Some skank has nicked my HTC Desire

bubblesmoney

Fifer wrote: »

A magentic field strong enough to affect a memory card would also be strong enought to damage your phone and to probaly damage you too. Believe me, you are not going to accidentally stray into one, even in a hospital.

We have an MRI scanner at work. No-one has lost data from a memory card by walking near it and it's within feet of a main pavement through the site.

the room would be shielded, so walking next to the room would not make a difference. it makes a difference to machines as usual electronic equipment is not used there and special MRI compatible machines are used in those rooms. or if usual machines are used they are kept in neighbouring rooms and compatible cables are guided into the MRI rooms. i know of instances where some cards have been damaged after being accidentally taken in by others as told to me. obviously i cant vouch for that as i wasnt there at that time. a magnetic field in a MRI room is of the magnitude of a few teslas and does not damage us but can do damage to equipment. but metallic equipment accidentally taken in can become projectiles and injure people and damage equipment. where i worked earlier i know of an instances in the past where a commercial floor cleaner equipment flew into the machine when a enthusiatic cleaner decided the floor in the room needed scrubbing with the machine. it was lucky no one including that cleaner was injured when that equipment went flying onto the machine! just google MRI incidents and just in the usa there have been numerous instances. inspite of checks people can do mistakes and carry stuff especially when they are in a hurry or when new non clinical staff unfamilar with such stuff come for cleaning etc.

Fifer

Sorry, but you are starting to conflate effects which are irrelevant to the discussion. Projectile incidents only occur with ferrous metal objects. Memory cards don't tend to contain ferrous metals. I remain unconvinced that MRI scanners are a risk to memory cards and I'm especially dubious about any effect when accidentally walking near one. I've worked on this site for almost a decade and there hadn't been a single instance in that time with no special precautions being taken with respect to memory cards.

Sid_Harper

To get back on topic the desire can be factory reset by holding down the trackball and down volume whilst switching on. Take out the SD and SIM cards beforehand and it's back to factory state. Before someone accuses me of helping thieves, this is how the phone is designed to work.

So to cut the argument going on here short, it's all irrelevant - if they haven't ditched it, it'll have been reset and sold on abroad.

bubblesmoney

Fifer wrote: »

Sorry, but you are starting to conflate effects which are irrelevant to the discussion. Projectile incidents only occur with ferrous metal objects. Memory cards don't tend to contain ferrous metals. I remain unconvinced that MRI scanners are a risk to memory cards and I'm especially dubious about any effect when accidentally walking near one. I've worked on this site for almost a decade and there hadn't been a single instance in that time with no special precautions being taken with respect to memory cards.

i have worked on/off MRI sites (and in the MRI room too during procedures) for more than a decade too at mutiple locations in the uk and abroad. i know of one definite instance where a colleague had a problem with a card he accidentally carried inside, dont know if it was just a coincidence. anyway this issue is digressing from the main post. my fault.

the optical pad push + volume down + power button simultaeneously pressed when the sd card in situ does not factory reset the phone. it just achieves what a battery pull achieves physically. i have tried this and it just does what the battery pull achieves and does not factory reset my device. i have also tried the safe mode start option i mentioned (among other things generally fiddling with various test menus etc and anyother codes i could find on the net).

bubblesmoney

Sid_Harper wrote: »

To get back on topic the desire can be factory reset by holding down the trackball and down volume whilst switching on. Take out the SD and SIM cards beforehand and it's back to factory state. Before someone accuses me of helping thieves, this is how the phone is designed to work.

So to cut the argument going on here short, it's all irrelevant - if they haven't ditched it, it'll have been reset and sold on abroad.

or sold on to a recycling company, apparently till recently they hadnt been checking if the phone was reported stolen while buying phones! although they have now signed a code but dont know if they are complying with it yet.

ampletime

Aalways have a sim card pin and enable the phone lock when the phone has been idle for x amount of time.

On the Desire under the Security options you can instead of a phone lock pin enable the option to have a 'pattern' drawn to unlock the phone. You have 9 large dots and you are asked to join them up in whatever way you want. The secret with this is to make a pattern by going between the dots. Most people will look at it as though you have to join each one that is next to eachother.

You can of course just have a lock code but you should always enable pin and phone lock.

Sid_Harper

the reset procedure bypasses the pattern lock anyway, a bit like entering the password 10 times on a blackberry to totally wipe it. i.e. the phone is reset just to how someone who doesn't care about your data would want it to be!