Phone.wtf
phone.wtf
phone.wtf
It's very easy for people who wear pants to live a life where their phone is never switched off of vibrate mode and lives in their pocket. They will never need a noisy phone, and this is how I life my life.
My wife has pockets on about 10% of her clothes, and so typically her phone is in a purse, or on the table next to her. She will not notice it vibrating, thus, she uses the convenient for her feature where it audibly rings. My mother is the same way, but she uses hers so infrequently it simply sits plugged into a charger and works like an old landline. She also uses the ring feature.
Your own issues with noise (which I share many of, by the way) do not entitle you or I to request "mandates" that affect others negatively. The world's a big place and you have to learn to share it with other people.
That seems insane. What countries?
Conversations I get, but ringing?
So even if you get an answer to "where in the world", I'd like to add "but does that get actively enforced at all?"
The remaining <10% is obnoxious people who are going to be obnoxious anyhow. I dunno, they'll probably use strobe lights to draw everyone's attention instead of using sound because that gets around the law. Wait, crap, that exists already (I love people sitting opposite me in the bus and 'flashing' me every 12 seconds)
However, my impression is that this is mostly advisory/social pressure and not actually a ban that has any consequences if broken.
I know the newer near a thousand dollar models can get better battery life but my 2 year old version and her 5 year old version do not last much past 24 hours.
Explicitly trying not to pile on the “let me tell you how to manage your notifications” train by the way! That’s up to you and yours. Just nerding out on smartwatches.
One caveat is that notifications are quite basic and there's no way to respond to them - it's push only. They also always get sent to the watch straight away even if they're set to notify once a day (this is probably an iPhone limitation - no idea how it works on Android).
Your wife's clothing choices are just that: her choices.
> The world's a big place and you have to learn to share it with other people.
Yes, it is, and one of the things you're supposed to learn is not to engage in public behaviors that annoy other people, just for your personal convenience.
About 175 occurrences per billion words at its peak in 2000, according to wolframalpha.
Unless you're an emergency physician or something, I can't actually think of one.
Also: you're grossly mistaken if you think the whole world annoys other people with their phones.
No it is not for a normal well adjusted person.
I don't know if its a problem but awareness can't hurt.
Is nobody except your wife reasonable about when to send an async message versus when to call? You found an exceptional wife then, at least among that population
Also, not having (group) message pings is not the same as not having pings for synchronous calls where someone actually requests your immediate attention. I have two colleagues who have notification sounds on their phone turned on for our company group chat. I don't know what the people around them say, but I'm bothered by it already when they're in 30-minute online meeting with me. Is that the type of "not practicing DND" you mean?
In my experience, my wife (like many in our generation) doesn't like talking on the phone so she won't call unless it's something time-sensitive. Meanwhile I've even seen some scammers and robodialers call twice in a row.
That's kind of what I was getting at. Doesn't nearly everyone have the same policy already? This custom-agreement-with-wife is what I would call the default.
> I've even seen some scammers and robodialers call twice in a row.
Wow, how dare they?! That's illegal! ... More seriously, unless those are in your phone book then that should be easy enough to filter out and shouldn't bar letting your contacts call you when they think it's appropriate.
False.
There needs to be a break through "this is actually an emergency" way to get through silent mode. My wife keeps her phone silent at all times and on two separate occasions I have had actual emergencies and been unable to reach her. (A car crash where my car was totaled and a separate medical emergency) It's actually infuriating.
I asked them just now (look, OP, I talked to someone synchronously!) and they say it's "fine" - me: "just fine?" - them: "no it's good actually" and they'd set it up again if they had to re-make the choice. I am conscious of when I invoke the power, as with everyone, but still call somewhat regularly, so their positive rating is a good sign I suppose.
Have you brought this up with your partner?
Either way, yeah, this sort of thing is something you talk about only after you identify there is a problem. Ideally we'd have good defaults, and while I disagree with OP on their proposal for new defaults, their opinion is clearly borne from frustration. Perhaps phones should, when a contact calls you once while on silent, create a silent notification that asks "Allow <contact> to ring phone when calling twice within one minute?" with as buttons [No] [Buzz] and [Ring]
My wife: phone on silent
Me: wander around the store for 5 minutes to find her
My wife: oh sorry my phone was on silent
I can think of many examples:
Around 2012-2014, there was an Amber Alert that went off in the SF Bay Area in the middle of the night. Almost everyone's phone went off. Although it was an emergency, there was no need to wake up a few million people.
