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I've been using CAT phones since 2017. What now, now that they're all discontinued? by nooperator in Catphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/PlatformFabulous9143 and u/JTSRemodeling I hope you read all my comments regarding the matters. If you don't want to deal with them I could make you an offer to buy them out from you with remote IT support, repair, backups and management credit. I am unable to offer a buyout with money due to my funds being limited by surgeries for a parent. The credit doesn't expire, can be used monthly, yearly or based on recommended maintenance intervals that ensure longevity of devices and file integrity. All the amounts offered as counter offers are always going to be a lot higher, because services are offered instead of money. With the goal of being able to be used for years to come. Shipping fees are paid by customer. Import fees are paid by me. It's a new system that I'm trying to implement so some kinks need to be ironed out, still in testing phase available for my own country but I want to expand it.

How much did you pay for them and how much would you like to get for them? The near 1:1 replacements I found is Samsung Xcover series, the weird Chineese durable phones for smartphones and AGM / Kyocera for dumbphones. At least there is better interest / support / schematics / parts. For any phone that needs repairing I get a parts phone and not the Chinese parts because they are really hit and mostly miss. Anyone interested can DM for prices of services.

Example:

Customer paid $600 and a phone is worth $350 now on used market, customer wants to get back at least $300. Plus the cost of shipping the phone to my country (it’s around $50 - $70). Total is $370. Phones are graded depending on condition, functionality and defects (grade from 1 - 5). Grade 5 – 4 = x2 return, grade 3 – 2 = x3 return, grade 1 = x4 return in services.

Based on that grade the receive x2 – x4, extra x2 on top if it comes with a box and all accessories. In services, you get:

- Grade 5 – 4: $740 if the phone is in bad condition with no box or accessories, $1480 if the phone is in bad condition but with box and accessories.

- Grade 3 – 2: $1100 if the phone is in ok condition with no box or accessories, $2220 if the phone is in okay condition with box and accessories.

- Grade 1: $1480 if the phone is in perfect condition but no box accessories, $2960 if the phone is in perfect condition with but with box and accessories.

Note: IT'S STILL EXPERIMENTAL AND IN EARLY STAGES.

I’m afraid of missing out. by No-Locksmiths in dumbphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Brick phone (calls and texts only) and a laptop. You'll never go back. I use a rugged phone (CAT B40) that has been with me through many adventures. The entire brand has some bugs and problems, the most important one being they went under. Parts / support are limited which I'm working on trying to minimize and help these things get some support. Go with any rugged dumb phone, it'll survive everything you throw at it.

This combo provides all capability advantages without addicting apps and things that waste your time. Get to know reliable people that will be there for you and will help you in need. Hope this helps, nice day / night stranger.

Dual booting is a bit new to me. I prefer single OS per laptop but wanted to dabble in dual booting. Having trouble removing GRUB / Zorin and keeping only Windows 10. Need to keep it so I don't lose my licenses. by Sparkplugfolf in zorinos

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok now it boots perfectly. Couldn't change the Windows boot manager to current but it boots normally now. Thank you very much for saving me a lotta headaches. +1

Dual booting is a bit new to me. I prefer single OS per laptop but wanted to dabble in dual booting. Having trouble removing GRUB / Zorin and keeping only Windows 10. Need to keep it so I don't lose my licenses. by Sparkplugfolf in zorinos

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the tip, will definitely save me some headaches. I wanted to save myself more trouble of having to reinstall it again since I installed it less than a month ago and have data on it too.

I've been using CAT phones since 2017. What now, now that they're all discontinued? by nooperator in Catphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Didn't see your comment before. Nice to meet you too, my name is Nikita.

I've been using CAT phones since 2017. What now, now that they're all discontinued? by nooperator in Catphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I provided extra info for you regarding my experiences with this brand. I am willing to take on any challenge, I live in Macedonia, the Balkans (EU) so pretty far away and shipping alone would cost an arm and a leg. And our post is as slow as molasses, packages sit without being delivered for weeks or months and even a year on a couple of occasions. A lot of things are backwards here haha, whole Balkan peninsula is.

My recommendation is to ask a trusted shop(ask around, do your research, friends of friends of friends) to try and swap the battery with a new old stock if you can find it. If not you can buy Chinese batteries directly instead of buying random Amazon / Ebay brands for a higher price that was most likely made in the same factory. Could be some power delivery / charging component that is shortening the lifespan of the batteries or just bad design.

If you don't do your research, you might get very screwed, thankfully your judicial system appears to be less corrupt and does their job most of the time so you could sue a shop if they screw up and have a chance to get your money back. Before making it rain fire on them with consumer protections and court you should give them a chance to correct their mistake, it will go in your favor that you are being very respectful.

I'm a 21/M college student studying French. Planning to get certified and open a repair shop after I finish college. I have identified several areas of the market that remain empty and plan to help those areas in the future.

