TALKING TECH

The harrowing experience of someone dear to me being in distress will haunt me forever

Duncan Bell explores the private health care system of the tech world, and attempts to revive a sickly Samsung S7 handset. But will the gadget doctor be able to bring it back to life, or is it time to put his phone to rest?

I’m sorry,” said the man in the white coat. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s gone. It’s gone.” Softly, the woman began to sob. Behind us, more wounded were wheeled in on trollies by uniformed staff, accompanied by men and women wearing pained expressions.

The woman in charge paced the room. Her face told of lack of sleep and dealing with too many traumatised people. “Have you done triage on these?” she asked her exhausted team.

Addressing the room, she barked, “We’ve got a wait of 2-3 hours before you’ll be seen, ladies and gentlemen.”

Over and again, I heard the same question from the lips of the desperate: “The data. Can you save the data?”

Nurse, the screens!

Yeah, so, it wasn’t a hospital or a vet. It was a laptop and mobile repair centre. Yet I swear I haven’t made up or overdramatised any of the above, much.

If you ever had any doubts that we are now totally, hopelessly addicted to tech – and busily anthropomorphising it to the nth degree – take a visit to any large, walk-in repair facility.

Yes, the ‘patients’ being literally wheeled in were PCs. And people were more concerned about the contents of the devices than their physical form.

So yes, it was different from a real vet or hospital in that respect. Cos nobody there says, “Okay, so he’s dead. But can I take his brain home and put it in a new husband?” Not yet, anyway.

However, it felt like one long, rolling crisis, and there really was talk of ‘triage’: determining which device was the most badly wounded, to determine what should be dealt with first.

Well actually, since I am pretty sure early intervention doesn’t really make any difference if your hard drive has stopped working, it was probably to determine how qualified a person was required to look at your sickly old iPad.

The atmosphere really had the air of hushed despair, punctuated with moments of pure elation that you get in medical establishments.

And boy, were people getting upset. As upset as if their pets were sick or dying? No, of course not; these were British people. But WAY more distressed than if it were, say, an elderly relative. That woman really did cry when told that no repair could save her data.

That said, given how embarrassed I felt to be there, it might as well have been a clinic for ‘intimate’ infections.

As the UK’s leading tech columnist in a monthly magazine published by Future, I should be able to fix stuff myself. Usually I can. This time though, something had gone wrong with the charging port on my mobile and I couldn’t even turn it on. I’d also failed to backup The Data recently – disgraceful – and had to retrieve it.

I’d be lying if I said I was massively traumatised about this – not like those other losers! – but it was irksome.

I’d tried different chargers, bought a brand new charger, used one of those little tins of blowy air… The lot. I was sure a new power supply and/or battery would be needed, and I was expecting it to cost me not a small amount. Sadly, there is no NHS for tech. And let’s face it: if there were, you’d take your Galaxy S7 in with a cracked screen, and it’d come out with a deadly virus and half the RAM missing.

Having gone through triage, I was passed on to someone who I think, with the best will in the world, was nearer to nursing student than brain surgeon on the tech-fixing qualifications scale.

That said, he did have a reassuring manner. “Yes, yes, we see a lot of this,” he said confidently. “Absolutely no cause for concern. I’m just going to use these tweezers… You may wince a bit…”

With this, he started to pull fluff from the Lightning port. Now, you know you sometimes read a news story about someone who goes into the GP’s with ‘gas’ and then gives birth? It was a bit like that. Out and out it came. Yards of it.

My iPhone, it transpired, was like a f**king magician’s sleeve. How could so much lint live in so small a thing? How was there still room for the processor and the battery and the motion sensors and the… things?

As the final effluvia came out – followed by flags of many nations and a brace of white doves – my tech doctor turned to me and smiled. “I think it’s going to be alright, mister Bell.”

It’s going to be alright.

My iPhone was like a magician’s sleeve. How could so much lint live in so small a thing?