Been a mixed week on the IT side for me. Whilst I am doing a delivery job the mobile phone is second only to the vehicle (or third if insanity is counted) as a requirement to undertake the job. Amazon stopped providing equipment years ago so drivers have to get their own phone that will run the delivery application. This saves Amazon money and time in caring and charging for equipment but means the drivers have to have a decent phone - but not too decent. Taking it out for deliveries all day, whilst carrying parcels and asking people to sign on it - in all weathers - there is a great risk of dropping the damn thing. Once there's even a tiny crack on it the phone becomes useless once it starts to rain.

Battery life is also important. My rule of thumb is that the app makes the phone use about 1% battery per delivery. This means if you've more than 100 deliveries (or start with less than 100% battery) you need to leave it connect to a power source as you go for a great deal of the day.

After dropping my previous phone several times (a Redmi one) the crazed screen meant it only really worked on dry days. After that the route was all in the lap of the gods. In addition to that one more little drop and it would no doubt be useless. So I had to bite the bullet and buy another phone. After a bit of research I went for the Blackview 5500. A reasonable price and very rugged. It worked well and survived several drops completely unscathed, with its inbuilt rugged cover and toughened glass. And the battery life was fine. It was ideal for the job.

Until Tuesday. Suddenly it went wrong. The battery didn't charge up fully overnight and then it was using the battery up rapidly through the day. Changed cables over the next four days and could get it to 100% charge, but the battery was dropping faster than West Ham in the league. Hadn't put on any new apps. Went through and deleted some - just in case - and made sure all the notifications and locations were turned off for everything but the work App. But to no avail.

Couldn't find any information online about current issue and in the meantime I could barely finish a day at work when I only had 63 drops - let alone a day when I would get over 100. I needed to sort it. Only advice I could see was trying a factory reset. This would be painful: having to reload all the apps (and fail to remember all those usernames and passwords). In the end this was not a problem I had to deal with… as when I attempted the reset it failed and the phone will not even boot up. I think they call this a 'soft brick'. So basically I have no phone to do my work. Arghhh! I may be able to fix it but it may take some time - and still may fail. A lost day for not being able to work due to phone is the same as buying a new phone. So, I'll have to bite that bullet.

So I'm off to buy another one. And then yet again another bloody case. I'm not going for the Redmi again as it was too full of bloatware that couldn't be deleted, or the Blackview as now I don't trust the software/firmware. Think I'm going to go for the Motorola G7 Play: good deal at Argos at the mo. Will have to get a case online.

Anyway, thanks goes to Amazon for not providing equipment, and to gravity for causing screen breaks, the weather for causing difficulties in the rain, and software issues for affecting batteries: thanks to all.