[HN Gopher] The first minute of every phone call is torture now
___________________________________________________________________
The first minute of every phone call is torture now
Author : firstbase
Score : 217 points
Date : 2022-10-31 17:18 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| joenot443 wrote:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...
| jcpst wrote:
| Wow, I didn't realize this was a common enough problem that
| someone had to write about it. I don't have any of those issues.
| I mean, I've had a few times where a call was dropped, but that's
| really rare.
|
| One thing that really improved life for me was intentionally
| never setting up the voicemail on my current number. I am unable
| to accept voicemail. I've had it this way for 4 years now- I do
| not miss checking voicemail, and I'm not bothered by people
| unable to leave it. They can text or email.
| uhtred wrote:
| > I didn't realize this was a common enough problem that
| someone had to write about it
|
| I don't think it is, but The Atlantic is no different to all
| the other web based magazines / newspapers -- they have to keep
| churning out articles to keep readers' attention, it doesn't
| really matter what the content is anymore, we all just need to
| keep seeing new headlines.
| GaylordTuring wrote:
| I very often have my Sony earbuds connected to my iPhone, but I
| don't really like talking through them, so when I get a call, I
| usually just pop them out and then select that the audio should
| come from the phone speaker, which works. But then, just 10-15
| seonds afterwards, if I haven't put my earbuds in their case
| (which I might not have been able to do yet), they will
| reconnect, hence switching the call back to them. And this dance
| continues until I manage to find the case or simply give up.
|
| To me, this makes no sense. I could understand that the phone
| might think that I want to switch to my headphones if I take them
| out of their case during my call, but why switch back to the
| headphones that I've actively chosen not to use just a moment ago
| when I haven't even put them back in the case in between?
| kleiba wrote:
| I suppose sometimes there's also a good side to belonging to an
| older generation (like me): my experience with making phone calls
| looks like this: walk out into the hallway where the charging
| station is plugged in, pick up the phone handset, punch in the
| number, push the green button, wait, and talk. The end.
|
| Did I mention that I don't own a smart phone?
| mellavora wrote:
| What is this "green button" of which you speak? And how do you
| "punch in" numbers, don't you mean spin the dial?
| kleiba wrote:
| Haha, yeah, I actually have fond memories of dial wheels.
| There was something quite meditative about the clicking sound
| when it ran back into zero position. But then again, most
| numbers I called back then consisted of just four digits.
| pjdesno wrote:
| The US telephone system has been digital except for the "last
| mile" since about the 80s. Speech is encoded as 8-bit samples at
| 8KHz, giving a Nyquist frequency of 4KHz, and using either
| u-law[1] (US) or A-law (Europe) compression - you basically
| sample at 12-14 bits or so, take the logarithm of that value,
| truncate it to 8 bits and send it, and reverse the process at the
| other end.
|
| If you take 24 of those 64Kbit/s channels and multiple them you
| get a T1[2]; 28 T1s were multiplexed into a T3. Basic ISDN
| multiplexed two 64KB channels and a 16KB signaling channel on a
| single wire, but it got very little use in the US.
|
| The signals from those modems we were using in the 90s were
| getting digitized a few miles down the road, and at the ISP end
| the modem banks often connected directly with the digital phone
| system via a T1 line. (In fact "56K" modems relied on having a
| digital connection on the other end; the fastest modem speed with
| analog on both ends was I believe 33.6 with a V.34+ modem)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-law_algorithm [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier
| paultopia wrote:
| The most interesting part of the linked article is this:
|
| _Online, ad-riddled, search-engine-optimized webpages offer folk
| solutions: disconnect Bluetooth; reconnect Bluetooth; factory-
| reset the earbuds; reboot the phone; and so on. Like a finger
| trap, these desires for remedy plunge the user only further into
| the technological murk and its associated despair._
|
| How did this happen? It's really bizarre and weird that it's
| vastly easier to get basic usage and troubleshooting information
| through googling for stuff that very few people use (linux
| command line utilities!) than for stuff that basically everyone
| uses. Is it just SEO wars? Is it because conversations about sed
| or something select for much higher skill levels and commitment
| than conversations about AirPods?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I don't really know, but it seems like you could just short
| circuit all of that by just answering the fucking phone and not
| bothering with Bluetootha nd stuff.
| paultopia wrote:
| I guess, but the whole rest of the way technology and
| galloping capitalism have transformed work makes that harder.
| For example, lots and lots of us have to take calls on the
| move (walking somewhere, driving somewhere, etc.) just
| because our schedules are so crammed. Try doing that without
| some kind of hands-free device.
| outofmyshed wrote:
| I only answer the phone - and that includes FaceTime and all
| other audio calls - to my wife and my mum.
|
| Everyone else - particularly cold-call sales droids - can do one.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Sometimes it's the connection to the car speakers, via CarPlay
| or Android Auto._
|
| One issue I've had is that I'll be on a call on my cell phone,
| and my wife will start the car to go somewhere. The car will then
| inexplicably attach to my phone via bluetooth -- despite my being
| 30 feet away. Super confusing for all parties involved, and only
| resolves when my wife drives out of range.
|
| How is it cars can't tell that the phone they're connecting to is
| not actually inside the car?
| Arrath wrote:
| Rather infuriating considering most bluetooth applications will
| get spotty and sketchy, say if I'm working in the garage and
| playing music over a speaker, and move into the house for a
| moment.
|
| Starting the car on the other side of the house? CONNECTING.
| brk wrote:
| While most communications technology has improved over the last
| quarter century in terms of throughput, latency, cost, etc.,
| voice calls have become horrid.
|
| Every aspect of telephone calls has become a total nightmare.
| Constant spam calls, poor audio quality, phones doing weird and
| random things in terms of answering calls and routing the audio
| to the proper device.
|
| It is strange how telco's have managed to absolutely devalue
| their core product so thoroughly.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I still remember distinctly when it all started going to hell.
| At least for me. Cordless phones. The old AT&T handsets were
| comfortable, you could rest that against your ear for hours.
| For some reason the cordless phones quickly abandoned that
| notion and went for smaller size, sacrificing ergonomics to get
| it. So now it was uncomfortable against your ear, -and- you had
| all the degradation in audio quality that came with early
| wireless tech.
| agumonkey wrote:
| ergonomics too, long gone are the days where you'd get the call
| started in one second. I know the market forces that drove the
| "call" app to become so subpar but it's still impressive how
| many fragile steps you have to get to someone.
| sib wrote:
| Google is working on 'clear calling' for Android phone calls:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/9/23344147/android-phone-cal...
| brk wrote:
| _The first beta for the Android 13 quarterly release includes
| a new "clear calling" feature that "reduces background noises
| during calls."_
|
| That's neat, but background noise is not the issue as much as
| laggy over-compressed audio. Reducing noise might help make
| the over compression not so bad, but it won't fix the
| horrible lags, IMO.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| I thought only old people still used the phone for making calls.
| topspin wrote:
| Thing is there are a lot of old people.
| politelemon wrote:
| And there are more being created all the time!
| Markoff wrote:
| Yeah, but new old people bring their habits from younger
| years like not using phone for making private calls.
| topspin wrote:
| You'll need a few years yet for that. Most old people
| around today used rotary phones unironically.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Even rotary cell phones [1] I'm old but that is too much
| for me.
|
| I just bought my first smart phone and spent a while in
| developer mode quieting it down to extend battery life so
| _some_ old people can do this.
|
| [1] - https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html
| topspin wrote:
| > so old people can do this
|
| Some can, many won't. Eye sight and dexterity problems
| have a lot to do with this. When you can't see and your
| hands shake it's a lot easier to just "hey google call
| so-and-so."
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Fair point. Edited my comment to include _some_.
| kelnos wrote:
| Hell, I'm not even _that_ old (41), and we had a rotary
| phone until 1988 or so. We also had a touch-tone cordless
| phone, but the corded phone in the kitchen was still
| rotary.
|
| I expect there are even younger people than I who used
| rotary phones as kids.
| xxs wrote:
| That would depend on the country, yet I'd consider late
| 30s to be the age. Also I am using the phone daily to
| call anyone - family, coworkers. It'd appear, around
| here, the ear buds have not caught up.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| And all of them were once the youngest people on earth.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Define "old" :)
|
| Also even those of us who don't ca that much, do _receive_
| calls since some entities still prefer to call you (government,
| medical, education). It's either that or snail mail - despite
| the fact that most of them have my email address.
| Markoff wrote:
| > I thought only old people still do phone calls for private
| communication.
|
| FTFY
|
| Just yesterday I received spam call, my only response was
| answering with "Yes?", then when they started to talk about
| something I just hang up without a word, they wasted enough of
| my time and energy. Private matter I communicate 100% through
| IM or video calls within IM, it must be very rare ocassion that
| my retired father calls me on the phone or that I have to call
| wife because she is not responding to IM.
| xxs wrote:
| >they wasted enough of my time and energy.
|
| compared to the myriad of ads plastered everywhere. I suppose
| the latter has just been normalized - yet the amount of
| 'energy' (as in joules; or as in human frustration) is
| unparalleled compared to the one spent on unwanted calls, or
| just calls.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I cannot read the article due to the paywall, but just to
| vent.....one painful phone pet peeve for me that's declined
| recently is the art of people leaving a useful voice mail.
|
| Ok, I get it. There's a few technically-challenged people that
| struggle with emails and texts and prefer to use their voice. I'm
| perfectly happy to deal with that.
|
| But they call and leave a voice mail that focuses on the wrong
| information. They'll agonizingly slowly spell out their first and
| last name (D-as-in-dog, E-as-in-elephant, etc) and phone number
| (even though any digital system provides that already) but not
| even mention what they're calling for.
|
| What should be a 15 second voice mail like "Hey Mark, this is
| Denise from the Jersey office. Please send Rachel in sales the
| paperwork for order #9485. Let me know if there's any problems
| with that. Thanks!" turns into a 2 minute long voicemail that is
| physically painful to listen to and that ignores the only
| necessary piece of information required and turns into an
| unnecessary game of phone tag.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > and phone number (even though any digital system provides
| that already
|
| Speaking of which, when I call any customer service, they
| ALWAYS ask for my phone number. I've been baffled by this for
| awhile. Why? Can't they see it?
| Eleison23 wrote:
| That is one of their verification points for your account.
| They want to know whether you know the phone number on file
| with them.
| kelnos wrote:
| I wonder if caller information is just unreliable enough that
| they always ask anyway, because even if it gives the wrong
| number a smallish percent of the time, that's bad enough that
| it's worth taking the time to ask.
| mellavora wrote:
| not if you are spamming your number when you call
| causi wrote:
| _turns into a 2 minute long voicemail that is physically
| painful to listen to_
|
| Not like it's any less painful on a live call. I wish I had a
| setting to automatically tase anyone who calls me and when I
| answer the first thing they want to know is what I'm doing. As
| if it's up to them to judge whether what I'm doing is more
| important than whatever bullshit they've called me up for. You
| tell me what you need and then I will tell you if and when I
| can do it. Sooner or later I'm going to start answering these
| people honestly. "Oh, nothing much Sharon, just browsing some
| naked anime women."
| tacostakohashi wrote:
| Being forced to convey things like addresses, phone numbers,
| credit card numbers, etc by voice instead of text can be
| incredibly painful, and of course it gets worse with poor
| quality connections, accents, non-native languages, etc.
|
| I almost wish there was some low-tech thing for sending text
| in-band in voice calls, like DTMF but for all ASCII characters,
| or some 75 baud protocol / tones so you could be like 'Ok, I am
| sending my name / email / account #. <sending> See it on your
| screen? great! screencap it... copy and paste it into your app
| now, etc!'
