Last year, while I was replacing the battery in my Switch, my hand slipped and the screwdriver flew off and hit the screen, leaving a nice little pit right in the middle. That’s when I remembered that almost a year ago, I still had insurance on the screen — you can read the details here. So I thought, isn’t this the perfect time to get the screen replaced? While I was still hesitating, the next day the machine obligingly developed a new problem: the TrackPoint’s right-click button popped out, and it wouldn’t go back in. Looks like I had no choice but to go to the service center.

About two years ago I bought a China-market Fossil Gen 5 smartwatch. I already covered why I bought it and how it felt to use in an earlier post, so I won’t repeat that here. Today I’m just going to talk about my after-sales experience with this watch. First off, less than a year in, I accidentally scraped the bezel on one side, exposing the bare metal underneath the black finish. That bugged me for a while. I even tried some nail polish type stuff to cover it up, but it was no use—just a little mental scab I couldn’t pick off. Also, after a year or so of use, the battery life was nowhere near what it used to be. I remember in the beginning I could leave Always Display on and still get a day and a half. Later, even with Always Display off, it barely lasted a day. Pretty clear the battery health had declined. Then the watch started acting weird. The speaker would intermittently produce distorted sound. Whenever you got a message, the watch would make a sound, but it was this harsh, crackly noise—super annoying. The thing is, it wasn’t easy to reproduce. Sometimes it happened, sometimes not. I couldn’t figure out if it was a software issue or a hardware issue.

The Redmi Note 3 my parents have been using is almost two years old now, and I’ve had it repaired a bunch of times to keep it breathing, but recently I found out my dad smashed the screen again. So I couldn’t be bothered to keep it on life support. The Redmi Note 7 is out, so let’s just switch to that.

A while back I noticed a bunch of problems with the Sony Xperia Z Premium. First, one of the external speakers stopped working — put simply, only one speaker produced sound. I also found yellow spots along the edge of the screen, maybe a screen issue. Since mine was a China-market unit, I went to Sony after-sales service. This time the Sony service location had moved to the Erqi Square area of Zhengzhou, on Dehua Street. I don’t think I’ve been here in ages… it’s changed quite a bit.

I’m not really interested in Tongque’s earphones, but I do enjoy watching their founder pick fights with people on X (Twitter). Honestly, the way he goes after people is pretty on point — some folks really are that dumb and deserve it. I didn’t want to buy a Tongque earphone, though, because word was the sound was pretty mediocre. Then I saw the founder announce the new EN700 Pro in red and black, 12 months interest-free, and his line “if the sound’s bad, you can hit me.” So I bought one on impulse.