LG Mobile: A Secret revived

About six months earlier, my two-year-old LG Secret phone conked out. For some sentimental reasons, however, I decided to have the semi-smartphone repaired instead of sending it for recycling or straight to the landfill. The past several months that passed saw me too pressed for time to bring it to LG Electronics Philippines’ service center. Located in Pasig, one of the Metro’s eastern cities, the service center is quite out of the way of my usual home-to-office-and-to-home routes.

LG Mobile's service center at the SM Megamall. No need to go all the way to Pasig City to have your troubled LG phones fixed.

Then I heard that LG had a service center at the SM Megamall in Mandaluyong. Now, that is a lot closer to home and, not to mention, more commuter friendly.

LG Lounge @Megamall
So about a month ago, I went to the country’s second-largest shopping mall. Finding the LG service center proved to be an adventure by itself. After getting off the taxi at the Megamall’s Building B, I had to walk the whole length of the building, then cross the connecting bridge to Building A. Finally, after walking through about two-thirds of the building’s length, I found the mall’s CyberZone IT retail section.

My LG Secret mobile phone, good as new after getting some TLC from the LG Lounge staff at the Megamall shopping center in Mandaluyong City.

Smack right in the middle of the mall’s collection of high-tech product outlets stands the LG service center. I immediately talked to the person in charge of the place, and asked her what they could do about my phone, which was not exactly in the spring of its youth. The staff was pleasant enough, and accommodated my request and promptly pointed me to the shop’s resident phone technician.

Secret Revival
I had to know whether the phone could be revived or not, whether I could entrust it to their care or should I be looking for a new phone. The technician told me that my phone’s hibernating status was not permanent. My phone was not beyond repair, praise be to the lords of the mobile-phone heavens.

Two years of wear and tear, without the benefit of having any protective accessories, my LG Secret mobile phone still looks elegant. There are some scratches and even a crack, but this Korean beauty still can make some late-model smartphones impulsively run to Belo or Calayon for some aesthetic help.

And for a reasonable fee, he would examine the phone’s internal workings. He also would try to determine whether the problem was software or hardware in nature.

Today, this phone might seem like a pauper in terms of features and capabilities. But despite its reputation for being laden with bugs, the LG Secret phone has lived to its billing as a phone with a "style that lasts."

He told me to telephone him the following day. And when I did, he told me some parts of the phone needed to be replaced with healthier ones. He asked me whether I would want to proceed with the surgery, I mean, repair process; and gave me an estimate of how much it would set me back.

I gave the go ahead.

To Buy or to Care for

A couple of weeks later, he and I are still waiting for one part more to complete the process.

Moral of the story? Sometimes, it’s better to buy a new handset. Service centers are for servicing mobile phones having some hiccups. They are not, however, designed to revive “antique” handsets. Besides, buying new handsets is good for the economy.

Thanks, once again, to the LG Lounge staff.

The whole process took a couple of weeks longer than usual. But the LG Lounge staff were not to blame. My phone needed a new flexwire, which had to be shipped direct from Korea. Once the required part arrived, it took only a few hours for my Secret phone to be revived fully to a good-as-new status.

I am now a proud owner of a newly revived Secret.