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I use sipgate. They transcribe every voicemail into an email
| with mp3 attachment. That makes it easy for me to just email
| people a reply to their phone call.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Voicemail is essentially "Here, _you_ type this email for me ".
| I delete them unheard. But I'm an old curmudgeon.
| turrican wrote:
| I disagree! With ubiquitous voicemail voice-to-text
| functionality, I find it fast and useful, plus it can be sent
| using a hands-free device in a car.
|
| I would argue that you're a zoomer curmudgeon rather than an
| old one. :)
| mongol wrote:
| I think it is because you want an acknowledgement that the
| recipient listened to your voicemail and will follow
| through. Without them calling back you will be in the dark.
| Also, for cases like exemplified with, email is probably
| better. Calling to talk is for more complex stuff that
| requires a conversation.
| jahewson wrote:
| Why not use voice-to-text to send an email instead?
| turrican wrote:
| My previous post was lighthearted, but I have had
| problems with voice-to-text in noisy cars. I suppose
| there's a chance this issue be carried over to the
| receiver's voice-to-text software.
| cwillu wrote:
| "Dictated but not read"
|
| Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends and Influence People" has
| an anecdote about him writing that as kid to some person he
| wanted to impress, and it predictably having the opposite
| effect.
| grogenaut wrote:
| When I can tell Google voice is messing up what I'm saying
| I'll end with dictated not read. I got it from the
| Simpsons. Only a few people get the joke. What's funny is I
| use it for important communications and people I need to
| respond to not than others
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| This article is basically "old man yells at cloud"?
| hericium wrote:
| Upon reading just the title, I thought this is going to be about
| prolonged, slowly spoken automatic pre-IVR messages, which
| appeared during COVID with "due to the current situation, we
| kindly ask you to be patient because we're understaffed and have
| more calls".
|
| Now it's just unspoken "you learned how to wait during COVID so
| fuck you and wait", often mentioning opening hours, even when you
| call during those hours, website address and other nonsense
| before a human is even notified about a phone call at the other
| end.
|
| Fuck you and wait.
|
| > Instead, this: Hello? ... Wait, hello? Can you hear me? Okay,
| hold on. Ugh. Okay, okay, just a second. I have to get my
| earphones to connect. Damn it. Okay, never mind, I'll just hold
| it up to my head. Hi, ugh, sorry about that.
|
| Noone I know has these issues. The author seems to be impaired in
| smartphone handling or the US cell infrastructure started to
| suck. No such issues in Europe to my knowledge. These sound like
| the issues with Zoom and Meet, not phones. "Can you hear me? Can
| you see me? Am I presenting?".
| colinsane wrote:
| > Instead, this: Hello? ... Wait, hello? Can you hear me? Okay,
| hold on. Ugh. Okay, okay, just a second. I have to get my
| earphones to connect. Damn it. Okay, never mind, I'll just hold
| it up to my head. Hi, ugh, sorry about that.
|
| i had basically this same problem just yesterday. for years i
| would take calls with wired earbuds that had an integrated mic.
| i upgraded my iphone and now i have to use one of those
| lightning to 3.5mm adapters for that. the official adapters
| last for like 2-3 months until they begin flaking. not usually
| a deal-breaker, because it just means ~0.5s of lost audio every
| couple minutes but...
|
| a recent iOS update made it so that if the earpiece disappears
| during a call then the OS _drops the call_. so i had to redial
| 3 times during my call. eventually we switched to Facetime,
| which still disconnects me upon audio drops but leaves the
| other side connected so that i just have to press "join"
| instead of redialing.
|
| not an infra issue, but it adds up to the same crappy call
| experience.
| sirmarksalot wrote:
| I think it's more likely that they've bought more accessories
| than you and get bit by more incompatibilities. I think the
| issue is that there's nobody designing the entire end-to-end
| experience of what happens when you use every accessory with
| every feature turned on. I'm sure there's QA on all of it, but
| tickets don't magically create an architecture.
| bern4444 wrote:
| Did the author ever try just not using headphones or other
| smart/connected devices to take the call?
|
| Misclick and end the call? Call back.
|
| Rushing and can't take the call without headphones, let it go to
| voicemail and call back when you can.
|
| We have agency and autonomy. We don't have to use all the tech we
| have all the time. Everything around a phone call has
| 'progressive enhancement' from the bones up. That also means we
| can easily toss out all that 'enhancement' and be left with the
| same basic feature set.
|
| Like everyone I sometimes fumble around with my headphones if
| they don't auto connect and its frustrating but its not a big
| deal. But far more often than not everything works well for me -
| starting the call on my watch and moving to my phone as I look
| for it, starting on my phone and moving to my headphones,
| starting and staying on my phone.
| diob wrote:
| I was out of the country last month.
|
| Absolutely no spam on my "in country" sim there. Just exactly
| what I asked for, useful calls and texts.
|
| The moment I got back, I was inundated with spam and texts.
|
| I don't understand how we've let it get this bad in the USA.
| codalan wrote:
| I bought a SIM in Brazil a few years ago and was bombarded with
| text spam within minutes of putting the card into my phone,
| most of it from the carrier.
| pkaye wrote:
| Looks like other countries have it too. What country were you
| visiting?
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1045618/spam-calls-per-m...
| gsich wrote:
| Paywall
| bowsamic wrote:
| In the UK we have it, but not as bad as in the US. In Germany
| we don't seem to have it at all
| Toutouxc wrote:
| In the Czech Republic I get like one spam call per year,
| and it's usually semi-relevant (carrier, bank, insurance),
| virtually zero scams or blind marketing calls.
|
| Same phone number for 17 years, dozens and dozens of
| companies have seen it.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| Can confirm. From Germany, have the same number for 15+
| years, basically any provider has this number and probably
| leaked it at some time. Still no spam at all. I think there
| are heavy penalties for that in Germany.
| hdesh wrote:
| Perhaps your "in country" number was not circulated well enough
| in the spam networks in a duration of one month?
| kube-system wrote:
| If you get a new number in the US you'll likely have a similar
| experience
| thom wrote:
| Not everything is a zeitgeist, Ian.
| aliqot wrote:
| I read articles like these and have a melancholy reassurance that
| these aren't Amish problems, but then I get sad because other
| people have to put up with it and don't see a way not to.
| hedora wrote:
| In my very limited experience with the Amish, I have found they
| are one of very few groups that can be trusted to build a
| website.
| [deleted]
| allanrbo wrote:
| Maybe we need to unbundle the phone again. Maybe "a widescreen
| iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a
| breakthrough Internet communications device" isn't what we need
| in a single device after all...
| kergonath wrote:
| It is definitely what I need, and I don't think I am alone.
| Phone calls are such a minor functionality of these devices. If
| we do that, that will be the death of the phone as quite a lot
| of people won't bother carrying a second device, or give up on
| their pocket computer.
| senectus1 wrote:
| I can't remember the last time i actually held a phone to my
| ear... I always _always_ have a bluetooth headset /car around.
|
| these days I wear an AfterShokz "bone conducting" headset pretty
| much as soon as I get up in the morning till i go to bed.
|
| I listen to podcasts/audiobooks/music and make calls on it all
| day... no issues.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Is the app required to use that headset? I've read that the app
| requires excessive permissions.
| filoeleven wrote:
| Huh, I didn't know that bone conduction had progressed that
| far. Do you have a headset with or without the boom mic? Is it
| always paired to one device, or do you switch between a few? If
| you do switch it around, does the handoff work well?
|
| Asking because I've loved the idea since I first heard about
| it, and might pick up a headset myself now that I know they're
| of decent quality.
| senectus1 wrote:
| No boom mic. it is fine in most scenarios.
|
| The model i have is paired with one phone. not sure if the
| newer models have multi pairing.
|
| Music is kinda crap on them. but everything else is fine.
|
| I also have a set of Bose QC45's for Teams and decent music
| listening. that also supports multi pairing
| robomartin wrote:
| My first thought before clicking through to read the article was:
| This is about the torture of using automated receptionist
| systems.
|
| It was bad enough when you had to go through a wall of numbers.
| Now, with speech recognition, it is probably ten times worse: "In
| a few words, tell me what...". I am so sick of it I usually end-
| up saying something like "attendant" or "real person" repeatedly
| until the thing drops down to the last "else:" statement and
| connects me to a person.
|
| As far as some of what the article covers, this is one of the
| reasons for which I still use wired earbuds. The wires have never
| been a problem. I just don't want to deal with the nonsense. For
| example, I was watching a movie in bed on my iPad one night. The
| wireless earbuds disconnected and sound came blasting out, waking
| my wife.
|
| In addition to this, CarPlay implementations just seem awful. Not
| sure if this is on Apple, the radio manufacturer, the car maker
| or a combination. Just yesterday, my 2020 car simply refused to
| connect to my iPhone X no matter what I did. Most of the time it
| works fine. Yesterday, I could not get CarPlay to come up if my
| life depended on it.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Because phones aren't allowed to have bezels anymore for some
| reason, I'm constantly hanging up on people because there's no
| room for a proximity sensor to turn off the screen so my cheek
| presses the "hang up" button. It tries to use the front camera as
| a makeshift sensor, but it doesn't work very well.
|
| Recently I reacted with incredulity when the people on the other
| end could properly hear me through a newly-connected Bluetooth
| device -- it's more jarring to me when this stuff _doesn 't_
| fail.
| ksec wrote:
| Yes. It is either Hang up, Mute, or Worst, suddenly on speaker
| phone so the sound would blow up my ear.
|
| There are many other aspect of "calling" that has gotten worst,
| including call quality, codec and signal etc. My thinking is
| that no one calls anymore and no one gives a damn about phone
| calling.
|
| I still remember I used to buy Motorola Phone just because of
| their Crystal talk.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > suddenly on speaker phone so the sound would blow up my
| ear.
|
| This being so bad is a phone design issue that goes beyond
| the touchscreen.
|
| Well designed phones have two microphones and speakers, so
| when in speakerphone the top becomes the mic and the bottom
| the speaker, preventing deafening people in the event of an
| accidental switch.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Personally I think it was two things reinforcing each other:
|
| On one side, a natural decline in people using the phone
| (replaced by texting/apps)
|
| On the other side: the cell companies no longer "encumbered"
| by laws around landline reliability, cramming ever more phone
| calls in to the same amount of bandwidth
|
| The cell companies could have the clearest call quality by a
| wide margin, if they chose to. TBH, (and I know I'm an
| outlier) even though I talk to people for maybe 5 hours a
| month, I would still switch providers to one that offered
| call a quality equivalent to being in person
| GaylordTuring wrote:
| This is one of the reasons why I always let the phone hoover a
| couple of centimeters from my face when talking to someone.
| Utterly ridiculous!
| tmjwid wrote:
| This is the way you are meant to hold a phone anyway. In the
| manuals it states this (e.g apple says 5mm-15mm from your
| head). This is to reduce SAR.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| What is SAR?
| mikestew wrote:
| https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/specific-absorption-
| rat...
|
| Summary: Specific Absorption Rate - how much RF energy
| your head is absorbing.
| silveroriole wrote:
| Same happens to me with the mute button. It also seems hard on
| newer phones to find a position where the speaker is clear -
| shift it by a millimetre and now you can't hear anything. The
| phone is so big that holding it completely still for a long
| call is uncomfortable. People ask why everyone holds the phone
| out and uses the loudspeaker now, well...
| myself248 wrote:
| Worse yet, the "muted" and "not muted" states of the button
| are visually distinct when looking at them side-by-side, but
| if you just see one in isolation, you'd be hard-pressed to
| determine which it is. Gotta poke it a few times to see it
| change, you know?
| tremon wrote:
| My father's phone had the same problem (some HTC abomination),
| but with the mute button rather than the end call button. I'm
| not sure if it was due to cheek contact with the screen or some
| gyro sensor thinking that the phone was flipped upside down,
| but during a call the phone would randomly mute its microphone.
| Markoff wrote:
| That's not problem of a bezel, but either crappy software or
| bad sensor, never happened to me through 11+ years of using
| Android phones with touch screen.
|
| Better choose decent phone next time, mind sharing what phone
| causes you this trouble?
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Circa 2012, top 60% of an Android call screen was
| unresponsive to touch and never had phantom touches. As the
| buttons creeped upward, I get phantom mute, hold and even
| hangups.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Samsung Galaxy S10e (with recent software). It wasn't cheap.
| And all my previous Android phones were fine too, but this
| one only has the little hole in the screen for the camera.
| There is no sensor.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Return the phone, it's broken
|
| There's no way Samsung made a phone with no proximity
| sensor
|
| .. well, then again, they did make the Note 7..
| https://youtu.be/0IVk8PsSgEI
| jl6 wrote:
| I do sympathize with users who have to distinguish
| between the kind of brokenness that warrants returning
| the phone, and the kind of brokenness which is simply the
| norm in this space.
| gary_0 wrote:
| I know it's not using a proximity sensor because the
| front camera turns on when it's trying to fake-proximity-
| sense. I also know what a proximity sensor looks like
| (I've worked with such sensors for my job), and there
| isn't one. It's just a bad design; form overrode
| function.
| Markoff wrote:
| S10 series should have under screen proximity sensor, so
| there is no way for you to see it unless it lights up
| during function, it's white flashing LED
|
| https://nasilemaktech.com/samsung-galaxy-s10-series-
| proximit...
|
| are you using samsung phone app or 3rd party app? see my
| other comment with links how to resolve it
| bearmode wrote:
| I have an S10, literally never had an issue with this
| notacoward wrote:
| I have an S10, literally did. So which anecdote wins?
| Markoff wrote:
| The point is parent's generalization is wrong because
| it's either caused by faulty hardware or software issue,
| but it's not widespread problem across all new (Android)
| smartphones, just because you and him experience this
| issue.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Also just throwing my hat into the ring, writing this on
| a S10e. It's not perfect, but I don't have any issues
| with the sensors, no ads, and it generally just works
| about as well as any other phone I've used.
| Vibgyor5 wrote:
| Not sure if the device really is the issue here. I've the
| same phone, it costed me $600 when I bought it 3.5 years
| back. And till date, it's the best phone I've owned: not
| too big, headphone jack, expendable storage, physical dual
| sim, capable cameras and Touch ID that's located just
| right. Importantly, I've never had issues that you
| mentioned (dropped calls or Bluetooth glitches for that
| matter) I use this phone (S10e) every single day for calls
| and music etc. In fact, I'm typing my response on it now
|
| What I mean to say is - there's a very high chance that
| your device is broken.
| Markoff wrote:
| You may be using different software version, maybe they
| fixed it. It was very popular model, I really doubt if it
| had such serious issues it would not be fixed.
|
| I found guy reporting it as software issue: https://www.r
| eddit.com/r/galaxys10/comments/bzv9oq/proximity...
|
| though other says it's faulty design https://www.reddit.c
| om/r/galaxys10/comments/d94ob7/proximity...
