phone-related settings). If it doesn’t, I’ll probably grudgingly get a new phone.
Next up: A fan that refuses to blow air.
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