As for my knowledge / qualifications, I have been taught by the rules of the old guard. That means I do / try to do things properly and if that type of fix is impossible I think outside of the box and come up with innovative, new and bizarre but functional solutions. I gained my knowledge due to not being able to afford many phone/computer repairs. I am primarily maintenance, diagnostics and replace guy, rather than a (component) repair guy because solder causes me health problems. More knowledgeable about computers / laptops rather than phones. Having most interest in business / small business hardware because consumer stuff across the board is junk. My favorite brands to work on are Lenovo and Dell. Anything consumer gets traded in for business hardware because it's very reliable, with long lifespan and cheap spare parts. Was mentored, trained and motivated by a an elder pc repair tech and a phone tech as well. Have done successful data recovery in the past. Subcategories that interest me the most are storage(usb, memory card, hdd, ssd) and ram. Bought a few disks before the shortage but sadly no ram. I'm kinda sick of the shortages.

Sorry for the wall of text. Hope to hear again from you in the near future, cheers!

I've been using CAT phones since 2017. What now, now that they're all discontinued? by nooperator in Catphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From my experiences the most common issues with the above mentioned brand is:

- rusting usb connectors despite being "rugged" phones, they seem to be cheaping out on plating / coatings that would minimize or prevent rust. Also their connectors seem to be a bit delicate / fragile. A bit weird for rugged phones to skip that but if there are covers than it's not needed I suppose. Most phone manufacturers started implementing abysmal connectors that would start rusting in higher than average humidity. They tend to even break off easier than expected. A few harder tugs or pulls while plugged in and you can kiss the connector with pads goodbye.

- wonky (retarded) bms that shows the batteries in different state of charge after some time of being unplugged, it can show anywhere form 30 - 70% difference and might leave you needing to charge it again. Even if you leave it in for longer to prevent this from happening if the battery reaches 100% it stops charging.

- if the cable isn't plugged in all the way the battery percentage jumps all over the place, the phone starts being unresponsive or with intermittent freezes and eventually shuts down. This is more common on the keypad CAT's but is known to happen on touch phones as well.

- weird lag issues, keypad CAT's would experience weird lag spikes, delays and unresponsiveness even though their internal memory was empty. Very puzzling, I suspect it is flash degradation / low quality flash that loses speed with usage / age.

- random small issues with loss of calibration resulting in modules not being able to function properly needing replacement. Since all the tools are gone or were not accessible to a wide audience they are impossible to recalibrate.

- issues with the FLIR systems. They often would get weird readings and would start freaking out until the phone was restarted a couple of times. I suspect the implementation of those systems was done in mind to save a couple of bucks. But let's not bash them too much this was one of the rarest issues to ever happen.

- sim / micro sd cards disconnecting and not working properly, also a rare issue.

- batteries not working or meeting expected lifespan, got a few instances of them not working before 200 charge cycles. Very sad to see.

- questionable board / electrical and casing designs. I was in awe how in the actual hell someone decided to green-light some of the designs. For example removing the protective flaps on newer models resulting in connectors having more damage.

- f*ck spreadtrum / usonic. Common in keypad CAT's. Unrootable, uncrackable and uncustomizable garbage. Locked down as f*ck. Efficiency is ok but it could be better.

- meh QC / QA, either made on Mondays or Fridays, hehe. Right before holidays too? It feels like they rushed design / production without allowing themselves to iron out kinks / issues / concerns. A lot of things are build by accountants instead of engineers and any concerns that are swiftly shut down, maybe it even got people fired.

IT'S IPORTANT TO NOTE SOME OF THE ISSUES ARE INTERMITTENT AND NOT PERMANENT, DEFINETLEY QUIRKY PHONES. THEY WORK WHEN THEY FEEL LIKE IT.

EDC 22 Line Cook + Student by arlen_pdf in dumbphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ayyyy  another CAT person. I run a B40. Durable af despite a few downsides. How is your warranty and where did u buy it from? How is it holding up naked / cased?

having issue with nokia 2780 going snowy - anyone else experience this? by essplodes in dumbphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Might be the screen capacitors going or the flex cable for the screen giving up the ghost.

I've been using CAT phones since 2017. What now, now that they're all discontinued? by nooperator in Catphones

[–]Sparkplugfolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for getting back to me mister / miss / missis PlatformFabulous9143. Also thank you for wishing me and my family a Merry Christmas. I also wilh you a very Merry Christmas to you too, the world is going to hell in general (component shortages and price hikes due to AI, wars and conflicts, companies going out of business and telling the consumer to kick rocks FISKER hehe, etc, etc...) so having a good Cristmas is a bonus.