|
| Samsung recommended to return the phone, some people had
| luck with changing Touch sensitivity settings and
| Accidental touch protection
| https://piunikaweb.com/2019/03/18/samsung-
| galaxy-s10-proximi...
|
| possible to test it here to see whether it's hardware or
| software issue https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/the-
| proximity-sensor-is-n...
|
| But considering not all people have this problem it's
| either software error, software setting or some batches
| had hardware issue or they fixed the design.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Huh, I just switched out my s10e after a few years and I
| never had this issue. It didn't even occur to me that the
| face-detection method had changed.
| phh wrote:
| S10e definitely has a hw proximity sensor under the screen,
| but Samsung also adds infos from touchscreen to complement
| this sensor. I used a s10e and loved it, but not on Samsung
| sw and I never did calls so I can't say much about it.
| rchaud wrote:
| The article makes a great point early on: hearing voices over
| VOIP is markedly different than over analog phone lines. The
| robotic voice and the weird compression when your connection
| isn't good are common for me. Worst of all is the 0.5-1 second
| delay I still sometimes hear, on local calls no less!
|
| If the same call was being had over a phone line and we were in
| the same country, the audio fidelity would be excellent.
| kibwen wrote:
| The key word there being _analog_ phone lines. Cell phone
| lines, which account for 99.99999% of all phone communication
| these days, are IMO worse than VOIP for sound quality (though
| better at latency). It 's weird that kids growing up in the
| post-landline era will never realize how clear and _amazingly_
| low-latency phone calls used to be. If two people were seated
| across a table talking on a landline, they 'd hear the signal
| from the phone before they heard it over the air.
| Animats wrote:
| "The key word there being _analog_ phone lines. "
|
| No, the key words are _uncompressed_ and _non-packetized_.
| The best telephone voice quality ever was ISDN from handset
| to handset. Digital end to end, 64Kb /s without compression,
| and rigidly clocked at the bit level. No noise. No jitter.
| Switzerland had ISDN to the home for years. Also, in Europe,
| there was power over ISDN, so the phone didn't need AC power
| or batteries. A friend there was annoyed when they forced him
| to convert to inferior VoIP, which, even over fiber, is
| worse.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Cellular phones used to sound good back when they were FM
| and not packetized, as well.
| rsynnott wrote:
| In Ireland, until _weirdly recently_, after ISDN had died
| out for pretty much all other purposes, every government
| minister got an ISDN phone installed in their house, to
| make them easier to interview in the radio.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Audio quality on cellular is widely variable. If both ends
| support VoLTE/HD Voice, the audio quality is actually
| superior to analog.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd like to experience that. I've never had a cellular
| voice connection that was even remotely as good as the old
| analog PSTN.
| myself248 wrote:
| It's wild when I'm talking to family on Signal, which
| seems to run high quality VoIP even on a non-VoLTE-
| capable phone. (and the hardware seems to be VoLTE-
| capable, just Sprint never released the appropriate modem
| firmware _in my market_, and I've been unsuccessful at
| hacking apart a rom from india...)
|
| But as nice as the quality may be, the latency still
| sucks. It's just the nature of the beast.
| yabones wrote:
| VoLTE with fancy compression didn't make audio quality
| better, it just freed up bandwidth for carriers to cram
| more channels in. This has repeated for every single
| "improvement" in VoIP technology over its ~40 year history,
| the tradeoff always goes in the direction of making more
| money instead of offering better service.
| mlyle wrote:
| VoLTE doesn't do it on its own.
|
| If you're calling within the same carrier with "HD
| voice", AMR-WB at 12.65kbps scores a higher MOS than old-
| school G.711 64kbps PCM (and is more pleasing in some
| ways that the MOS doesn't capture).
|
| Sure, if they'd just give us another couple dang
| kilobits/second it'd be way better still, but...
|
| At this point, the bandwidth used for voice is pretty
| much irrelevant from a cellular capacity planning point
| of view-- people use >5GB/month on average and 24/7
| 12kbps calling is less than 5GB/month.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > VoLTE with fancy compression didn't make audio quality
| better, it just freed up bandwidth for carriers to cram
| more channels in.
|
| Not just that, it's also used for additional carrier
| lock-in!
|
| (In Canada, carriers were barred from selling carrier-
| locked phones some years ago, but since VoLTE, they don't
| support VoLTE functionality on any phones that haven't
| been certified for use on their network, which is
| limited, in practice, to phone models that they sell
| themselves. Normally this means you fallback to 3G for
| calling, unless you happen to be roaming with a
| carrier/country where 3G service has been dropped, in
| which case you simply don't get any voice service.)
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I have to agree. People forget how many frequencies made it
| through the Bell System and the wire lines. Maybe long ago
| it was 100% analog, but somewhere along the way they
| started adding in digital compression and that usually
| meant stripping out all but the most important frequencies.
| There were several decades when a dial phone to dial phone
| call produced pretty horrible accoustics.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Sure but somehow I've only experienced that a handful of
| times so it's not very "actually superior" in my actual
| life.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Low-latency for local calls, yes. High quality sound, also
| yes.
|
| But for long distance, no thank you. I will not go back to
| the 90s just for that one reason alone. It was _hellish_
| calling across the Atlantic. Like 15 cents a minute with a
| 1.5 (sometimes 2) second delay between speaking. And having
| to remember the dialling sequences and complexity around
| looking up foreign phone numbers, both of which are now just
| built into the cell phone.
|
| Or having to trudge around in the rain for a phone booth and
| having to page through a worn out phone book just to make
| some dinner reservations. Yuck. I'll take the bluetooth
| shenanigans, thank you.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Or having to trudge around in the rain for a phone booth
| and having to page through a worn out phone book just to
| make some dinner reservations. Yuck._
|
| Pretending like this was the only way to make a dinner
| reservation reminds me of the juice loosener informercial
| from the Simpsons.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viejY6UZ5Bk
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I didn't pretend it was the only way, I was saying that
| there are times when one is out and needs to make
| reservations or call the wife that went into labour or
| call work after a car broke down. These were actual, real
| things people did back then. Thankfully I'm young enough
| to only have had to do it for a couple of years, but I do
| not have Merry England syndrome around what phones were
| like in the mid nineties.
|
| Even caller id is a major win on its own.
| 2rsf wrote:
| I'm not sure about the exact year but many phone lines stopped
| being analog in the early 70's and almost completely by the
| 90's
| chrisseaton wrote:
| That's funny - my experience is digital is much clearer than an
| old analog line.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah definitely. Well we haven't had analogue phone lines for
| decades but compared to landlines, mobile can be much better
| - especially now we have HD Voice which landlines (and call
| centres apparently) can't access. Maybe it's the extra echo
| cancellation that's the real problem.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That can certainly be true, I've lived places that had
| problems maintaining a moisture-free analog network and it
| could be irritating.
| ryandrake wrote:
| My observations, in order of decreasing quality:
|
| Analog Land Line local call > WiFi Calling through cellphone
| > Analog long distance call > 3G/4G/5G Cell > Home VOIP
| service > Zoom/Meet/etc.
|
| With the first two pretty close to identically high quality.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Zoom is entirely dependent on whatever hardware the
| participants are using. My team switched to using cardioid
| mics and the audio quality is stellar. It's just when you
| get that one guy dialing in on his mobile phone with an old
| pair of wired earbuds with the cord mic that's not anywhere
| near his mouth. Usually from India, with horns in the
| background...
| myself248 wrote:
| Clarity and latency are at odds here. Digital can, with
| enough bitrate, encode more clarity than your ear can hear.
| Radio stations use two-channel ISDN for remote studio links
| so it sounds like the interviewer and interviewee are in the
| same room, sometimes you'd never know they aren't unless they
| announce it.
|
| But ISDN is all but gone, and all other digital voice systems
| are packetized and suffer awful, terrible, excruciating,
| reflex-fumbling latency. No matter how clear they are, I'm
| forever tripping on -- no you go -- okay as I was -- go ahead
| -- um okay -- aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
| thewebcount wrote:
| I agree about the delay that sometimes (way more often than it
| should) occurs in digital calls, but the voice quality of
| analog calls was shit. It was band limited to something like
| 8kHz (so maximum of 4kHz signal making it to your ear). That
| seems like a lot, but it really isn't. There's a significant
| amount of high end that gets lost and makes everything seem
| muddled. I remember making calls over 22kHz audio codecs in the
| late 90s and the quality of even that (maximum frequency
| transmitted being 11kHz) was way better than an analog phone
| call.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| This article is not wrong.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I don't even pick up my phone anymore unless its from someone I
| know. Most calls are now just spam.
|
| Audio quality on most calls is also atrocious. I have to keep the
| phone glued to my ear and walk out to a quiet room to even hear
| anything.
|
| Email and phone, I hate to say it, are dying. And spam is the
| culprit in both cases.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Article plays up the fumbling for effect, but is otherwise spot
| on. The PSTN was immensely overbuilt. Old Western Electric
| equipment is, literally, built of tempered steel, from the
| crossbar switches in the CO to the red telephone on the desk. The
| human artifice erected in between, electrically and mechanically
| connecting a microphone at one end to a speaker at the other, was
| staggering in its analog complexity, and yet it worked with
| astonishing reliability. And, to put it in modern terms, all of
| it was for just one single "app:" voice calls.
|
| It all began moving to digital relatively early in the 60s, but
| even well into the 90s many systems were still functionally
| analog, with copper wire pairs carrying analog signals in a /not-
| metaphorical/ loop between callers.
|
| Today we have comparatively infinitely greater capacity and
| capability, and there's no going back, but the "core experience"
| of the modern voice "app" is without a doubt a pale reflection of
| its original progenitor.
| bombcar wrote:
| There is also something incredibly "simple" about the end
| result of an analog connection - literally a pair of wires
| connected across thousands of miles.
|
| Digitalization has added so many layers people don't even
| _know_ - it 's sad that there aren't many actual direct analog
| connections you can make anymore to see how "realtime" it was.
| bashinator wrote:
| I love my electric guitar.
| myself248 wrote:
| Yeah, the delay on digital phone calls still trips me up.
| It's nothing like being face-to-face or an analog call. I'll
| take the static, just give me sub-20ms latency!
| disruptthelaw wrote:
| I remember overseas calls having a huge lag. Now I can call
| across and works and chat with perfect audio and video. I
| think we're romanticizing the past and failing to recognize
| the ways in which calls are so much better.
| bombcar wrote:
| Nothing can avoid the speed-of-light lag, but full-duplex
| and things have made it certainly better.
|
| It's very noticeable on globe-spanning links (which is
| where video actually starts to _help_ because you can use
| the silent visual cues).
| fivre wrote:
| if you want to see how complex and overbuilt it is,
| https://www.youtube.com/c/ConnectionsMuseum has coverage of all
| the old PSTN equipment you could ever want
|
| i can't claim to _understand_ it half the time, but there are
| big rows of mechanical automatons galore
| namaria wrote:
| One thing not taken into account on this rant (and it is just a
| big rant) is the incredible increase in scale. Nearly everyone
| has a phone and can make phone calls now and we're almost 8
| billion people. The old, understandable, analog system would
| have never scaled like this. Quality didn't degrade because of
| greed or degeneracy. It was a trade-off and I say the level of
| access we have now trumps whatever nostalgia people feel for
| the past decades.
| walterbell wrote:
| World population by late 1990s was 6 billion. Landline audio
| phone calls were reliable with fixed guaranteed bandwidth,
| albeit expensive. Today there are more people, but has there
| been a linear increase in 1:1 calls? More
| bridge/group/conferencing calls, yes.
| namaria wrote:
| Was penetration of phone services the same back then?
| ghostpepper wrote:
| You may be correct that we made the right choice with the
| tradeoff, but saying that the old system worked better (for
| those who could use it) is not nostalgia. Audio quality (and
| communication ability) on zoom is objectively far worse than
| it was over analog copper lines.
| namaria wrote:
| Why are you comparing zoom calls to analog phone calls? My
| transcontinental, zero marginal cost whatsapp phone calls
| are pretty good.
| svachalek wrote:
| Absolutely. Same with turning on a TV these days. People used
| to flip a switch, now it's a highly technical process that
| takes a few minutes.
| eeperson wrote:
| It doesn't have to be. If your devices support HDMI-CEC[0],
| then you can turn on 1 device and everything sets itself up.
| For example, I can turn on my PS4 and it automatically turns
| on the TV and sets the correct input.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, this is the point I wanted to raise. It's not just
| phones. The first minute of everything is torture now. It
| takes minutes to turn on the TV and navigate menus and
| establish connections to sources and get to the point where
| everything is buffered and playing smoothly. I watch a lot
| less TV than I did when I was younger, despite the vastly
| expanded amount of content that is available, because it's
| just too much trouble.
|
| Other appliances are similar. Playing music, you used to turn
| on the radio and maybe dial in a station. Or put a record on
| the turntable, or a cassette tape in the deck and press
| "Play".
|
| Appliances much the same. You had power and maybe one or two
| analog dial controls. Controls in your car were the same.
| Everything was tactile. Feedback was both physical and
| immediate. Nothing needed accounts or logins or apps to use.
