Not quite burning questions of the day

[kinzel]

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.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

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...

[painoarvokas.livejournal.com]

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 :-)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

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).

[painoarvokas.livejournal.com]

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.