The Huawei Union, one of the smartphones we bought to replace our cable bundle three years ago, died at the end of July. I was sad, but the Union had served us well, especially for a phone that had only cost $10.
This is the story of how the Union unexpectedly bit the dust, how I unsuccessfully tried to fix it, and how we ultimately replaced it.
The End Comes
The Union dipped out early one weekday morning. I grabbed the phone to look up something for a post I was writing. It was acting weird, lagging and not responding to touch, so I did what I always do in those situations: restarted the phone.
When the phone came back on, the usual splash screen with the red Huawei logo popped up…and stayed there. Again, I wasn’t immediately alarmed by the Union’s behavior. The splash screen always stays up for a bit before the unlock screen appears. But this time, it didn’t go away.
Clearly, something was up with the Union. Yet, I was hopeful that the problem was a minor issue that could easily be fixed through some googling. I couldn’t find any help aimed at my specific phone, so I settled for forums discussing any Huawei phone model and articles about general smartphone troubleshooting.
Even though I tried every diagnostic trick in the book, the Union always got stuck on that splash screen. Well, almost always. Sometimes the phone’s notification light came on, cycling through red, green, and blue—a possible error code that I never deciphered. Once, the phone restarted to a new Huawei splash screen with animated fireworks. My mom jokingly called it the phone’s last hurrah.
Our beloved Union was gone.
The Accusations Fly
Before I get into what we did after the phone died, allow me a short digression about how I was falsely accused of murder.
I waited as long as possible to tell my parents about the Union’s demise. I feared they would think I’d purposely killed the phone so we could get a new one. I was somewhat right. They didn’t accuse me of breaking the Union, but my dad did ask me if I’d tried that hard to fix it. Same difference!
Admittedly, the evidence against me looked bad. It was no secret that I’d wanted to replace our ancient phones for a long time. In fact, I’d been “shopping” on the Boost Mobile site for new phones the day before the Union died. I had even showed my parents some of the options.
But there were also several reasons supporting my innocence:
- Why would I kill the Union knowing that we might not be able to replace it? We had just survived a rough summer, full of car meltdowns and medical emergencies. A new phone was the last thing on our list of priorities. With only one phone in residence, I would have lost half of my monthly data. Killing the Union under those circumstances would have been a risky gamble.
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Why would I cause myself unnecessary pain? Losing the Union, my daily driver, was a nightmare. I had to set up my many email and social media accounts on my iPad, a task that took tons of time, used lots of data from the ZTE Speed (my dad’s phone), and was heaps harder to complete without direct access to my authentication apps. I’m still locked out of one account. If I’d killed the Union on purpose, I would have been much better prepared for the aftermath.
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Why wouldn’t I have targeted the ailing Speed instead? My dad’s phone is so messed up at this point that we all hate using it. It wouldn’t have been hard to figure out how to put it out of its misery. Nobody would have thought twice about its demise or been particularly sad about it.
So, give me a little credit here. Yes, I was excited about the prospect of getting a new phone, but it wouldn’t have made sense for me to sabotage the Union. My only crime was jinxing myself by looking at replacement phones that day.
End of digression.
The Regrouping Begins
We agreed that we needed to replace the Union quickly. My dad began to leave the Speed at home when he went to work so we would have a phone in the case of an emergency, but multiple factors, like the car’s unpredictability, made it just as dangerous for him to be without a phone.
Our goal was to get a new phone without breaking the bank. The most obvious option was to buy the cheapest phone Boost Mobile had to offer. The previous day’s research had turned up two low-priced phones: the Coolpad Legacy Go ($24.99) and the Wiko Ride ($39.99). Despite having the right prices, I was nervous about buying something from a company (or two) that I’d never heard of. In any case, the Legacy Go was sold out anyway.
Then a second, more interesting deal revealed itself: the BoostUp! program. Because of our good standing with Boost Mobile through the years, we could get a phone by paying a down payment and the sales tax for the device. Then Boost Mobile would add a few extra dollars to our phone bill for 18 months to pay off the balance. The phone’s overall cost would be higher in the long run, but we wouldn’t need much money upfront. We were cool with that trade-off.
The BoostUp! program had some good deals. We could’ve gotten an iPhone 7 ($349) for $1 down and $24 a month, or an iPhone Xs Max ($999) for $500 down and $33 a month. For our purposes, I narrowed down the list of eligible phones to ones that cost around $60 and had a monthly payment around $5 to keep the down payment low.
My criteria left us with four choices:
- LG Tribute Dynasty ($49.99)
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LG Tribute Empire ($49.99)
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Motorola moto e4 ($49.99)
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Motorola moto e5 play ($59.99)
Since I’m the “tech expert” in the house, my parents left the final decision to me. No pressure!
After a long bout of pros and cons, I picked the LG Tribute Empire. The moto e5 Play, my first choice because of its 5.2” screen, was sold out. The moto e4 was splash proof and had long battery life, but it was heavier than the other phones. The two LGs were practically identical, but the Tribute Empire was more attractive and ran a more recent version of Android than the Tribute Dynasty.
Our grand total was $7.25, or $1 down and $6.25 tax on $49.99. The phone arrived exactly three days later via UPS.
The Tribute Empire is Unboxed
After I opened the medium-sized brown box the Tribute Empire shipped in, I was greeted with the usual orange-and-black Boost Mobile box.
Unlike the previous Boost Mobile boxes I’ve encountered, the outside of the box lacked the see-through flap that shows the phone. The inside of the box was different too. The phone and its charger were packaged in a gray LG-branded box instead a set of interconnected plastic trays.
The phone was surprisingly easy to set up. I started by fully charging the device. I liked how the ends of the USB cord have three bumps across them to indicate which way is up. I didn’t like the lack of a charge light, though I later learned that the phone beeps and an arch flashes onscreen over the USB port when you plug it in.
Once the phone powered up, Boost Mobile’s activation system took over. All I had to do was put in the phone number associated with the Union’s account and confirm that I wanted to swap that phone with the Tribute Empire. In short order, the new phone was registered and ready for use.
Then Google’s system took over. It, too, wanted to know if I wanted to set the phone up as a new device or restore from a backup. I went with the former. Once I put in my Google credentials, it still asked if I wanted to redownload the apps I’d had on the Union. That made the process much faster.
And with that, the Huawei Union was well and truly replaced.
Coming Up Next…
In the next part, I’ll review the LG Tribute Empire. Stay tuned!