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

[saruby.livejournal.com]

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.