My New (ish) Phone is Cursed!

My last phone was a first generation Moto G, I purchased it when it was a new release from phones4u. For its price point, it was well spec'd, very reliable and fairly rugged. The only reason I replaced it when I did was down to the battery, it's none removable and had come to the end of its life. Over the years I'd dropped the phone countless times, used it in very damp conditions, used it as an entertainment device and used it as a satnav when hiking and camping, nothing ever really phased it.

About 5 months ago, when the battery finally stopped holding a charge, I replaced my Moto G with the Moto G7 Power, expecting a similar level of reliability and ruggedness. My new phone is already almost completely knackered.

I'm not well paid, I understand the value of money and I like to look after what I own. The first thing I did when my new phone arrived was to install both a tempered glass screen protector and a shock resistant case, two things that served me very well on my previous model. This time around, however, it's apparently been a pointless endeavour.

As the name suggests a mobile phone is mobile and, as such, should realistically be able to withstand being used outside. I'm British, something which I'm increasingly embarrassed to admit, so when I'm outside it's inevitable that there's going to be a degree of moisture in the air. I answered a call in some fairly standard British drizzle, no real raindrops, mostly just moisture hanging in the air and just that small degree of dampness absolutely ruined the speaker. During the call the sound went from being fairly clear to heavily distorted and painfully tinny, at the time I thought this was just down to signal and didn't think too much of it until after the fact. To be honest this might not be an issue if it only affected my ringtone or the call quality, two things that I only experience occasionally, but it doesn't. My phone is an important tool in my day to day life, it's my alarm clock, my calendar, my navigation system, my word processor, my calculator, my primary source of entertainment, my main media access point and more. This essentially means that I hear sounds from the speaker dozens, potentially hundreds, of times a day, and it's causing me a real headache.

To make matters worse last weekend I dropped the phone, something I'd done to my old one hundreds of times with little to no ill effect, and, despite the protector, the screen actually shattered. To make it more annoying it's shattered underneath the screen protector, which remains fully intact.

How is it that technology and materials keep getting better, tougher and cheaper, but the things we rely on most seem to be getting worse, more fragile and more expensive? To say that I'm extremely disappointed in Motorola is an understatement.