kinzel | Not quite burning questions of the day

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phonemetrics

Not quite burning questions of the day

OK, good morning, crew. Mr. Phelps, you may leave the room -- your phone is ringing in the hall.

Today's not quite burning question follows somewhere in the verbiage.

We've been considering upgrading our phones -- that is, our cellphones -- and in pursuit of that, since I'm a hands-on kind of guy -- we've been in/at a number of cellphone stores/big-box stores/corner kiosks looking at the suckers. We've played with keyboards, swiped at letters, shrank and de-shrank windows, observed what the sky looked overhead in Bejing (I was ay a Sam's Club in Augusta... the demo phone wanted to show me Bejing, I dunno why, and neither did the salesgirl...), and etc. Decided on an android phone, and decided that if I have a phone I ought to be able to text on it without chording through the letters, and that I really do prefer typing on a keypad, and made lots of decisions with the anticipation that by the New Year I might be finally caught up to 2008, communication wise. But all is not clear, yet.

One question that's come up (asked by the booth inmates) a number of times, often without additional information or clarity, is "where do you carry your phone?"

Now, I've had an emergency/traveling use only phone (trac[hone brand) for years, and in those years Ive carried it on my belt in a leather belt-looped pouch, in my pants pocket, in the cellphone holder on my shoulder bag, in my shirt pocket. Actually I've had three or four tracphones -- and lost one in it's iron-hand belt pouch (which apparently failed).... somewhere. One just died. Anyway, but the questions I have which are not well answered --

1. Are there phones -- let me be clear, I mean smartphones at this point -- that are best carried in certain places? Should *where* I expect to carry a phone affect a buying decision?

2. Do belt-clip pouches ever work? On my way to Raleigh for NASFIC my clip-on phone pouch got caught in the seat belts a couple times ... and I even tried clipping it to my suspenders, which (apparently) never works, or at least looks awkward as hell. I did manage to answer a call that came in with it in the pouch on my suspenders, but it was vewy vewy vewy iffy, and I swore not again, at least not with that kind of a pouch.

3. Where do *you* carry your phone usually, and what has failed for you (and why) in the past?

Thanks.

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Have you heard the news from this article? None of it was new to me, but it reinforced the idea that I should not carry a cell phone on my body. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14digi.html?_r=2

Having said that, I do sometimes clip the phone onto my pants or put it in a rear pocket. I don't use my phone that much though and really only have it for emergency purposes.

not a NYT member -- link won't work.

Try this link instead:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14digi.html

Just to hijack the thread . . .

We're thinking of getting our first! ever! cell phone, emergency and travel use only. Tracphone is in the running. What are your opinions on coverage and general utility, in the pay-for-minutes territory?

Tracphone worked for us for years but when we traveled in May and June we were teased when Sharon's phone briefly had a working browser (within Tracphone headquarters range, it turned out). If you intend to travel it is pretty useful, but pay attention to the local coverage maps if it is mostly for Maine use.
Sharon had a heck of a time when one of her phones crashed -- she must have spent three or four hours on the phone getting things to work, besides having to wait for new phone and etc ...

This would mainly (Mainely?) be for local use -- Wife wants me to carry it while biking and skiing.

I just tried their website for local coverage and got an error message . . .

Unless this is really pressing I;d give them a try a little later.

Pressing? We've been discussing this for a year or two, now . . .

Mine lives in my bum-bag (er, for LeftPondians that's "fanny pack", a term which is rather rude in the UK).

Don't carry it in trousers (pants) pockets, when you sit down it will bend and that is not good for the phones. I have no idea what one would do with a smart-phone, I don't have one (mine makes phone calls and does text messages and doesn't pretend to be a camera, PDA, games console, etc.).

I do like the earphone things which go round the ear (I can't wear in-ear ones), and there are some with small microphones which you can clip usefully to a shirt pocket or (in the US) suspenders[1], and put the phone where you like.

[1] The term 'suspenders' is used in the UK for what Americans call a "garter belt", and makes me thing of Rocky Horror...

Depends a bit on which pant pockets, and how spacey (or not) they are, doesn't it?

