[adventured]

> Then, how had he noticed it wasn't working properly if he wasn't using it?

How about any number of several dozen extremely obvious possibilities. A family photo album is on the personal phone and he wanted to retrieve it, so he used the phone and noticed something was wrong with it. He needed to retrieve contact information for a friend that was stored on it. You know, the same exact reasons any of us might fire up an old phone we still have.