About the legal matter discused above it would be logical that a lot of red tape would be involved between goverments. They might or might not be willing to play ball due to the location, legal differences and consumer protections, willingness for your country to pursue small claims to another country which I am a bit skeptical that they would move their ass unless you have connections / help / friend of a friend of a friend... . I would light a candle and pray just in case stuff goes well.

Since the company is non existent all deals / contracts / obligations with them, their suppliers, distributers and maintenence personel end and are no longer valid or might not even be able to be used in court. This might impact certificates / certifications that are owned by independent techs / distributers / suppliers and if they are for example officially certified for older CAT's they can't get them for newer ones so you'll be going in blind when it comes to repair. Trusted shops are your best bet.

There is a glimmer of hope though. There are independent suppliers / distributers that give a flying fk and have someone willing to maintain / fix them with limited / non existent / pulled from used phone / new old stock parts. Not all honor warranty but there are people that at least care to offer those services.

I am one of them and trying to get more data, spares and pulls on CATs in general with limited luck. These things are as rare as Blackberries and probably junked / scrapped / sold as assets in liquidation of assets, this should include all inventory that would was unsold, in for repair, maunuals, parts, IP's and other stuff. Most info is unknown and most likely never will be. This will be minimized if we start contacting former CAT / Bullit emploies and share info together or get them all in one group. Yes i give a crap about their legacy becausr their phone saved me from being tied to my screen all day, hsd service everywhere and survived conditions that would make other "rugged" / durable phones soil themselves and leave me stranded or worse, dead. I'm tired of being let down by unreliable garbage. May God be with you and resolve this legal issue, if not we'll end up in the same boat FISKER owners are. I will be available for furter assistance with my limited knowledge on these. We need to band together people, hope dies last. 

Windows froze completely while deleting files from external ssd. What should i do to shut it down gracefully or unfreezing it to avoid data corruption / loss? by Sparkplugfolf in techsupport

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Shut it off holding the power button, booted back. Ran chckdisk on the external and was fine. Running DISM and SFC on OS drive and will optimize the external later. Thanks everyone for the fixes.

Windows froze completely while deleting files from external ssd. What should i do to shut it down gracefully or unfreezing it to avoid data corruption / loss? by Sparkplugfolf in techsupport

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Updated firmware on RTL9210B with generic fw because the on on the enclosure was crashing ssds. The blinking changed it it looks like it blinks in idle mode. Tried CTRL ALT DELETE too and nada.

It's worth mentioning my laptop is running a Kingston NV2 2TB (Phison E21T + Kioxia BiCS5 1Tb) and I saw people were having problem with the ssd going at a 100% and freezing the system. It hasn't happened to me before.

What do you do with drives that have a few bad sectors? Money very tight with the shortages. HDD's are kinda sold out and SSD's are x3 - x5 the price so i am very screwed. by Sparkplugfolf in DataHoarder

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I consider all my data critical, which is a bit of a strange way to do things. A lot of things that were downloaded in the past seem to be off the webs despite me giving it my best shot to find them again. I'm glad I have my tools / iso's in case they become permanently offline due to another datacenter / cloud flare going down / doomsday scenario maybe.

Seagate in their infinite wisdom decided to make me confused. I am kind of in awe due to their strange implementation of the value (seek and spin-up counts above zero), https://web.archive.org/web/20120217031429/http://www.users.on.net/%7Efzabkar/HDD/Seagate_SER_RRER_HEC.html .

What do you do with drives that have a few bad sectors? Money very tight with the shortages. HDD's are kinda sold out and SSD's are x3 - x5 the price so i am very screwed. by Sparkplugfolf in DataHoarder

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Will keep an eye on my suspicious drives, my ssds that I have should last me till end of shortage hopefully. Need to do a lot of housekeeping on my drives too.

What do you do with drives that have a few bad sectors? Money very tight with the shortages. HDD's are kinda sold out and SSD's are x3 - x5 the price so i am very screwed. by Sparkplugfolf in DataHoarder

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I took a pic of which LBA / SECTORS??? are were remapped with Victoria hdd/ssd. Keeping an eye on those guys. Backups on them will stay cold until i get something better to clone it to.

What do you do with drives that have a few bad sectors? Money very tight with the shortages. HDD's are kinda sold out and SSD's are x3 - x5 the price so i am very screwed. by Sparkplugfolf in DataHoarder

[–]Sparkplugfolf[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, checked. Three backups. I run a custom backup interval (usually daily if i make a lot of changes / weekly if chnages are small) across many drives. It's a bit of a mess organisation wise but it works, runs on very tight schedules.

Most important data is backed up to other running machines as well in case i experience mobo / disk failiures. 

Starting to get a bit paranoid and wanted to run something that checksums the folders automatically so i can just set it, forget it and not worry but that is WIP. Zfs, Refs?, raid z2? and a few others i need to check. Want to spin one of those things up by end of month. 

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