My phone (Nokia N900) is generally in the side pocket of my pants. One of the key criteria for my pants is a big pocket :-)

It isn't just sitting on it, it's the bending. Unless you have pockets down the thigh or calf, but even those may involve some curvature. It may take some time before it fails but it reduces the life (a friend had his Nokia 6310i for a year or more before it failed; I've had mine in the pouch for a lot longer and it's still going fine).

As I said, I select pants for the size of the pockets, and I never go for tight pants. My phones tend to get some damage from infrequent dropping, but not from my pockets.

I have an iPhone. To protect the glass, I have a leather case. I toss this contraption into my fanny pack with my wallet. This works well. I have yet to drop or break said phone. The gottcha?

1) It's hard if not impossible to hear it ringing in noisy restaurants, bus stops, grocery stores, and highways. (The last is a blessing if I'm driving, a curse if Hubby is driving.)

2) When I do, at long last notice the vibrating and ringing, I need to unzip the fanny pack, pull out the phone, unsnap the case, flip it open, then start talking. If I'm lucky, I haven't missed the call.

3) I proceed to talk with the phone against my ear until the microwave radiation makes my ear hot, then I dig out my earbuds, untangle them, plug them into ears and phone, and at long last, I can have a conversation.

4) I have a voice that comes in right at white noise frequencies and I cannot be heard in any kind of noisy place. So the little mike that dangles from the ear wire isn't vaguely close enough to my mouth to catch what I'm saying. Currently I'm actually holding said mike up to my mouth so I can be heard. Sometime next week I hope to have the adapter so I can use my older boom style headsets with the newer iPhone jack.

Pardon me if this seems like a complicated rigmarole to go through just to talk on a phone.

Yes my case has a belt hook. I think I could carry my phone there, but I haven't ever tried. I do frequently carry the phone in a pants or jacket pocket. I always worry about sitting on it though.

you don't have the location I most often carry my Centro. While it's prob not a good idea re radiation I can leave it on vibrate. If I keep it anywhere else I miss phone calls. The other place I carry it is in my pants pocket. The phone doesn't seem to mind either place. While I want a droid I'll miss this phone because its done a better job of holding up than any other phone I've owned.

I carry mine in my righthand shirt pocket. Works well and I've only killed one by dropping it on its head off a ladder. While coming down I caught the bottom of the pocket and squeezed the phone out the top.
Sam

I used to use beltclips, but inevitably the clip would fail or the phone would brush up against something, resulting in the phone hitting the ground (or in one particularly spectacular incident, falling into a puddle on rain-soaked pavement) with pieces going in all directions. (I have several Motorola V180 phones that I broke that way that I scavenge parts from to keep my wife's phone working.)

Now, I tend to carry my phone in a front pocket (either pants or shirt), and wear a Plantronics bluetooth earpiece. If you carry a briefcase (or messenger bag or whatever), put the phone in that instead.

Answers to your questions :)
1)(where designed to carry) donno, other then issues of fragility (see IPhone in your comments) I think just about anywhere you'd be willing to risk mild electro-magnetic radiation exposure shouldn't be a problem.

2)Belt Clip failures - Too many to number, but I'm a big guy and a lot of stress goes on my belt area when I'm not standing ... I've seen skinny folks with holsters that looks like they're as old as I am, so I guess that's a body type issue and not a design one (like fitting into airline seats)

3) I've taken to wearing carpenter pants (jeans) as often as possible, there's a small tool pocket on the right leg that's perfect for my cell phone (Casio G'zOne ruggedized phone, I've put this poor thing through the washer 3 times and it's still 100% functional).

Unasked for advise: if you get a smart phone, decide now if having a replacable battery is an issue for you. Most rechargables start to fade after a year to 18 months and if you have a phone that you can't change the battery on, you're eventually going to get stuck with a phone that spends most of it's time on the charger.

