And so yes, I've definitely seen and experienced people watching inane tiktoks on speaker in subway or bus or airplane. It's the epitome of complete lack of empathy or self awareness to me, but I guess that's the way culture is going.
Still annoying?
If so, is the problem usually the loudness of the speakerphone, or the loudness of the person who is there? I've noticed some people talk louder when on speakerphone than when on regular phone (and some people talk louder on regular phone than when talking to someone in person).
Back before mobile phones there was a tendency for people to talk louder on the phone at first, but after being reminded a few times that just because the other person is far away doesn't mean you have to shout most people learned to talk at normal volume.
I wonder if loud talkers don't get that feedback now? With old phone handsets there was pretty much only one position for them, so the mic was about the same distance from the mouth for all speakers. Talk to loud and it would be annoying on the receiving end.
But with modern phones there are a variety of positions people hold them in, which can lead to quite different mic positions. My understanding is that they do a lot more automatic gain control and other processing to try to keep the level the same despite all those different positions. Perhaps this means that the person on the other end doesn't know you are talking loud and so unless someone on your end tells you to keep it down you might never realize you are a loud phone talker.
Naturally it is extremely rude. If two people have a conversation in public both pay attention to the surroundings and feedback to change their volume tone and topics. If you put someone on speaker without introducing everyone present then they should hang up on you.
This is silly. Just tell the person you are talking to that they are on speaker.
Assuming the party on the phone has been informed and the volume is not excessive, having a conversation on speaker is equivalent to having a physical conversation in person.
Don't take functionality away because of a few bad actors. That'd be like getting rid of drones because a few people are assholes.
Put rules in place to correct the bad behavior. Kicking them off planes seems fair.
With the old phones you could reasonably tilt your head and raise your shoulder to hold the handset in place so you could do something that required two hands while talking/listening, like looking up something in a book or taking notes.
Smartphones are smaller than the old handsets and much flatter. I can pinch mine between my shoulder and head but I've got to raise my should pretty high and do some other contortions to get my head tilted enough making it much more awkward to do anything with my hands. Also that phone is small enough that it is pretty well covered in that position by the side of my face and my shoulder, so I'm not sure the mic could pick up much.
Landline telephones mostly had handsets that looked like the top photo here [1]. When held with a hand they were positioned as shown in the second photo there.
Because of its thickness and length you only had to tilt your head and/or raise you should a little to hold it hands free with the speaker end right at the ear and the mic end still near the mouth.
If you were taking a call while standing for example and needed to write something down in a notebook that was no problem.
But if you're in public, and using a smartphone, headphones are always an option. There s absolutely no reason why anyone needs to use speakerphone in public if they're just one person.
I told him that phone speakers "make me gassy" and then he turned it off.