I’ve had my silver LG Shine for a little over a year now. It’s worked reliably for the most part, with only sporadic issues with dropped calls and a weird bug where it won’t vibrate consistently. I’ve never had shut-down issues with it, and have kept it in relatively good condition, though being a college student it is fairly heavily used.

However, just starting last night, I haven’t been able to make or receive ANY sort of connection from it, SMS, call, internet, anything. I didn’t notice at first since I didn’t try to call out. But when my girlfriend emailed worrying because I hadn’t answered my phone for a few hours, I realized that I wasn’t able to make or receive calls. I turned the power off and back on, and discovered that while I had good bars, it only had the antenna symbol instead of any of the 3G symbols, and the network name of AT&T didn’t show up on the home screen. No calls or texts could go in or out. After about 5 minutes the AT&T network name magically reappeared, and I was able to use the phone normally. I plugged it in when I went to bed last night as usual.

This morning I wake up to a deluge of text messages as all the messages that should have been delivered while I was asleep came in at once, with my girlfriend once again worried by my silence. Through the same restart I eventually got connection back and called her, but our call would be dropped every minute and a half or so (approximate). She being fed up, I promised to restart again and call her back. This was two hours ago and I haven’t had any sort of connectivity since.

As it stands right now: After multiple restarts/removing the battery, I am not able to make or receive any form of call or text. The AT&T network name IS on-screen, and the signal symbol is strong and changes from time to time, indicating that it is communicating with the network. But any attempt to call will stay at the dialing screen for a few seconds, then display "Call Ended" without ever ringing. Text messages will move to my Outbox for a few minutes while it tries to send them, until it gives a "Message Sending Failed" message. Attempting to connect to the internet (which I don’t normally use) just gives an immediate "Connection Failed!" message.

I would love to call AT&T or LG’s customer support, but I’m a college student and this is my only phone and it currently can’t make calls. The online tech support requires an account registration that my parents have never done, and I can’t call them either. I’m also a bit worried because the phone was purchased as a free upgrade last Thanksgiving after my PREVIOUS phone died, making this one more than a year old, and the fact that my family spent our last upgrades on my mom and sister for Christmas.

Update: I went through the LG Live Chat Support system. The opperator walked me through removing the battery and restarting the phone *eye roll*, then informed me that I would need to mail it to the factory for service that would cost "between $40 and $100"…… I’m really hoping that’s not the case.