Shucks the above post mentioning the G'zOne is me. Don't you love it when you get logged out between reading the post and decided to make a comment (and don't notice it!)
(ferragus AKA Tom Powers)

I also have an iPhone, which I generally carry in my back pocket, if I have one. In the summer it is often in my bag because the pants/shorts I wear in summer often don't have pockets. One of the drawbacks of the iPhone, in my opinion is that they are too large to comfortably fit in my front pants pocket and don't really fit well in belt pouches. I have broken one, but not while wearing it. It slipped out of my hand and dropped on a stone tile floor. I do sometimes miss calls when the phone is in my pocket, but generally because I just didn't hear the ring and I was in a noisy place. However, I love the fact that I have a full QWERTY keyboard available. Texting without it is just too confusing.

My partner has a droid and always uses a belt pouch. She usually takes it out and puts it on the seat in the car, because it is impossible to get it out of the pouch in time to answer while wearing a seat belt. Her one complaint about texting is the word prediction which she sometimes misses until after the text is sent, requiring a second text to correct the confusion. I just don't use word prediction.

So, belt pouches work sometimes. If you are using it for travel, I would cough up the extra bucks for a bluetooth headset since more and more states are requiring "hands free". It would also solve the "getting the phone out of the belt pouch on time" problem.

I use a belt-clip case for my iPhone, but instead of being a pouch it's a fully covered flip-front case. The case is attached to my belt through a swivel clip; the belt side of it is a full loop, so barring mechanical failure or inadvertent activation of the latch the phone can't fall off. (The latch uses a two-button "squeeze", so it's very unlikely to release without intention.)

When it rings, I can easily grab it one-handed (using my pinky/ring/middle fingers to grasp the top of the case and my index/thumb to release the latch), rotate it 180° in hand so the cover and screen don't face my palm, and flip it open.

I've had other clips fail by falling off or through mechanical failure. At this point, the only cases I'll buy use the Krusell "Multidapt" system, which allows me to swap in my belt-loop-swivel for whatever basic clip comes with the case.

Unfortunately, Marware (the company that I've used in the past for cases) has stopped selling Multidapt cases; my next one will probably be a Krusell model of some sort depending on what my next phone is.

Burton from Montreal

Have old Motorola RAZR cellphone that I carry around in customized holder with magnetized closure flap on my belt. Alternatively, most my jackets and backpacks got special pouches for cellphones.

See no reason to upgrade the cellphone, since it's mainly use as a phone. Also, most of the new phones is too small.

FYI most cellphone batteries don't like the cold. Battery drains faster when the phone is cold and transmitting.

I carry my cellphone (a Motorola Backflip) in my pocket and/or in my purse, not in a case exactly. I have a hardshell case, but it essentially just goes around it like a frame.

That said - I spend 9 hours a day at a desk and it sits on the desk most of the day, except when I go to meetings (about 2-3 hrs in a typical day ) and when I go to lunch (an hour out of the middle not part of the 9. And I'm only in the office 3 days a week.

It's generally in my purse coming and going.

So the real answer is "in my pocket 2-4 hours per day.

You may be interested in this "cell phne finder"
at cnet:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4247-6454_7-5.html?tag=revCatWrap

Just to clarify - front pants pocket. Or jacket pocket.

One other place that you don't mention isn't an option for you. I'm a full figured female, wear loose sweaters/tees and have a comparatively small phone. I will sometimes tuck the phone in my bra if I'm not going to be in public.

HTC G1 (keyboard, slider) works well for me, but probably going to change to Verizon since they have better wilderness phone and data coverage.

I use the phone vastly more for texting than for voice, but I do have bluetooth devices if I am going to be on voice for extended amounts of time.

At work, I wear a vest and my cellphones (work and personal) live in the two front lower pockets.

Away from work, depending on what I am doing or wearing, my phone may be in jacket pockets, shirt pocket, pants pocket, cellphone pocket in my purse, or inside a pouch inside a backpack or other container. Don't wear a belt and stuff around that area is going to get scraped off/snagged on stuff anyway.

Suspenders holster from Duluth Trading (http://www.duluthtrading.com/search/searchresults/80007.aspx?feature=product_19&kw=suspender&processor=content)

I use an iPhone and carry it in my front pants pocket. I had terrible luck with belt clip cases with earlier phones.