| causi wrote:
| _Often it's the wireless earbuds, which won't reconnect or are
| connected to the wrong device._
|
| More often the fact that no matter how much a reviewer praised
| your earbuds' call quality, it's total shite and the person on
| the other end of the line will ask if you're in a car or using
| speakerphone.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Not sure if it's because I have a big head or mumble but nobody
| can hear me clearly on AirPods. It's fine with wired headphones
| where I tend to hold the mic in position more. It's annoying
| because AirPods are great apart from that.
| dzink wrote:
| There needs to be a Big(O) table for UX. Number of user
| interactions and decisions to get to each functionality in each
| screen size. Then comes prioritization. You can only fit so many
| buttons and boxes close to the hottest zones of user interaction,
| especially on Mobile, and even less of them in advertising-
| powered products.
|
| When someone prioritizes the wrong use case on premium real
| estate and pushes back buttons that matter to you more, that only
| gets worse over time - your needs are not their priority.
|
| That is why on mobile at least the giants are not always giant
| enough to squish competition entirely - one can always provide a
| better UX than Facebook or Google with a small but focused app
| that works for your problem better. The real damage to
| competition comes from device apis that put UX overhead to use
| cases you serve bette than them, but then give their apps with
| the same use case UX priority in their next release.
|
| Just like data and code, complexity increases for UX with each
| added user story and use case, but the screen space remains the
| same.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I work in UX and I can tell you the people managing these
| design teams have never even heard the term 'Big-O' much less
| understand it; in my sphere I find they are mostly interested
| in boosting engagement metrics on whatever new feature will get
| them sooner promoted before they exit to the next company and
| do the same thing.
|
| I love this idea, but my outlook is grim.
| Spivak wrote:
| Create maligned reward system, get maligned work. It's not
| like our field doesn't have resume driven development, and
| honestly why would you do anything else? Doing good work for
| your employer only pays if it literally pays. If your
| employer and the market rewards launching features, products,
| and making metrics go up then why toil away needlessly making
| money for someone else?
| specialist wrote:
| I haven't done user interface design, in anger, for 20+ years.
| Before the kids renamed it "UX" (old wine, new bottles).
|
| Anywho. We used to consider Fitts' Law, Hick's Law, and so
| forth. Celebrity UI designers (ahem) like Bruce "Tog"
| Tognazzini and Jakob Nielsen would belabor these seemingly
| obvious design considerations ad nauseum.
|
| Your Big-O suggestion could be a nice heuristic for scoring and
| ranking design alternatives. Cool.
|
| Not that design intent ever mattered. The age old tale remains
| the same. Grind, iterate, validate. (Does anyone do usability
| testing any more?) Voila!
|
| Then some PHB doing drive-by mgmt decrees "Those buttons should
| be cornflower blue. I like the old font better. Just change it
| all back."
|
| I eventually rage quit UI work. Preferring to have my good
| taste, experience, skill, and efforts denigrated in other
| domains.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick%27s_law
|
| It now occurs to me the audience for all that UI design advice
| was our bosses, not us practitioners. For appeals to authority.
| For populating our bookshelves, to exude the facsimile of
| learnedness.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Does anyone do usability testing any more?
|
| My impression is that it's all quantitative post-fact A/B
| testing nowadays.
|
| What is interesting, because it was widely known that
| quantitative usability research was mostly waste and you were
| much better doing 10 times the amount of it with only
| qualitative results.
|
| What was not widely discussed1 is that post-fact testing is
| also almost useless. It can only tell you what solution is
| better, but the real gain comes from discovering what
| problems exist.
|
| 1 - My guess it's because it is too obvious.
| wruza wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOMS
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| "Ugh. Okay, okay, just a second. I have to get my earphones to
| connect. Damn it."
|
| This has never happened to me - using either wired headphones or
| AirPods which connect rather seamlessly to the phone even mid-
| call. Just get headphones that work well with your phone's model.
|
| The whole article sounds very "millennials discover telephony" to
| me - either that or the author is in way over their head and
| don't really know how to use the smorgasbord of devices they
| appear to have maneuvered themselves into.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| AirPods aren't that seamless for me. The switching between
| phone and MacBook is pretty good, but there is still an element
| of randomness if the phone will connect to the AirPods or not.
|
| Add in a few more switches such as in the car or a Bluetooth
| speaker and the article rings true for me.
| Tomte wrote:
| My right AirPod bud regularly (as in 2 out of 3) needs to be
| put back into the case and taken out again, in order to
| connect.
|
| The left one just works.
|
| I won't buy them again.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| I used to have such problems with older Airpods. Since I
| got the 2nd gen Airpods Pro pretty muvh every issue is
| gone, they work perfectly every time.
| bmitc wrote:
| That's (a) hard to believe and (b) in the minority if true. I
| think this stuff works so poorly all the time that some get
| accustomed to it or some are just lucky. I had it happen on my
| desktop computer and the monitor's audio today because the
| audio device got confused after a Remote Desktop session. There
| wasn't even a wireless connection involved. I had to run to get
| wired headphones.
|
| If anything, in my experience, it is service providers' cell
| coverage and cell reception on phones barely designed to be
| phones that are all so abysmal that it doesn't even matter if
| everything else works well. They alone make cellphones terrible
| as phones when on cellular.
|
| And in general, BlueTooth sucks. I need to do an incantation to
| keep my PS4 controllers connected, a problem reported by many
| in various forums.
| MrJagil wrote:
| I am curious why we still have telephone numbers. The technology
| have not changed since i was born and my internet calls are just
| as reliable.
|
| It seems unnecessary to have infrastructure for two different
| technologies that do the same thing.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| I still remember the awe I got each time I called someone and
| they also used a BlackBerry and had HD calling and how goddamn
| good and clear it sounded, like holy shit, I can't believe phone
| audio could sound this good.
|
| I'm not sure if that was only a Canada thing or not, but you
| instantly could tell if someone else was on a BlackBerry just by
| how startling good it sounded. I haven't heard anything remotely
| good in years.
| themadturk wrote:
| I solve this by basically never talking on the phone.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| The first minute of every article like this one is also torture.
| First it seems like the page loaded and you can start reading,
| but then you are going to be hit with a massive, all encompassing
| pop up covering the page. If you're lucky, it's a cookie consent
| modal, to which you basically _have_ to consent; the other case
| is a paywall and the content might never have been there to begin
| with.
|
| You can brave the elements (the DOM elements) or zap away
| annoying modals, and if it's a paywall you might find an archived
| linked in the comments (thanks to anyone sharing these by the
| way) but either way you are in for a jolted start. If you are
| _really_ in a hurry you might just bite the bullet and accept all
| cookies, muttering quotes from 1984 in the process.
|
| Then there are the autoplay videos, good luck finding the X
| button on those, and have fun actually clicking one.
|
| It's been an annoying first minute but you can finally start
| reading, only that every paragraph break is now an ad to
| something else, a focus grabbing div to additional content on the
| site, or - my favorite - another autoplay video completely
| unrelated to anything. Aside from videos, most of these are still
| present even in reader mode, for the clever reader.
|
| Ad blockers help with some of these issues, but media articles
| today are just a total crapshoot, unless it's a personal blog,
| although those might turn out to be a marketing funnel for
| something, and oh why don't you sign up to our newsletter for the
| actual content we baited you into clicking, which in turn is an
| ad for the class they are promoting.
|
| I envy the younger people online who never knew the internet
| before it became this weird annoying minefield of attention traps
| and poorly disguised marketing ploys.
| postalrat wrote:
| The worst torture I've experienced is when I want to use the
| screen on my phone during a call but the damn proximity sensor
| keeps blanking out the screen.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > Then we got Zoomed out and became desperate for phone calls
| again.
|
| We did?
| jwmoz wrote:
| This should not have been an article.
| gspencley wrote:
| I'm glad I don't have this problem. I hate telephones and
| everything about them, and try to live my life having as few
| "telephone conversations" as possible. That life choice long
| predates the pandemic.
|
| Airpods? Ear buds? WTF. I can't relate to this world at all. Just
| email me and I'll get back to you if/when I check it at some
| later date.
|
| Now get off my lawn.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| This all started when Apple got rid of the headphone jack.
| plgonzalezrx8 wrote:
| What kind of monstrous device is the article writer using?
|
| I literally just pick up my phone, press accept, and say "hello".
|
| Is he talking about something completely different yet referring
| to it as "phone call"? I don't get it.
| pavlov wrote:
| Phone calls should have a subject line, just like emails.
|
| It's crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on my
| personal device with no context. If call metadata included a
| subject line, software could automatically screen out calls where
| the subject is empty or spammy, just like with email.
|
| It would be very helpful for missed calls. "Why did my wife call
| twice in the last 5 minutes, did something happen, should I
| panic?!" It also removes the need to leave rambling voicemail.
|
| The subject line takes only 15 seconds to write but will
| significantly reduce receiver anxiety, both synchronously and
| asynchronously. Sending a text after the call is not the same
| because it's not in context.
|
| I remember proposing this to WhatsApp while I was working at FB
| but the WhatsApp culture seemed uninterested in feature ideas of
| any kind. Hopefully someone else does it eventually.
| Markoff wrote:
| > Phone calls should have a subject line, just like emails.
|
| Yeah, I think it's called IM.
|
| > It's crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on
| my personal device with no context.
|
| That's called DND, my phone is 100% time in DND mode. There are
| already filters for spam calls based on phone number.
|
| > It would be very helpful for missed calls. "Why did my wife
| call twice in the last 5 minutes, did something happen, should
| I panic?!"
|
| Maybe tell wife to write you IM/SMS or just communicate through
| IM as priority, if you desire text communication?
| kergonath wrote:
| > Maybe tell wife to write you IM/SMS or just communicate
| through IM as priority, if you desire text communication?
|
| Not the parent, but Dog knows I have been trying. Some people
| just don't understand how disruptive an unnecessary phone
| call is.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| This feature would be super useful, since nobody I would ever
| willingly talk to would use it I could dump all calls with
| subjects to voicemail (and then not check it).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| "Receiver anxiety" should crawl off into the forest. It's a
| youth-millennial thing that inhibits waaaay too much authentic
| social action. People are just too scared to be human. Just
| call me! I might pick up I might not.
|
| For that matter, if I don't respond to your email in a day,
| treat it like a phone call and just try again. Don't assume I'm
| ignoring you. It's just e-mail.
| hansel_der wrote:
| also it's very easy to curate a public image of beeing busy
| if you complain about interruptions because everybody can
| relate to the feeling.
| daviross wrote:
| > if I don't respond to your email in a day, treat it like a
| phone call and just try again. Don't assume I'm ignoring you.
|
| I mean... _aren 't you_ ignoring them? It's an email. Where'd
| the first one go that the second one is going to be any
| different?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| It isn't visually present in the list of 50-100 emails in
| my inbox. Mail again and remind. It's not rude. It's rude
| to assume the other person is ignoring.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I read your email, got interrupted, and did not reply. Then
| I forgot about it.
|
| If you email me again, it might get read at a more
| convenient time, and I'll answer.
|
| Same reason I might not answer your call: I'm busy with
| something else or not near my phone at the moment. This
| used to be normal by the way -- if I called your home phone
| and nobody answered, I'd have no choice but to call again
| later.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I miss a very high percentage of legitimate email messages
| from people because I don't receive many of them (half a
| dozen per year?) and get like 20-30 spam and mistyped-
| address emails per day (that's _after_ the spam filters),
| so I don 't pay much attention to it unless I'm expecting
| something.
|
| Humans I know contact me through whatsapp. Or if they're
| old (and hell, I'm almost 40, so I mean _old_ ) through
| text or phone. Strangers' only real hope is text. I'll
| probably miss anything else. And even that is getting so
| goddamn spammy now that it's not far from being like email:
| only useful if I'm already expecting a message. I receive
| stupid political ads for states I've never lived in a
| couple times a day.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| My mother had no issues calling someone but her parents were
| upset when she started listening to that damn rock and roll.
| The youth thing inhibits way too much authentic music. People
| are just scared to listen to the oldies. /s
|
| Different generations have different norms and it's not right
| or wrong.
| tristor wrote:
| >Different generations have different norms
|
| Yes.
|
| > and it's not right or wrong.
|
| No.
|
| This sort of relativism of all norms, mores, morals, and
| ethics needs to stop. There are some cultural and social
| norms/mores that are better than others. We know this,
| because empirically some produce better outcomes than
| others. Mass-scale social anxiety at having to interact
| with another human being is NOT healthy for society, and is
| likely the underlying cause for a significant amount of the
| current social ills that are either new or increasing over
| time.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb and guess 17 year olds who
| can't call people aren't the reason for societies
| problems. Certainly less to blame than the 45yo's who
| bemoan them.
|
| Every generation thought that society was collapsing.
| Despite that, time progresses, people age out of the
| population and a new generation is born. And society
| (mostly) doesn't collapse.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Those 17 year olds grow up into adults with the same
| unaddressed anxieties.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| When I was 17 I spent like an hour emailing a teacher
| telling her I'd be late on an assignment by a day.
| Because I was very anxious about writing an email to a
| "superior" and didn't know how it'd go, or what the
| "right" email looked like.
|
| Now I email hundreds of times a day, and have constantly
| shifted deadlines to no professional detriment. I still
| get nervous emailing a new important person, but you do
| it anyways.