More mundane: At an old job that used Teams, there was no way to silence groups that I wanted to follow, but didn't need alerts for.
Loud breathing is still ok?
Really weird hill to die on.
Except some things are.
Even at work, there are things that really are urgent. But those shouldn't occur often, otherwise you would be right, poorly designed process.
If she has somewhere to be and didn't plan for a flat or other mechanical failure (as a result of a crash or something else), that process (schedule) was poorly designed.
I may not need an ambulance, but I may appreciate a ride home. I may get a flat and be unable to fix it, ten miles from home. I may go for a run and need a ride after I tweak my knee. My kid may get norovirus at school and need to be picked up and taken to the doctor.
Trying to treat your life like a Jira ticket is slightly absurd. Pretending other people did something wrong because they don’t is ridiculous.
Honestly it seems like you're really stretching the meaning of "urgent" for online brownie points. People responding here really are trying to redefine "urgent" as a matter of personal preference or inconvenience. These blatant attempts are frankly shameful for a discussion community of this caliber. What makes things urgent is loss of life or limb or some other kind of serious trauma. Words mean things!
It's perfectly fine to want things and to be a little sad when bad things happen, but bad feelings do not urgency make.
Neither family members nor friends have to be at an immediate risk of losing a limb before asking you for immediate attention.
Sure they can ask, and if your intention is to be available on the phone the moment they ask then your examples are irrelevant to the entire thread, which is about not needing your phone except for things you deem of primary importance.
> Sure they can ask, and if your intention is to be available on the phone the moment they ask then your examples are irrelevant to the entire thread, which is about not needing your phone except for things you deem of primary importance.
The whole point I'm making (and please note that not all of the above replies are mine) is that everyone's lives contains unexpected elements which can become urgent under the right circumstances.
I can't imagine a life in which a call from a friend, family member, the authorities, or even a coworker can NEVER be urgent.
At this point I can't feel otherwise but that you're putting words in my mouth to beat a straw man. I never advocated for anything even remotely related to a sentiment like "keep your phone off at all times and fuck everyone who asks for your help". If they're someone whom you would want to be available for, you should probably design a process that makes that possible. What I am saying is, unless you're licensed as rescue personnel or something similar, that call probably isn't as "urgent" as you seem to want it to be, regardless of the panic or anxiety which might exist.
Also, many things aren't emergencies until they are. Having to walk home 20 miles in the desert when you can't push your bike isn't an emergency, until you've been out in exposure for 5 hours. The plan here is quite literally, everything is fine unless something happens, then my husband knows where I am and will come get me.
I agree a priority button would be nice when calling someone, to be able to differentiate, but how often do you get interrupted by a phone call during something that you didn't want to be interrupted? For me it's never so uninterruptable that declining the call was an issue; I decline calls maybe twice per year (on a total of maybe a dozen unexpected incoming calls altogether). I'd prefer if it's okay to just pick up a phone and see if someone is reachable.
- Unscheduled calls are if it's an emergency or something that you need an answer to right now
- Calling twice in a row is an emergency
- SMS if it's important but not urgent
- Discord chat if it's just casual messaging or pics
This is how my family and everyone else I know communicate, but my wife. My wife will call me repeatedly to tell me that they just got out of work and are going to the store. It really doesn't help that the bluetooth in their car is trash too, so answering the call is rewards you with feedback hell. It gets me in the habit of not dropping everything to answer their calls if it's around when they get out of work, which has bitten us twice when they couldn't get a hold of me for a bit when they had car trouble and needed a rescue.
To me, personal calls operate on a reputation system since you don't know what they will be about until you're already answering them. If you burn that rep on calls that don't matter, all someone will think the next time they see you on caller id is that it can wait.
It's interesting to me that discord has become a "default" for you. For my social group, discord is only used for people I only have an online presence with. If I want to do something IRL, I send an SMS or something.
I was a gamer until just before Discord appeared but what ever happened to things like Mumble and Signal
Of course this cuts both ways, and that creates conflict.
