So I recently got a Motorola SLVR. Cool phone, I have 90 songs on the 512MB transflash card, it's like an ipod nano with speakers. I love the phone, although it is hard to hold to your ear for long conversations. But with the included headphone kit, it works like a dream.

Until last week.

I started getting messages from people saying that my phone had been "Disconnected or no longer working number". This morning, when I got a email from Jerry & Karen, asking for my new phone number, I said enough & called Cingular.

After going through the usual who are you, what phone number do you have, what's the airspeed of an unencumbered swallow stuff, the guy asked me how often I turned the phone off.

I said very rarely.

He said, "Well, it only downloads new updates for the phone when it has been turned off. So we recommend turning it off for at least 30 seconds in the morning and 30 seconds in the evening".

The tech support guy told me to "hard shock" it, by pulling the battery while it was still on, leave it off for ten minutes, and then power it back on. We'll see if it fixes the issues. Also, it makes me wonder if the phone actually "turns off" when you turn it off, or if it just enters a powered down state & does the update check.

So I ask you, dear reader, why on earth does this phone have a 7 day battery life if I have to turn it off twice a day? One of the joys of this phone over my previous phone was that I could turn it on and forget about it for days. The last phone had to be recharged every six hours it seemed like.