1) My friends say modern smartphones are fairly tough. Dropping on a corner tends to do the most damage. So what is easiest for you to get to? Difficult to reach often equals dropped. Some friends have had pocket lint jam keys, but the phone store easily cleaned them out. Hoping to prevent lint and scratches, My wife knitted a “Pop-Tart Cell Phone Cozy pattern” to keep her phone in.

2) I carry my flashlight on my belt, since pockets tend to get warm and heat drains your battery’s charge faster through self-discharge. My flashlight costs more to replace than my phone. The only carry pouches I use have a nylon belt loop (often will support my full weight) with a Velcro or zipper closure. When I tried belt-clips, bad things happened, very bad things. When I thread my belt on my pants, I skip a loop on the side. This lets me slide the carry pouch way forward or way back so it does not A) snag a seatbelt or B) bruise my pelvis.

3) With incoming call logs, voice mail and text messages, I can miss a call and still get back to people. So I carry my phone in the outer pocket of a fanny pack. While driving, I attach a headset and carry it in my shirt pocket. If they ever make me give up my cell phone and get a new one, I will probably get one of those Blue Tooth headsets and just leave it in the fanny pack.

Before incoming call logs, I have dropped a cell phone trying to get it out of a back pack. I have dropped a cell phone from shirt pocket into toilet. I have broken a face plate on a phone in my front pocket while tying my shoe. My wife has broken a face plate sitting on a phone in her back pocket.
=FIN

I have a palm centro. I've carried it in shirt pocket, back pants pocket, front pants pocket, stuck in bra strap (not an option, I understand for the gents), back packs, belt pouches, just about any jacket pocket I've worn, and the occasional purse.

I haven't had trouble with any of these. My favorite is the back pocket of a pair of jeans, but there are times when I'm not wearing jeans, and others work.

In fairness, I drop my phone not infrequently, but I've also had it for about 3 years, and it's still going.

If I want to access it while sitting I usually use a shirt or similarly placed jacket pocket.

Spills happen most frequently from shirt pockets and small front pockets of pants ( I understand this is not as prevalent an issue in men's pants, but for some reason women aren't supposed to need real pockets).

My husband has a belt clip for his, and he loves it. If you wear a belt regularly that's probably the best option, but it can get caught on things.

Also it's totally worth investing in a case.

I have what I have heard referred to as a 'candy bar' phone - specifically a Motorola i425. It's a little shorter than your typical pen, and about as thick. It's maybe 1.5-2" wide. Whenever I'm wearing a shirt with a breast pocket, it goes in there. This covers at least 80% of the time - I like to have that pocket to put a fountain pen in!

Otherwise, it goes in the outside pocket of my bag (where it has gotten lost in the bottom), the outside pocket of my wife's purse (ditto), or some pocket of my jacket - usually either an outside zip pocket, or an inside tallish pocket.

If/when I get replacement phone, I may be asking the same question. I'd like an Android with keyboard, but the necessary plans are a pain! I'm currently spending about $45/year on my cell - I'm not looking forward to multiplying that value by 20!

Edited 2010-11-22 23:34 (UTC)

I stick it in my back pocket, but frequently sitting on, say, an iphone was probably a bad idea, in retrospect. Works fine with my old Razr, though, since it folds and is nice and flat.

I have a flip phone so I don't accidentally butt-dial someone. I usually put it in my back pocket or in an outside pocket on the purse.
It sometimes falls out of the outside pocket
on the purse though.

It's very basic - no camera, no email. LG made it
and I think it was $19 with 3 yrs of promising
Sprint my business. I don't have a problem with
Sprint - it has towers mostly where I need them.
I think the choice of carrier should follow where
you want coverage rather than what kind of phone
you want. All the apps in the world don't help you
if you have no bars.

I see people with belt holsters for their phones
all the time --- and I don't know how they make
it work myself. It wasn't for me; my phone kept
popping off/out of the clip.
Lauretta@ConstelaltionBooks

And so we have a lot of information to distill! I think i see some patters for me -- and at least one solution that we'll keep on the hotpad once we do order ...

Thanks all!

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Not quite burning questions of the day

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Difficult to reach often equals dropped

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