YOU HAVEN'T STRESS-TESTED your phone--any phone--until you start getting messages like "Phone start-up failed. Contact the retailer." I ignored the message on my Nokia E90 for several days since I used a key-press routine to force the phone to boot back to its original settings. But I failed to consider three important side effects of overtaxing a mobile phone's memory. Without main memory, you cannot back up your phone. For more than a fortnight, I failed to back up my main phone since the sync software was unable to execute a handhold to main memory. This was stupid on my behalf because I wasn't able to sync either to my Nokia back-up or to my desktop organizer. Why buy into a syncing routine if you're going to ignore the practise? It's a best practise and you cannot ignore backing up your phone.
Phone memory affects call handling. I failed to see that my phone was unable to direct weak calls into my voice mail. One of those calls, repeatedly attempted during times I was driving in weak signal coverage, was from my credit card fraud management team. They cut off my credit card as a precaution when my phone simply dropped them from reaching either me or my voice mail.
Phone in-box hides data when memory cannot page. For a little more than two weeks, I never knew when a new message arrived if I didn't feel the phone vibrate on a message arriving. Without main memory available, the unread message icon never illuminated and the only way I could see messages was to go into the inbox and page down for them.
All things considered, I'm happy with how my Nokia E90 behaved when out of main memory. I'm also happy knowing that I had all the short codes to revive the phone and I'm confident the phone has another year of daily use left in its lifespan before I retire it to the centre armrest of my car.