|
| Do people really forget what it's like being young?
| Sometimes you just grow up and move on.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| While I didn't understand the analogy, I will happily admit
| that, yes, I'm making the case that some norms are better
| and some are worse.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| a few generations ago, there was a moral panic _that the
| kids weren't all right_ because rock and roll music was
| corrupting. It was loud, vulgar, etc and therefore wrong.
|
| My point was to emphasize how across generations,
| everyone seems to think that the youth have bad norms and
| it's somehow wrong, and then they grow up and the world
| keeps spinning, and the cycle repeats.
|
| It's awfully vain to think that the norms of _your
| generation_ in _your nation_ at _your point in time_ are
| magically the "better" ones.
|
| The parent comment reference a novel idea that phone
| calls could have a subject line. It's novel, it's clever,
| it would solve many problems beyond just "people are
| scared to be human". The world moves on, and we can
| improve it or we can launch ad hominem attacks on the
| next generation.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I don't have a problem with phone calls but if someone
| unexpected engages with me on the street or in a hallway I
| kind of freeze for long enough that we have walked past each
| other and then realize that was a bit rude but its too late
| now.
| amf12 wrote:
| > Phone calls should have a subject line, just like emails.
|
| Pixel phones have call screening feature. It can be enabled for
| all calls or unknown callers. It asks the caller to state the
| reason they are calling and notifies you with the text of the
| reason given and you can choose whether to accept or reject.
|
| If you want something more then you could just ask callers to
| text you instead.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| > It's crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on
| my personal device with no context.
|
| It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function. If you
| don't want that, wouldn't a pad be a better option than a
| phone?
|
| Besides, how would you handle calls from landlines and such?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| As a phone, all cell phones are terrible. In the wired-phone
| era companies used to advertise on call quality. Nobody does
| that any more because the quality of cell phone calls is so
| abysmal that text with (or without frankly) emojis is an
| order of magnitude better for communication.
|
| If they made pads the size of my phone that could still use
| cell network internet and that I could put a custom OS on I'd
| consider it.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| People who never experienced a really good connection when
| no more than a _little_ of the phone & switching network
| was digitized, surely have no idea what they're missing.
| I've never once heard a call since that era that was as
| good--VOIP, Zoom, cell network, modern POTS network,
| whatever.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| Hah, no it's not, I don't even have the phone app on my home
| screen unless I search for it.
| mikestew wrote:
| _t 's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function._
|
| Not for about fifteen years or so, no. I don't even have the
| Phone app on the front page of my iPhone, let alone allow it
| to sit in the dock. Regardless, whatever the primary function
| of the device, there is room for improvement over "it's
| always worked that way".
| rvieira wrote:
| tbf, it depends. I make/receive around 1 call per month, if
| that.
|
| To me, it's a good quality camera that I can fit in my
| pocket.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| >Besides, how would you handle calls from landlines and such?
|
| Direct to voicemail, of course, with a message saying 'text
| me' for automatic transcription. As they say, its a feature
| not a bug [to not be interrupted]. In a perfect world I'd
| have a secretary or AI to screen calls on my behalf, but I
| don't.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Ironically, you almost do. Last week I updated my S22 to
| Android 13, and one of the new features Samsung claims to
| have implemented[0] is to have Bixby pick the call for you,
| transcribe what the caller says, and display it on screen,
| giving you a choice to pick up the call, or type/select a
| reply that Bixby will then say to the caller. With spam
| call detection being an established feature for years
| already, the ingredients for your AI assistant are already
| there.
|
| Now that I think of it, I might actually try this the next
| time a telemarketer calls.
|
| ----
|
| [0] - I haven't actually tested it, nor seen it in action -
| just saw it being mentioned when I reviewed "Tips" app
| after update.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Pixel phones have call screen feature today, and
| anecdotally it works great. I haven't picked up to a
| telemarketer in over a year.
|
| https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9118387?hl=en
| newbie2020 wrote:
| Thankfully you're not charge of designing my phone
| danielbln wrote:
| Is there a 5-6 inch pad available? If not, then that's not an
| alternative, can't shove a 10 inch tablet into my pocket. And
| while it's called a phone, the primary function for many
| (dare I say most?) is definitely not doing voice calls, hell
| my phone app icon isn't even on the homescreen anymore,
| that's how little I use this device for phone calls and I use
| it for hours every day otherwise.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Samsung Note series of phones. I've been using them since
| the Note 3 and could not imagine using any other device
| without a stylus.
|
| Yes, it's primarily a phone by market segmentation. But
| it's a small tablet by features.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| > Is there a 5-6 inch pad available?
|
| Android tablets? Several.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd be interest to know what those are. Smallest I've
| been able to find is 8 inches.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function.
|
| No, it's not. You sound like a dinosaur. A phone's primary
| functions are 1) text-messaging apps, 2) camera, 3) dating
| apps, 4) banking apps, and various others. Phone calls are
| somewhere around #20.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| dating apps over phone calls is an absolutely ludicrous
| take that demonstrates a disconnect from reality
| coldpie wrote:
| Definitely not. It depends on who you and your circle of
| friends are, of course, but dating apps are definitely
| way higher usage than phone calls among anyone I know. I
| use my phone as a phone less than half a dozen times per
| year. If the phone functionality vanished, I don't think
| I would mind.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| the disconnect is that you're not able to see outside
| your bubble. Your average iphone or android user is using
| the phone function far more than dating apps
| coldpie wrote:
| How do we know who is in a bubble? :) When I walk around
| downtown, I see hundreds of people on their phones, and
| maybe one or two of them is actually using it as a phone.
| Obviously I don't know if they're on dating apps
| specifically, but they are enormously popular, so it
| seems plausible.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| A quick google search will show you that you could not be
| further from the truth :)
| Cederfjard wrote:
| You only do voice calls six times in a year?
| coldpie wrote:
| Something on that order, yeah. Looking through my phone's
| call log, I had a call with a friend in mid-August, and
| another with another friend in mid-July. Prior to that
| was a call with my mom in April and that's as far back as
| the log goes.
| imchillyb wrote:
| You sound like you're disconnected from reality.
|
| Phone = Telephone: The term telephone was adopted into the
| vocabulary of many languages. It is derived from the Greek:
| tele, tele, "far" and phone, phone, "voice", together
| meaning "distant voice".
|
| Distant voice communication is the entire purpose for a
| phone.
|
| Just because you want or expect your phone to do more,
| doesn't make your desires the primary function of the
| device.
| kevmo314 wrote:
| The save button icon is also a floppy disk.
| monocasa wrote:
| And geometry is from the Greek ge (ge) 'earth, land', and
| metron (metron) 'a measure', referring to it's original
| use as a tool for surveying farm plots in flood plains.
| It's obviously expanded much past that original
| definition to the point now that the original definition
| is simply one small application of the tool. In fact an
| application that the vast majority of practitioners will
| never administer.
|
| Names change much slower the function generally.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Not according to the mobile OS engineering teams at Apple
| or Google. Phone calls are intentionally given priority
| over other functions.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > Not according to the mobile OS engineering teams at
| Apple
|
| Phone calls haven't forced full screen takeovers for
| several years on iOS, and have the same UX as 3rd party
| VoIP and Video call apps...
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Priority isn't solely limited to forced full screen
| takeovers.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The way I like to look at it is: Imagine a world where the
| concept of a phone call never existed. Then, suddenly
| someone invents an app that:
|
| 1. Allows an instant, full-screen foreground takeover over
| whatever else you are currently doing on the device
|
| 2. Rings and vibrates your device
|
| 3. Has a button that could allow an unknown person to send
| and receive audio to and from your device
|
| 4. All of this is triggered remotely, from anyone in the
| world, without any kind of user identification or
| authentication, besides a spoofable number
|
| No app store's rules in either major ecosystem would allow
| such an abusive app. Yet, only because the legacy concept
| of a "phone call" exists, not only is the app allowed, but
| it's preloaded on every device out there!
| yifanl wrote:
| If things were different, things would be different,
| certainly. But things are not different, so things are
| not different.
| gort19 wrote:
| Clent wrote:
| It's a pocket computer.
|
| The phone feature is a legacy feature that goes away with
| 2G. Soon carriers will only be moving data.
|
| The providers have data to show that the phone
| functionality is not a primary use case. It is a legacy
| product whose overhead has a real cost on our economy.
|
| When do we stop paying $10-$20 a month per lines of
| service, for the privileging of being interrupted? When
| do we stop calling it a smartphone and treating as such
| and recognizing it as as computer, a laptop for your
| pocket.
|
| I expect those born in the last century to be most
| resistant to the deprecation of the 'phone call' as a
| concept. People also reminisced about having phone lines
| that were partied together. Imagine what scammers would
| do with that today.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| Unfortunately it kind of fails at being a good pocket
| computer (all else aside they got rid of the concept of
| files and replaced it with nothing). The fact that it
| fails at being a phone too is just adding insult to
| injury.
| hedora wrote:
| I doubt people from the last century are the ones holding
| on to the idea of a phone call.
|
| Whatever telcos are doing these days would have led to
| jail time in the 1990s.
|
| I would like to see a return to the government passing
| QOS laws for safety critical services, then enforcing
| them.
|
| Since everyone is dunking on twitter these days: How is
| it legal for them to slap an auth wall on top of
| emergency response agencies' feeds? If I MITM'ed the
| emergency broadcast system with such bullshit, I'd go to
| jail. Twitter is used during emergencies by at least 100x
| more people than emergency broadcast.
| saurik wrote:
| > If you don't want that, wouldn't a pad be a better option
| than a phone?
|
| 1) Do they make devices that aren't phones that are the size
| of a note"pad"? The smallest non-phone tablet devices are now
| (with the death of iPod touch) the size of (at best) a small
| note"book", not a sensibly-sized-for-portable-usage
| note"pad".
|
| 2) That doesn't even solve the problem as tons of Internet-
| connected messaging software now supports calls, so I feel
| like you are missing the point in some sense: the person you
| are responding to is seriously talking about WhatsApp!
| solumunus wrote:
| > It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function.
|
| So? This is a way to improve phone calls.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I like where you're going with this, and particularly with the
| increase of video calls, it's still strange to just pick up and
| see a person.
|
| The flow I get people into is to communicate via text (slack,
| whatsapp, etc depending on the nature of the environment) with
| a "hey, is now a good time to call", or "I wanted to discuss
| XYZ", and we can then hash out the best method for
| communication.
|
| The authors complaint is valid, but I think it is more of a UX
| issue, similar to what you're suggesting here.
|
| Great handle BTW
| GaylordTuring wrote:
| I've changed the settings on my iPhone so that calls are shown
| like notifications like everything else. So no more taking over
| the whole screen.
| kergonath wrote:
| Phone calls from unknown numbers go straight to voice mail.
| Same for some people who think it's fair game to call me and
| bore my ears off with their life whilst I am working.
|
| Problem solved.
| xnickb wrote:
| How is it solved for someone who has to have phone calls?
| Since when saying "it's not a problem for me" solved any
| problems?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If you are being paid to answer your phone, then answer
| your phone. I'm not, so I don't.
| bluedino wrote:
| Or if you're waiting for a call from _____
| kergonath wrote:
| Then I add an exception for ______. If they cannot tell
| you their number (happens with some companies), then they
| can:
|
| - arrange a call, which is great because then I am
| guaranteed to have the time to deal with the topic, I do
| that sometimes with my bank;
|
| - leave a voice mail, which is not great but then I am
| not responsible for their phone number policy (nobody
| leaves voice mail anymore);
|
| - send an email (or a SMS, a WhatsApp, FB Messenger,
| Skype, whatever, I am not picky), possibly to arrange a
| phone call, also great because I can answer written
| messages on my own terms and not when they feel like
| calling me;
|
| - (most of the time these days) have a chat over whatever
| IM platform they integrated into their website.
|
| My time is not theirs to use however they want. If they
| want me to be on call, that's fine, but with
| compensation.
| kergonath wrote:
| Exactly!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This is a solution very dependent on individual preferences,
| though, it is not any kind of blanket solution.
|
| I once called my brother from a phone that was not mine, in
| the middle of the night, to inform him that our brother had
| died suddenly. He did not answer. He got that message in the
| morning when he checked his voicemail after waking up. He was
| very upset at the delay.
|
| Filtering from unknown numbers is a hack, and it has
| consequences. We should not have to do it just to get some
| peace from our phones.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I once called my brother from a phone that was not mine,
| in the middle of the night, to inform him that our brother
| had died suddenly. He did not answer. He got that message
| in the morning when he checked his voicemail after waking
| up. He was very upset at the delay.
|
| Well, sometimes shit happen. I can think of a handful of
| scenarios where I cannot be contacted and it's right that
| sometimes it could be important. But I am not living on
| alert 24/7 because sometimes someone might die. My
| filtering system lets the second call through, which I
| think works fine as most spammers do not call twice within
| one minute. That said, in the middle of the night I still
| probably would not hear, but not because of that.
|
| (I am sure that the situation was complex and difficult to
| manage enough for you to have to borrow a phone, and I do
| not envy you for having gone through it and am sorry you
| had to. In that situation I would be very upset regardless
| of the delay).
|
| > Filtering from unknown numbers is a hack, and it has
| consequences. We should not have to do it just to get some
| peace from our phones.
