Some fourteen months ago, I bought myself a shiny new Nexus S.

In the year that followed, I grew to seriously love this phone. It has been rooted, tweaked, screwed up, nearly bricked, and updated ad nauseum. Whenever I feel I want a “new” phone, all it takes is some research and some time to set it up with a new ROM and/or launcher and/or launcher theme, and it’s ready to go.

And then on Friday, it gave me some very, very bad words:

Safe Mode.

I do not know why, or how, but my dear Nexus S booted up in Safe Mode on Friday morning, and it would not leave.

There are various instructions on the web for leaving Safe Mode. All were tried. I rebooted. I removed the battery. I booted with the up volume pressed. The down volume pressed.

Eventually I completely wiped the phone and installed a stock ICS ROM. Problem “solved”.

And it’s a good thing, too – I very much do not want to buy a new phone right now; anybody who willingly upgrades their phone right now is a bit of a fool.

The reason? 4G.

Waiting on the Fourth Generation

My wife bought the latest version of the iPad. She bought the “4G” model – or what was being called the 4G model at the time. Now Apple markets it as WiFi + Cellular in the UK.

Why? Because we’re backwards here. While the rest of the developed world uses LTE (or other competing) technology to have a so-called 4G network (these standards actually fail to meet the 4G standard, as a general rule), the UK is lagging behind in having these faster networks. In fact while the latest news indicates that progress is “speeding up”, you will still see a conspicuous lack of a schedule for the introduction of a 4G standard to Britain.

And until the technology is rolled out, nobody knows the version of the standard that will be used. So any device that might be designed to handle a 4G (or 4G precursor) technology would not necessarily work on a British solution.

So I’m glad that I did not have to buy a new phone this past weekend – I’m hoping to hold on to my little Nexus for a little while longer. I’d suggest you do the same.