The biggest things I struggle with in my family is the older folks not seeing SMS as asynchronous communication. Just because I’ve had time to send a text, it doesn’t mean I’m free for a call, and it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be able to hold an ongoing conversation right this second.
At the risk of sounding misanthropic, I struggle with phone calls in general and find them to be a terrible distraction; not just for me but also for whoever I happen to be with at the time, as a shared activity means we both have to stop what we’re doing.
Sure I could just ignore the call, but at this point there are several members of my family who are at the age where an unprompted phone call could well be bad news. Then when I turns out to be for idle chit-chat in the middle of my work day I just end up feeling both irritated and guilty for feeling irritated.
I remember the time when phone OSes did not have notification categories but it’s not a useful feature if app developers don’t implement them.
Marketers -- you're on notice.
I'm 35 and grew up with answering machines, then email, texts, cell phones, and voicemail soon after. Phone calls have always sort of bugged me. My parents did not, and for them the phone ringing has always been kind of an urgent matter. Letting it ring, even in the middle of something, and despite the fact they'll get a message and be able to deal with it easily later, clearly bothers them.
The decline button I use for when I can't talk right now but heard you. If you then call again, I will assume something happened. I like being reachable for those that have my number. So far, nobody has abused it
I receive a phone call unexpectedly maybe once a month, so it's unlikely that anyone is bothered by a buzzing phone for 1-2x 25 seconds. I don't need it to be on "do not dare disturb me" all the time...
I prefer to have my phone on silent, and I often leave my home without my phone if I don't have any on-call commitments or whatever. I don't like being constantly connected, but that's a small problem for me to work through and not anyone else.
Some very inconsiderate people buy and sell phone numbers; who then call you to sell you things that you do not want. Often, you get repeated calls for these things. (I get many calls from people who "want to make me aware of solar panels," who seem to know where I live, but can't take the time to look at a satellite picture of my roof to see that it's covered in panels.)
(At least, this is a problem in the US. I don't know about your country.)
Furthermore, it's hard to go about life without a phone number. Interacting with various businesses and other organizations often requires a phone number.
I think the bigger problem is that some people just think they have the right to interrupt anyone at any time for any reason. It just doesn't scale, especially when it's easier and easier to make someone's phone ding for whatever trivial reason someone comes up with.
The problem I see that spam calls goes directly to phone. I would like them never to even reach my phone. Like a spam filter on a server, rather than on the client. I would want more control over this.
For me distraction isn't so much about _when_ my phone requires my attention. It's about how long I ultimately end up thinking about my phone, which invariably is more time I opt to "poll" for notifications, as opposed to get a phone call "pushed" on me.
Another useful feature for me is an app to customize the LED lights, so I can assign different colors and blink rates for different apps and different types of notifications.
These two things really make me feel like I'm in full control, and make my phone experience infinitely better.
Missing those meetings or being more than a few minutes late always feels terrible, and it's so easy to do when I'm heads-down working on something.
I would vehemently oppose a ban on public ringing for this reason--and also because it's needlessly authoritarian! If people want to ring at a similar volume to a person speaking or a baby crying, let them ring.
It would be cooler and better if this was reliably transcribed to text and displayed with the ringing screen.
It’s quite relaxing, to be in control of when I do specific tasks like check notifications and call people back. If you find yourself overwhelmed I recommend trying this out.
I'd prefer a phone that zapped me.
If I had kids, maybe the "nothing is urgent" would be different, but I also know modern parents can't fathom the fact that I was never reachable during school, ever, and that was perfectly normal and fine.
Android let's you customize DND as well, so I don't even see new or existing notifications unless I swipe down. This means if I get my phone out to look something up, I'm not going to get distracted for 5 minutes.
Modern phones are a plague. Dates, parents, siblings, coworkers everyone seems to be oblivious to how often they will just drop out of a conversation midsentence because their phone buzzed or beeped. I just stop talking until they're done now, which inevitably makes them uncomfortable. Sorry, it's rude AF and I get tired of repeating myself.
I have a zero inbox policy on my email and everything in my calendar must be marked complete for the day otherwise it moves along.
If you have some extra phones lying around, convert them to single-purpose devices for yourself or your kids.