My ZTE cellphone finally bit the dust. :-(

[ssfc72]

I am sorry to report that my nice little ZTE Axon 7 mini phone has fallen on the floor once again and this time it did not survive the jolt.  The touch screen is no longer working except for one small area, at the bottom of the screen.
I can not get any response when I swipe or press on any of the icons. I can't even power it down with the on/off button. I can only get it to do a restart, using the on/off button.
I will wait until the battery wears down and the phone shuts down automatically and then I will remove the SIM and the SD card.

Luckily I have my wife's nice LG phone to put the SIM card and SD card, into.

[fox]

Bummer! it's a good phone. I still have mine, although I haven't used it since I bought my secondhand Samsung Galaxy S9.

[ssfc72]

I am still trying to drain the battery and get the phone to turn off, so that I can remove the SIM and SD card, without corrupting the cards.
The battery is at 50 % and it doesn't seem to be going down hardly at all. :-(

I can barely read the display screen now.  It has gone a purple colour and I can hardly see any icons.

[Jason]

Another thought. I had a friend that had a phone that shut down automatically when he put it on a table in the hot sun for a bit.

What's on the SD card that you're worried about? If it was data created by a Google app it will be backed up to the cloud as long as you are using a Google account (e.g. photos).

[Jason]

Have you tried connecting the phone to your computer via USB and see if you can get any important files off the SD card that way? I'm assuming here that you're worried about files on the card not making the card unusable. I don't think pulling it while the phone is on would render it unusable although a reformat is likely if it shows up as corrupted.

It might also help option if you're more concerned about powering the phone down. Connect it to the computer, transfer a large video file to it like an HD movie or something and then watch it from your computer. That should make the processor on the phone work hard and drain the battery faster.

I also saw someone suggest just removing the battery if you can get at it. And you can probably do that with any phone; it'll just take some work but I expect you know that.

The SIM card isn't written to, I believe, so popping the battery and removing it should be fine unless it might be a problem electrically. But doesn't your other phone already have a SIM card? They can't charge you for porting the number from your ZTE phone to your wife's phone even if it's a different provider. And I don't believe they can charge you for unlocking the phone either unless it's not paid for then you'd have to do that first.

[ssfc72]

Thanks for your help Jason.
Yes, I was able to transfer most of the files on the phone SD card, to my computer, using a usb cable.
My main concern is the SIM card. It seems to me there might be a small bit of memory on the SIM, that stores some phone carrier parameters. I might corrupt that, if I remove the SIM while the phone is powered on, making the SIM not functioning.
I suppose I could easily just pay for the phone carrier, to send me a new SIM, if my original got corrupted.  I would just be without the use of the cell phone number , for about a week, while a new SIM was being mailed to me.

The ZTE phone is glued together, like most cell phones today, so it would be a bit of a chore to open it up. The battery is probably soldered in place as well, but a pair of side cutters would probably free that up. :-)

So if the phone battery hasn't run down and the phone powered off by Tuesday, then maybe I will just tear the phone apart and chop out the battery.

[Jason]

I guess you need to get a new SIM to port the number to wife's your phone. I wonder if you could call the ZTE phone provider and get them to forward calls for that phone to your wife's phone or at least the voicemail messages. Be worth calling them just to see what they recommend. I'm used to waiting long times for support but the last few times I've used support with many companies, the most I had to wait was 15 minutes!

[ssfc72]

I will take the old SIM card from the ZTE and use it in my wife's LG phone.
The original SIM card in the LG phone, I will use in my MotoG phone.

[Jason]

Sounds like you're starting a collection of phones.

[ssfc72]

I am a happy camper, once again.

It just happens that my brother and his wife got 2 new phones, after their 2 year plan with Bell Mobile was over.  So they had 2 nice Samsung A50 phones they were no longer using. My brother gave me his A50 to replace my broken ZTE.

I had great difficulty in trying to do a hard reset. The reset was completed but the phone would not go pass the menu where it wanted me to log into my brothers Google account, for the phone.
I also had to get my brothers password to access the phone.
Once I got a fresh install of Android on the phone, I just slipped in my PCMobile SIM card and bingo, I was accessing my PCMobile service with even the Data working.  Good job PCMobile uses the Bell cell service.

The Samsung A50 is running Android 11.

By the way, my brother and his wife went to Costco to see what cell phone plans they offered and they are now with Virgin Mobile (they use the Bell network) and they are paying a bit less per month and getting a bit more Data per month, plus he was given a $500 Costco gift card which he used a bit of to get cases for the phones and some other accessories and he still has a few hundred dollars left on the gift cards.

[fox]

Too bad that the ZTE phone couldn't be revived. You and I were the only people I know that had a ZTE Axon 7 mini. Mine sits in a cabinet unused, just in case something happens to my Galaxy S9. But if something did, I would probably just acquire another, newer phone. I'm starting to have a collection of old phones; 3 iPhones older than 6 in addition to my ZTE. None of them use a version of iOS or Android that receive security updates, so I'm not sure that they are worth anything to anyone.