I like my new mobile phone.

For the pedantically minded, it’s a Huawei P Smart 2019.

I like it because it’s fast, the battery is good and it has a pretty good camera. One of the reasons I bought it was for the camera as my Canon has developed a couple of faults and it had been overtaken by mobile phones for picture quality.

Naturally I dropped the phone a couple of times. Usually it was when I was bending down to pick up something and it would fall out of my shirt pocket. Each time there was the frantic examination of the screen to see if I had cracked it. The screen is still fine.

One day I went to take a photograph of something and checked the image that had been taken. Fuck me but it was terrible! It looked like I had filmed through a fog in poor light. I tried shooting the same scene and the result was the same. Then I examined the camera and discovered that the camera lens was shattered. It had broken into dozens of little shards and was utterly fucked.

So what was I to do? I thought of passing the phone on to Herself and buying myself a new one, but that seemed a bit drastic. Out of curiosity I did a search on the Interwebs. To my surprise I found a few sites and videos showing how to repair the lens.

I sent off for two spare lenses [just in case]. A few days later they arrived through the letterbox. I set to work with a small screwdriver and tweezers [to remove the old bits] and a hairdryer [to melt the glue]. It was a doddle. Ten minutes and the camera was back to its original state. Total cost [including postage] – around a fiver, which was considerably cheaper than a new phone. Good old Interwebs!

I have since bought a protective case!