|
| That's entirely right and I agree completely. But then we
| are where we are and the world often disagrees with me.
| Otherwise I could also get rid of my ads and trackers
| blockers.
| [deleted]
| happyopossum wrote:
| > It's crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on
| my personal device with no context
|
| Is this 2018? C'mon - phone calls don't actually do full screen
| takeovers on your device anymore, do they?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "It would be very helpful for missed calls. "Why did my wife
| call twice in the last 5 minutes, did something happen, should
| I panic?!" It also removes the need to leave rambling
| voicemail."
|
| Well, what is stopping your wife from also texting you, if it
| was something important and she did not reach you? And what
| would force her, to use a potential subject line?
|
| Otherwise it is an interesting idea, but I doubt it will be a
| killer feature, as most would simply ignore it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Well, what is stopping your wife from also texting you,
|
| LOL. She does. "Call me"
|
| Very helpful.
| incone123 wrote:
| I used to have a phone with DND but if the same caller tried
| twice in a couple of minutes then it would ring.
| nabaraz wrote:
| Is this through Tasker or something? I would love to have
| this feature.
| hansel_der wrote:
| default iphone feature
| mtwshngtn wrote:
| default android feature as well [0]
|
| [0]: https://support.google.com/android/answer/9069335?hl
| =en#zipp...
| ridgered4 wrote:
| I guess this explains why spam calls to my home phone do an
| immediate retry.
| pocketarc wrote:
| I think the problem there is that a lot of people just won't
| bother. Some people would just put "pick up" on that subject
| line, or leave it empty (surely you wouldn't make it mandatory,
| nobody would accept that), or any number of things.
|
| I personally hate unscheduled calls, and I'd love it if
| everyone sent a text first to check if you're free for a call,
| and only call after you've accepted, but... that's just never
| gonna happen.
| y7 wrote:
| I like the idea, but it will never take off. People are
| fundamentally lazy when it comes to these things. Look at the
| surging popularity of voice messages in some circles, shifting
| the burden of communication fully to the receiver. Even if you
| had the feature, I'd wager most subject lines would stay empty,
| or just contain the bare minimum like "hi".
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a burden. My watch already provides me
| a quick-select list of responses. So when I make a call,
| instead of one generic send button, how about two? One of
| them labeled "this is a emergency" or something like that.
| Maybe even a little list of a half dozen of the most commonly
| used subjects, so I just click the one that matches.
|
| No reason to make people work any harder than they do now.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| But if other people are lazy, why would I entertain
| interruptions from them? I generally don't do any work voice
| or video calls because, simply, they are an interruption. So
| they need to have an agenda and be scheduled. And indeed, I
| do not listen to voice messages; type it out or don't send it
| at all.
| pavlov wrote:
| That's ok. Metadata improves context but isn't mandatory.
| Some people want it, others don't bother.
|
| It's like sending a calendar invite. Sure, you can send an
| invite with nothing but your email address and a date+time.
| But many people would find an empty invite a bit rude. It's
| just polite to include some context about the meeting. The
| phone call should evolve in that direction.
| tsol wrote:
| If it's not mandatory, then what's the point? You can
| already send text messages if the message is important. And
| since it's optional, both spammers and your lazy family
| will leave it blank making it useless to filter out spam.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Not sure what kind of phone you have, but my iPhone doesn't
| take over the whole screen (unless locked). I have it set to
| only show a notification.
| m463 wrote:
| what about unwanted phone calls... of a different kind?
|
| I've been complaining for years how touching ANYTHING in the ios
| phone app initiates a call. Can there be a setting for "confirm
| before calling"?
|
| I've called spam numbers back.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| My golden rules to make videoconferencing more reliable :
| - Use ethernet. Wi-Fi isn't reliable, your neighbor's microwave
| can ruin everything. - Use wired headphones. 0 latency. 0
| connection time. And disables the mic noise-cancelling algos.
| - Use classic phone calls when required. It's more robust and
| latency is even better.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Any tips on using ethernet when you're renting a house and
| unable to wire any infrastructure? My only hookup for internet
| is in a pretty poor spot for wireless connectivity to my
| office, but I don't have a good way to wire a cable instead
| since there's an entire living room, a staircase, a hallway,
| and multiple doors in the way.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Wi-Fi isn 't reliable, your neighbor's microwave can ruin
| everything._
|
| Agree that wifi isn't reliable, but not for that reason:
| microwave ovens haven't been an issue for wifi since most
| people switched to the 5GHz band, many years ago.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| 2.4Ghz is still very much in use in many places. I have
| recent stories from friends whose apartment microwave will
| cause internet issues.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| 2.4Ghz is still very much in use in many places. I will use
| it even though I have dual band a lot due to
| range/penetration limitations.
|
| I have recent stories from friends whose apartment microwave
| will cause internet issues.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| You would be surprised that most wifis out there still don't
| run on 5ghz. I mean what do you expect from non-technical
| people, wifi is just this white box that should work, if not
| turn off/on and then call support. Ie we (Switzerland) have
| both bands available from the router and till now even I
| didn't know that higher band is better for interference, and
| I am most technical in the family/friends circle.
| onli wrote:
| 5Ghz also has drawbacks. Routers support both, usually with
| an option to either combine them and handle the selection
| automagically or separate them. Parent is just wrong about
| routers having switched over completely - and thus the
| microwave can indeed still be a problem.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Yes there's plenty of reasons, channel saturation, low
| quality routers, various interferences. My Ethernet cable is
| easier to debug.
| mjevans wrote:
| It's your neighbors, ALL OF THEM, trying to watch 4K on 2 TVs
| per household all at once.
| Spivak wrote:
| And why shouldn't they? That's like the whole reason to
| even have a high-bandwidth internet connection.
| mellavora wrote:
| Could you let us know what headphones offer a control to
| disable noise-cancelling algos?
| arnaudsm wrote:
| When you're on speaker, most platforms have a noise
| cancelling algorithm to prevent Larsen loops between mic and
| speaker. Using headphones usually disables it.
| Steltek wrote:
| Wired headphones or nothing. I know they're connected because I
| can see them physically connected. They're charged because
| photons can move through wires. It's the right protocol because
| they fit in the device.
|
| Apple gets props for making it break less often than everyone
| else but it's a fundamentally broken UI and broken protocol.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Tangent:
|
| > It had its quirks--You're muted, Cathy, and so forth--
|
| There would be a simple solution: add a good ole' vu-meter.
|
| This would also help with incorrect gain, which is why they had
| been present on recording equipment for almost a century.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _There would be a simple solution: add a good ole ' vu-
| meter._
|
| They're already there! Google Meet, for example, has them, and
| they also show whether the mic is muted in Meet itself or not.
| I can often _tell_ that they 're muted in the meeting because
| not only is it that their mouth is moving and no sound is
| coming out, but also because the little "muted" icon is perched
| on their tile. The same exact way they could, if they looked at
| the indicator.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I expected this to be about the now common pattern of subjecting
| people to some shit version of Alexa for 10 minutes before you
| eventually crack and allow them to sit on hold for someone who
| might actually be able to solve their problem.
|
| Bonus shit biscuits if you allow them to get to some answer from
| Brenda (the brainless Alexa clone) where you basically say "great
| news, you can do this online". As if anyone with half a brain
| would have have been stupid enough to shout at their phone for 20
| minutes trying to get your shitty arse robot to understand them
| if they could have gone online instead.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Yes I thought it was going to be about the true hell that is
| calling any company now. Phone menus for at least a minute and
| then connected to someone with long Covid and/or new hire that
| has no idea what they are doing or forgot how. Then transferred
| to another and another and another. Covid annihilated customer
| service.
| vlunkr wrote:
| It was terrible before, I'm not sure Covid could have made it
| any worse.
| tristor wrote:
| I don't know if it's directly due to Covid, as the
| grandparent asserts, but it's pretty indisputable that the
| quality of customer service has eroded across pretty much
| every industry sector, at least in the US. This could be
| due to companies generally being short-staffed, but it does
| seem like even when you interact with someone the
| intelligence level (or maybe more charitably, the
| experience level) of the people you interact with has gone
| down.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Yeah I can see that. Calling big companies has been
| terrible forever, but customer service in physical stores
| has gone downhill. Mostly they all seem short-staffed.
| Seems like lots of stores let people go, and didn't
| replace them in favor of self-checkout systems.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Really grinds my gears when you go into a physical store
| and they say "oh, we don't have that but you can order it
| on our website!"
|
| Bit of self reflection required about thier likely
| employment prospects.
| themadturk wrote:
| I had such a good (in-person) customer service experience
| last Spring I have to mention it here. Wife and I upgraded
| our phones. We both subscribe to month-to-month cell
| services, so we always buy unlocked phones from Apple. The
| problem is, Apple no longer sells unlocked phones from a
| physical U.S. Apple store unless you are signed up with a
| major carrier. The Genius who helped us with our purchase
| recognized the problem and logged on to the online Apple
| store and helped us order our new phones from a different,
| still-close-by Apple store, for pickup the next day. Though
| we picked up at the store, the order was placed online (by
| the kind Genius) and we avoided the major cell carrier
| requirement.
| ahelwer wrote:
| This has reached new heights when calling USCIS for immigration
| issues. You have to avoid certain trigger words or the callbot
| will shunt you into a loop that can only terminate with it
| sending you an email on how to do something on the website,
| then hanging up. If you say "operator" it will go on a spiel
| about how helpful it is and you should ask it a question. If
| you say "operator" again it will hang up on you. The only way
| to get to a human is to look in online forums where people
| share the magic phrases that get it to direct you to an
| operator. Most of these have followup comments saying "no
| longer working as of $date". The US government basically hates
| immigrants or anyone trying to help immigrants and is happy to
| make things as aggressively unpleasant as possible for them. It
| isn't a bug, it is intentional.
| factsarelolz wrote:
| dang wrote:
| You've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines a
| lot lately. Would you please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick
| to the rules?
|
| In particular, we don't want ideological or political
| battle (regardless of which flavor you favor) and we don't
| want flamewar tangents.
| tiagod wrote:
| Add a couple minutes about how the call is being recorded and
| there's nothing I can do about it
| wruza wrote:
| Don't tell her the truth, make her puzzled.
|
| Few days ago I had to help my grandma with hiding some utility
| cables behind a cover on a new door. I decided that a guy from
| tv cable company would be the most experienced with this and
| called their support. Please describe your issue? TV has no
| signal (it has). Are you at home? Yes (no). Let me check it...
| hmm, it's okay on our side. Did you try to rescan channels? Yes
| (of course not). I'll transfer your call to an operator, please
| wait. Sure, was nice to meet you too, stupid bot.
|
| Make sure that you "have" a direct service problem and it
| doesn't align with scripted or online solutions.
|
| _As if anyone with half a brain would have have been stupid
| enough to shout at their phone for 20 minutes trying to get
| your shitty arse robot to understand them if they could have
| gone online instead._
|
| There are plenty of people who call-first, to be fair.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| Ignore the voice tree. Just shout profanities or
| "representative". Decent systems will pick up your
| frustration and divert you to the human queue.
| mdaEyebot wrote:
| This often works, but not always. And it's not always clear
| when it does work; the systems don't usually say something
| like, "Since you would like to set our entire executive
| leadership team on fire, we will transfer you to the next
| available agent."
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Quick tip - screaming profanities at the voice assistant
| typically takes you directly to a customer support person.
| (Obviously, don't scream obscenities at the customer support
| person)
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Not sure if you'll understand all the Scottishness here but I
| think you'll appreciate the message...
|
| https://youtu.be/TqAu-DDlINs
| joshstrange wrote:
| Agreed, the 2 most annoying thing for me when I have to call
| into a business:
|
| 1. "You can find the answers you need online at our website: w
| w w dot our business name dot com" - First I would never call
| if I could do what I needed online, second get me to the menu
| already. I hate waiting 30-60sec+ for a prerecorded message
| that doesn't tell me anything new.
|
| 2. "We are experiencing higher than normal call volume" -
| Bullshit. I'll bet my right arm that either that message is
| always there OR you are "somehow" always horribly understaffed
| which is your problem, not mine. I accepted this at the start
| of COVID but pretty much every business has left that message
| in even well after it was reasonable.
| floren wrote:
| I had a recent trip to Japan, wanted to exchange some yen
| before I left, so I called around to a bunch of local banks
| and got to experience some exquisitely terrible phone
| systems.
|
| The worst, and this is a new one to me: you get a 30 second
| message about how you can do everything online (except ask if
| they sell foreign currency), and how the menu options have
| changed, and then you finally pick the option to talk to a
| teller... and after half a dozen rings with nobody answering,
| it says "sorry, guess nobody's around" and JUST FUCKING HANGS
| UP ON YOU.
|
| Also, turns out banks no longer keep foreign currency on-
| site, not even Wells Fargo which was always a go-to for me.
| Another case of "COVID gave us an excuse to do what we've
| been wanting to do for a long time"
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah, you gotta give em like a weeks notice and even then
| they might give you a bad rate.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Normally we have no calls. Then you came along. Our on call
| is getting dressed, just a few minutes.
