My phone is 5.5 years old. It's been cranky of late. Today, it was cranky again and it took me getting really stern with it and be techy for it to finally start up.

We are leaving on vacation on Wednesday. I use my phone for GPS stuff, finding restaurants while on the road, and all manner of other stuff. It needs to work and I don't want to spend a day on the road buying and setting up a new phone.

I dislike having to set up new technology, but ... I guess I'm going to have to go and get a new phone and spend the afternoon setting it up.

I think 5.5 years is pretty old for a phone, isn't it?  I got about 10 years out of my last one, but that was because it didn't do anything but text and make calls.  Sounds like you're going to have to bite the bullet and get a new one.  Good luck.

The new one is in hand and set up. It's supposed to be instant. They take from the old phone and move stuff to the new phone. But then you have to get everything signed in and signed together. My phone connects to my car. My phone is my GPS for the car, which runs off the phone that is now connected. And it has to connect to the garage door and then all the other apps were just dead in the water.

Getting stuff situated, was another treat. All the apps I routinely use came over, but they were just there and not on my screens like I wanted. The widgets are different. The stuff works a bit different. It's just annoyingly different.

But I will get used to it.

When we got to Verizon, they noticed that my battery was starting to bulge. We aren't flying for our vacation, but if I had taken that phone on a plane, I could be the reason the plane caught on fire. That would have been really, really annoying.

Yeah, setting fire to the plane you're flying in is a bit of a no-no.

Somewhat 'frowned upon'.

It is of course possible that all it needed was a new battery.  What a bugger it would be to survive the incident and then get sued  for 'causing undue distress' to all the other survivors.

The new phones are manufacturer centered. There is no longer such a thing as a "new battery" because they can't be changed.

Seems a bit short-sighted to me.  Based on the Trumpian model that there's no such thing as a new president, that the existing one is perfect and infallible, and will continue to function indefinitely?