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| 3. "Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed"
| svachalek wrote:
| Pretty sure this is like, did you unplug it, wait 10
| seconds, and plug it back in again? They want to say
| "listen carefully" but have to dress it up a bit so it
| doesn't sound rude.
| joshstrange wrote:
| That's a good one, as if I've ever remembered or trusted
| that menu options are the same. It's another one of those
| useless platitudes that just wastes time. Surely anyone who
| just hits a number and gets connected to the wrong place
| will just call back and listen to the options the second
| time, no need for that useless message.
|
| I'd greatly prefer if they just immediately started listing
| off menu options.
|
| Also a variant on #1 that drives me batty is when they use
| that in the "hold music". Every 30-60 seconds the music
| stops and a voice repeats the BS about how you can find
| what you need online. It's a tease, you think your call was
| finally answered, and it rubs salt in wound by advertising
| something that clearly failed in it's task.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Every 30-60 seconds the music stops and a voice repeats
| the BS..._
|
| ...at four times the volume of the hold music, so you can
| 't just set volume and forget it. And when a human comes
| on, _that_ will be attenuated at least 10dB from what the
| hold music was.
| s3p wrote:
| Honestly I'm fine with this as a consequence of modern
| convenience. The _real_ torture for me in that first minute of a
| phone call is the usual:
|
| "Hi, how are you?"
|
| Then I have to pretend they care (they usually don't), give them
| a 0.02 second explanation of how I am, then to be nice I have to
| return the same useless question before we can actually talk
| about their reason for calling.
| lrvick wrote:
| I literally just have VoIP routed DECT handsets all over my house
| like it is 1999 and it works great every time.
|
| Cell phones have become jacks of all trades and in the process
| have become difficult to use as phones.
| andersco wrote:
| I only very infrequently experience the issues described in this
| article, and I definitely would not consider it torture.
|
| Re. the other comments about robocalls, I use the "Silence
| unknown callers" on my iPhone and it works quite well. The only
| drawback is that you have to remember to disable the feature if
| you are expecting a call from someone who's number you don't know
| (eg a delivery driver.)
| UltraViolence wrote:
| I simply use wired earbuds with a built-in microphone. Works
| seamlessly every time.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I feel like I'm in another universe from this writer. 9.9 times
| out of 10 my AirPods connect immediately when I pop them them
| before answering and if they take a second longer we are in <10
| seconds before everything is good to go. The caller shouldn't
| have any of these issue (if they do they are a moron, connect
| your headphones, if you want to use them, before you make a call)
| and the callee doesn't have any issues if it's a scheduled call.
| It takes some nerve to call someone without texting/emailing
| about it ahead of time if it's not an emergency and if they need
| a second to get headphones in then that's all on you.
|
| Not to mention headphones aren't a necessity. Sure they are nice
| but if someone calls me and I think it's going to be quick I just
| answer and hold the phone up, it's not the end of the world.
| jawilson2 wrote:
| I have a newish iPhone and airpods. I have my pods in much of
| the day. When my phone rings, it rings through the pods. When I
| answer, 7/10 times the call is first answered going through the
| pods, then transfers to the phone, and I have to hit the button
| on the phone to transfer it back to the pods, where I hear
| "...ello? Can you hear me? Are you there?" Just 5 seconds or
| so, but still dumb. This worked fine a few months ago. I have
| changed no settings.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _The caller shouldn 't have any of these issue (if they do
| they are a moron_
|
| Quite frankly, you don't have the slightest idea of what you're
| talking about, and it's incredibly rude and insulting for you
| to call anyone having these issues a "moron".
|
| I have a pair of AirPods, and an iPhone, and an iPad, and a
| MacBook.
|
| And when I put on my AirPods, probably about _half_ the time
| they connect to a different device from the one I intend when I
| take them out and put them on. Or they connect to my phone but
| not the phone app. Or they connect and then immediately
| disconnect as maybe another device takes over.
|
| The whole process of getting them to a) connect, b) be selected
| by the phone app, and c) not become deselected/disconnected
| because I did that before some other device/app takes over...
| well yes, it's frequently 15-45 seconds. Half the time it works
| seamlessly though.
|
| > _It takes some nerve to call someone without texting
| /emailing about it ahead of time if it's not an emergency_
|
| You know, other people regularly call
| friends/family/colleagues. Same as you'll get calls from your
| doctor/gym/etc. about rescheduling. Honestly, it takes some
| nerve for _you_ to judgmentally declare that nobody should be
| like this.
|
| You need to find some empathy, and understand that your
| personal experiences are not universal ones.
| joshstrange wrote:
| It's quite hard to reply to a comment when you keep editing
| it (I count at least 3 edits so far).
|
| Maybe "moron" is a bit of a stretch but this isn't difficult
| to do. I don't make outgoing calls before I have my
| headphones in (if I want to use them) and I've never had them
| connect and work prior to the call then randomly stop working
| when I make the call. Your issue with your AirPods jumping to
| different devices sounds annoying, I've personally never
| experienced it, I also disable/enable the setting that says
| "Don't auto-connect unless it was the last device you were
| connected to", the auto-switching "magic" isn't good enough
| to rely on in my experience. This is my frustration, people
| who complain about how something (often technology) doesn't
| work the way they want it to without doing any work on their
| own to fix/improve it.
|
| > You know, other people regularly call
| friends/family/colleagues. Same as you'll get calls from your
| doctor/gym/etc. about rescheduling. Honestly, it takes some
| nerve for you to judgmentally declare that nobody should be
| like this.
|
| Literally only my family calls me and they are the only calls
| I answer save for when I know I'm waiting on a call. All my
| coworkers use Slack/Zoom, all my friends use Discord/iMessage
| and then move to Discord Calls/Audio channels or Facetime
| Audio if we need to talk. In fact I don't think I even have
| phone numbers for half of my closest friends or most my
| coworkers, there is just no need. As far as doctor/gym/etc
| they go to voicemail and I'll read what they said later. I
| reject wholeheartedly the notion that anyone has the right to
| unilaterally interrupt me and be able to speak to me at a
| moments notice. If you feel differently then so be it, I do
| not care how you utilize phone calls, I'm only speaking to my
| own experiences and what I (and most my peers) expect when it
| comes to phone calls. I never said everyone thinks this way
| or that my personal experiences are universal (though again,
| I've heard the exact same sentiment voiced from nearly all my
| peers).
| rhino369 wrote:
| My airpods generally work, but I ONLY pair them with my phone.
| I used to pair with my computer and other devices and it caused
| issues all the time.
|
| >It takes some nerve to call someone without texting/emailing
| about it ahead of time if it's not an emergency
|
| That is a very, I dunno how to put it, but born after 1990 view
| of customs.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > It takes some nerve to call someone without texting/emailing
| about it ahead of time if it's not an emergency
|
| Err, wait. WHAT?
| fknorangesite wrote:
| How old are you? I'm in my 40s, but even I know this is a
| reasonably common gen-z social norm.
| abhgh wrote:
| As others have mentioned on this thread, Pixel's call screener
| largely solves this problem. For me it's a godsend feature and
| prevents me from getting into a bad mood from answering multiple
| robo/spam-calls in a day. I seem to have a heavily recycled
| number (multiple owners before) - as a result, I seem to have
| been receiving more than one person's share of spam calls.
|
| For those unfamiliar: you can use Pixel's call screener to accept
| calls from unknown numbers. The effect is, an automated voice
| from your end handles the call, all the while printing on the
| screen what it says. It also transcribes what the other end says
| (mostly correctly). So you can "see" how the call is going, on
| your screen - its like a chat unrolling in real time. If you are
| convinced the call is legit (after having read enough of it),
| there is an option for transferring the call to you/mic and then
| you can take over. It also has some canned prompts you can have
| the call-screener speak out (these options appear when the
| screening is in progress).
|
| Very helpful!
| asmor wrote:
| Oh, I thought it would be something more... interesting.
|
| I have a voice that does not match most people's associations
| with my name, so the first minute of every phone call is spent
| explaining myself (sometimes it feels more like justifying). I've
| been mistaken for phishing attacks and got hung up on a few times
| too.
| baxtr wrote:
| This is about local connection problems, audio device with your
| phone:
|
| _> Hello? ... Wait, hello? Can you hear me? Okay, hold on. Ugh.
| Okay, okay, just a second. I have to get my earphones to connect.
| Damn it. Okay, never mind, I'll just hold it up to my head. Hi,
| ugh, sorry about that._
|
| I can confirm this. However, there is another class of problems,
| too, which aren't mentioned. Network problems. It is the year
| 2022 and still in many areas reception is really lousy. I need to
| hang up and call people again constantly.
|
| It is not really better with FaceTime Audio or any other VOIP
| tech. It completely sucks! I want to connect instantly and then
| have a stable connection for at least 30min with crystal clear
| audio. Am I asking too much for 2022??
| dont__panic wrote:
| I spend a lot of time outdoors hiking and biking. Since 2019, I
| have noticed a serious stagnation -- and possibly degradation
| -- of phone reception. Used to be, I could send a text and call
| someone on even 1 bar of EDGE. Now I basically need >2 bars of
| LTE to do _anything_ -- less than that and my phone isn 't
| usable.
|
| Maybe I need to pick up a 5G device. I am still using an LTE
| phone from 2016, so there could be some bands I'm missing out
| on. But my partner's much more recent phone has even _more_
| issues.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if this is happening
| to you it's your fault. You must either live in a coal mine or
| use terrible tech for your calls. I have voip calls all the
| time and they're all what you're asking for. It just takes a
| tiny amount of forethought when deciding on what tech to use.
| nihilius wrote:
| I use Vodafone and an up to date iPhone. Voice Calls are so
| crappy here in Germany its not even funny. I always prefer
| texting over calling.
| noobermin wrote:
| Can you force my boss to pay for zoom phone so we can use
| voip via zoom? Ah no it must be my fault then.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I work in Downtown DC, you can see the Washington monument
| from my office window--and I still get awful Verizon
| reception on an iPhone 12 pro.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| You mean it's all fine when you sit in your office using
| fiber and expensive VoIP gear? But how about when you are on
| the move? The 'coal mine' starts 2 meters outside the center
| of London and that's not only for data.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| > But how about when you are on the move?
|
| Yep, then too. The stats are extremely clear about this,
| don't use cheap carriers and don't use cheap Bluetooth.
| Southern England has excellent cell coverage.
| rayiner wrote:
| Phone calls and Zoom calls are such garbage compared to the old
| landline system. Jitter and latency just makes it unpleasant.
| Phone calls used to be so clear:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HnlqrMWVYCs
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Often it's the wireless earbuds, which won't reconnect or are
| connected to the wrong device.
|
| Wireless headsets seem to have intentionally crippled
| functionality in many areas for no particular reason[1]. The
| point of being wireless is that you aren't connected to a device.
| Why do they need a logical connection? If you're listening to two
| devices, just accept the packets from both devices, and play them
| over the audio output.
|
| [1] See also: if you turn on the microphone, you can no longer
| have audio output in stereo. It switches to mono, because...
| because.
| tristor wrote:
| I have never had any of the issues described in this article and
| I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods
| came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls
| 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls
|
| I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how
| bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere.
| It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off
| letting scammers operating boiler rooms in India steal money from
| your grandparents, so they're happy to utterly destroy any
| utility that a phone has.
|
| It's gotten so bad I just don't answer my phone unless it's a
| call from someone I know. The few times (like now, unfortunately)
| I expect a call from an unknown number related to follow-up for
| in-person business, when I answer 95% or more of incoming calls
| are scams/spam. This is with "Spam Block" enabled, that already
| blocks known scam/robocall numbers AND NoMoRobo, what slips
| through is still the majority spam/scams.
|
| I can't even imagine walking around with a cellular phone in 2022
| without any of these tools, it's probably a hellscape just like
| using the web in 2022 without uBlock Origin, NoScript, and
| PiHole.
|
| We can do better, and the adtech industry + the telcos making
| money off straight up scammers has destroyed the very fabric of
| technology as used for social connection.
| knaekhoved wrote:
| > I have never had any of the issues described in this article
| and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since
| AirPods came out
|
| I bought airpods day 1 and I've had every single issue
| described in the article. Carplay is unreliable. Airpods are
| unreliable. As apple hardware steadily improves, apple software
| steadily degrades.
| achow wrote:
| > _It 's gotten so bad I just don't answer my phone unless it's
| a call from someone I know_
|
| In my case 90% of time people I know call over WhatsApp or
| other Voip calls.
|
| Whereas 100% of phone calls from 'critical strangers' are over
| phone. 'Critical strangers' are delivery persons or cab drivers
| or courier or office colleagues... those who are calling to
| find out my whereabouts (critical in that context).
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Yeah, I thought this article was going to be about robocalls. I
| don't think I'm alone in realizing that for now most robocalls
| auto-disconnect if they don't hear anything on the line for
| somewhere between 15 seconds to a minute depending on the
| software's patience I suppose. This has taught me to never
| answer the phone for an unknown number and immediately say
| something, just to put it on speakerphone and let it pick up
| ambient fan noise or whatever for a minute-ish. If it is a
| robocall and it auto-hangs up, I win.
|
| If it is an actual person calling it is an awkward etiquette
| dance for a minute or so while people wait for that polite
| "Hello?" that the receiver is supposed to kick off the
| conversation with. I don't know if the etiquette needs to shift
| in a time of robo-callers or what. I appreciate that there's an
| increasing air of excuse now of "fiddling with my phone
| equipment because calls are so rare" that this article
| addresses (though the article believes this to be a bad thing).
| larrik wrote:
| You may be over-doing it. Most robo-calls wait for a second
| "hello?". So you can say it once, then wait a bit for a human
| to answer normally. Then if they don't, you just hang up, as
| the computer is waiting for that 2nd "hello?".
| r00fus wrote:
| I even just answer with a grunt or in a foreign language
| (e.g. "hola"). People know I may be juggling a mobile
| handset, automated systems hang up.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| That is something I often rely on ambient noise to do. My
| work keyboard is quite loud. My home a/c makes a ton of
| white noise and the occasional _thump_ when it clicks
| off. It also currently makes a lot of loud water sounds
| when it is off. I use throat clearing and coughs
| sometimes, too.
|
| It's a silly game to play with these robocalls what they
| are/are not listening for and it seems to change from
| time to time (and obviously from bot to bot). "Dead
| silence" is sometimes easiest and the easiest way to
| describe it (though I believe I did mention I generally
| put things on speaker and rely on ambient noise), but
| yes, not "required" and it is a dumb space to explore
| sometimes.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| > It's gotten so bad I just don't answer my phone unless it's a
| call from someone I know
|
| I have my phone set to silence calls unless they are in my
| contacts list. I tell people this whenever I give out my phone
| number.
|
| Honestly I think this should be the norm. There's no reason for
| a random stranger to need to call you, if they want to reach
| out they can text or email, and I can't imagine many urgent
| situations where they can't text, can't forward the message
| through anyone in my contacts, and can't directly get the
| authorities to contact me.
|
| The only exception is automated phone calls (e.g. call from a
| random number for an interview or to confirm 2FA where I can't
| do SMS), in which case I have to temporarily disable silencing
| calls. But systems where you get called once from a random
| number and can't call back are really awful for other
| reasons...
| tristor wrote:
| > I have my phone set to silence calls unless they are in my
| contacts list.
|
| My ringer is always silenced, I get notified to calls because
| I have notifications for calling enabled on my watch. I
| should consider disabling notifications altogether for calls
| not in my contact list.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > I have my phone set to silence calls unless they are in my
| contacts list. [...] Honestly I think this should be the
| norm. There's no reason for a random stranger to need to call
| you
|
| I teach an after-school coding class. Some weeks ago, the
| parents of two children didn't arrive at pickup. After 20
| minutes, I called the parents using the phone number listed
| in my company's system. The parents confirmed they were
| running late due to extenuating circumstances and were now
| ten minutes away.
|
| I think this was probably better than involving the
| authorities?
| VLM wrote:
| The authorities have no reason to be involved. It's 20
| minutes, and children can take care of themselves.
|
| At least 99.9% of my voicemails are a couple second long
| robocalls, but in the rare event of it being a genuine
| phone call, I get the google transcription of someone
| saying 'please call me back' on my watch and then I do so.
| Just because I'm willing to glance at notifications on my
| watch of incoming voicemails for an instant, doesn't mean
| I'm willing to talk to hundreds of robocallers per month.
| Its just too expensive.
|
| Voice phone calls are dead, kid discussion would usually be
| handled via text or email. I don't really get phone calls
| about my kids. I believe the more corporate-type
| environments enjoy the written documentation provided by
| text/email as opposed to unrecorded undocumented phone
| call.
|
| The era of always-on low-fi audio connections was very
| short. Just 30 years ago, parents certainly had no
| electronic tether and had a home phone number, maybe with
| an answering machine in later years. And now that
| technology is completely dead and unusable.
| downut wrote:
| My kid is in CA, I am selling a house in AZ, and my wife
| is buying a house in GA. Most of my friends are out of
| state. Voice has immense emotional bandwidth advantages
| over any form of text. It definitely helps everyone in
| the stress pool maintain levity. I do prefer all business
| to be conducted through text formats (email preferred)
| though.
|
| In the case in the GP, maybe a message would have worked
| too but I don't see the problem with calling.
|
| That said, I get a lot of spam calls on my Fi phone but I
| simply don't answer if I don't recognize the number. Fi
| asks me if the number was spam and it's simple to give a
| brief scan of the transcript if there is one and tell it
| yes or no.
| mcculley wrote:
| > Voice phone calls are dead
|
| I am amused by this blanket assertion. It really depends
| on the age/type of people involved and the kinds of
| interactions they are involved in. I am 50 years old and
| work in both software consulting and run a tugboat
| company. I had to take over the tugboat company two years
| ago due to a death in the family. For 30 years prior to
| that, I was working almost exclusively in software.
| During the last couple of years before taking over the
| tugboat business, I had my phone set to do-not-disturb
| almost all of the time. In the tugboat business, that
| does not work at all.
|
| For dealing with software people in purely technical
| matters, text/Slack/Teams is fine. I respect the needs of
| others who don't like real-time conversations. For doing
| business deals in software, I often end up having phone
| calls with decision makers.
|
| For the tugboat industry, it is too fast paced and too
| much money is on the line in quick deals to screen phone
| calls.
|
| Don't assume that everyone works the same way.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I'm guessing the reason you waited 20 minutes is because
| you know a call isn't a casual form of communication these
| days. I think people would say the norm should be that
| after 10 minutes you text the parents. In most case you
| will get a response sooner and if the didn't pick up you
| wouldn't be left wondering if something went wrong or they
| just dont pick up unknown numbers.
| powersnail wrote:
| Presumably, had silenced call be the social default, the
| parents would have added your phone number into their
| contact list on the first day of school, sort of like how
| you have to add someone on a chat app to talk to them.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Or they would have seen that there was an actual message
| left and called back.
|
| That's how I tell the scammers from actual calls 95% of
| the time - the scammers never leave a voicemail.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I wish that were the case for me. Most calls and most
| resulting voicemails I receive are from scammers.
|
| It's frustrating because all we'd need is some way to
| trace calls back to source providers and then let us
| apply client-side filtering akin to UBlock Origin. Easy.
| mathstuf wrote:
| Android has the option to ring if the same number calls
| within 15 minutes. I find it handy at least (though my
| robocall level is really low compared to the tales told
| here).
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Parents do not, as a matter of course, have my cell phone
| number. It's fine for a few families to have it (because
| e.g. I had to call them), but if _every_ parent in the
| program was able to message me at any time of day, I
| think I 'd have a problem.
|
| Now, there are other ways this could work. My company has
| a "director of client services"--let's call her "Anna"--
| and all parents have Anna's number. So I suppose I could
| have called Anna, and Anna could have called the parents,
| and then Anna could have called me back to relay what the
| parents said. It just would have taken longer.
|
| Of course, Anna is occasionally sick / on vacation /
| otherwise unavailable, in which case there's a second
| person--let's call her "Vivian"--who I can reach out to
| in an emergency. We're an after-school program, so we're
| not set up to have a centralized office phone, but I
| guess parents could add Vivian to their contacts as well.
|
| But I'm happy I was able to just call the parents.
| antasvara wrote:
| It seems odd to me than an after-school program has no
| set way for parents to contact the program without going
| through a relay-style process. I agree that the solution
| shouldn't be "give out your personal phone number," but
| it also shouldn't be "rely on a person that's not at the
| program to relay calls to you."
|
| Put another way, how would a parent contact the program
| in an emergency? They'd likely (as you illustrated) go
| through an intermediary that may or may not be there.
| That seems less than ideal, and certainly wouldn't be
| something that I'd be happy about if my child were in the
| program.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Y'know, that's a great point. I actually don't know how
| things look from the parent's side--I can tell you for
| sure they don't have _my_ number, but "Anna"'s number
| must be a business phone, as I know parents _always_ have
| a number they can call.
| Blahah wrote:
| If someone is looking after my child, I have their
| number. I block calls from unknown numbers adn and some
| prefixes, and silence calls from numbers not in my
| contacts. This is pretty normal I think (because of
| spam).
|
| I've only once had the problem that someone from the
| school used their personal mobile to call me and didn't
| get through, but I was already calling to let them know
| I'd be late.
|
| There's no reason for parents to be able to contact you
| socially unless you invite it, but surely you should
| contact them from a school/shared number?
|
| I'm suggesting this not for the sake of others, but for
| your sake. Given that people will block unknown numbers,
| I would think using a known number makes your life
| easier.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I get tons of spam calls and texts, but I really never see
| any of them anymore. I'm on Android and Googles distributed
| spam detection is really working great. I'll get a notice
| sometimes that I got a txt moved to spam but most of the time
| I never see these, and it seems to also block all robocalls
| too and they only go straight to voicemail.
|
| I probably have 15 voicemails right now I never knew came
| through because they're junk and auto-blocked.
| mcculley wrote:
| > There's no reason for a random stranger to need to call you
|
| I get a lot of calls from people for whom my first
| introduction/interaction is a phone call. I make a lot of
| money and otherwise get a lot of value from some of these
| interactions. Some are completely bogus telemarketer calls,
| of course, but I find that being reachable is still valuable.
| I have learned how to filter out the most obvious
| telemarketers. I hope that my competitors ignore unsolicited
| calls.
|
| (This depends on industry and role within an organization.
| Certainly people who never have to interact with strangers
| can screen calls. But don't assume this is true for
| everyone.)
| ipython wrote:
| That worked until my son was hit by a car, and my wife in her
| shock had no idea where her phone was. I'm still to this day
| guilty that I didn't pick up the phone the first time it
| rang.
|
| The truth is that this problem will kill the telephone system
| and honestly if this is how the telcos treat it, it deserves
| to die.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What did you have to feel guilty about? You could have done
| something for your son, remotely, that wasn't already being
| done?
| renewiltord wrote:
| When I was in the ICU, the hospital went down my
| emergency contacts and failed to get a pickup until they
| dialed my dad. The people who were my emergency contacts
| were good at handling the process and simplifying things
| for my parents once they found out (shortly after my
| parents) but they felt some degree of guilt for having
| failed to have acted.
|
| There are decisions to be made in these situations -
| notify work, transfer health information, ensure payment
| stuff is in order, notify people. It's much nicer to have
| someone handle all of these things.
|
| And, in the end, I think people would have liked to have
| seen me before I died, should that have been my fate. And
| that takes flying out of wherever into wherever.
| stonogo wrote:
| This is utterly bizarre. Why are you inventing conditions
| the parent poster never mentioned? For all you know they
| were on a different floor of the hospital, unaware they
| could have been comforting their child had they but
| known. Why go out of your way to be an ass about someone
| else's trauma?
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> What did you have to feel guilty about? You could have
| done something for your son, remotely, that wasn't
| already being done?
|
| > This is utterly bizarre. Why are you inventing
| conditions the parent poster never mentioned? For all you
| know they were on a different floor of the hospital,
| unaware they could have been comforting their child had
| they but known. Why go out of your way to be an ass about
| someone else's trauma?
|
| Some people have tenuous connections to humanity. In this
| case, a failure to understand anything surrounding a
| loved one's accident, other than the provision of
| physical care. I think that's somewhat more common with
| tech people, due to how some idealize aloof "rationality"
| to an extreme.
| glonq wrote:
| I get far more robocalls than real calls.
|
| I really appreciate the call screening feature of Google's
| Pixel phones!
| adriand wrote:
| > I have never had any of the issues described in this article
|
| Really? Because a telephone call is, by definition, between at
| least two people. And even if you have your shit sorted out, I
| find it surprising that every one of your contacts does too.
| Because although I, too, generally have the process down pat
| (it's true: it's crazy there needs to be a process around this
| now), a lot of the people I talk to sure don't.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Can echo GP. Simply have not had this been a problem for me.
| I call. Other party picks up. We start talking.
| binkHN wrote:
| My Pixel phone has largely solved this for me. The built-in
| Call Screening is stellar and I don't get bothered by robocalls
| much anymore because of how well the phone handles these.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Likewise. Half the spammers hang up the moment I activate
| call screening, the other half (probably automated) keep
| talking and then I hit the spam button. All the (marginal)
| benefit of saying "take me off your spam list", far less
| trouble.
| david_arcos wrote:
| Same here! "Call Screening" killed all the robocalls, or
| potential robocalls.
| bbarn wrote:
| I get the same issues I did in the US here in Iceland, fwiw. I
| get the added bonus of no longer being able to use many voice
| activated features because names aren't phonetically pronounced
| or simply have characters that aren't recognized by CarPlay.
|
| "Call Thorunn mobile." "I don't have a Thorin." "Call Porun
| mobile" "I don't have a porun".
| 01acheru wrote:
| I had to call my mom "Mamma" in every possible field for Siri
| to call her when I say "Hey Siri call mamma" (I'm Italian but
| my phone is in English).
|
| Before that she was only "mamma" as first name but I had
| other "mamma zoe", "mamma ale", "mamma gio" and Siri always
| wanted to call "mamma zoe" when I said "Hey Siri call mamma".
|
| After filling some fields of my mamma she started asking "Who
| would you like to call?" and started saying all mammas in my
| phone book, but when I said "mamma mamma" she started calling
| a random one or not getting it.
|
| Now that I have my Mamma (first name) Mamma (middle name)
| Mamma (last name) of company Mamma nicknamed Mamma with email
| mamma@mamma it works... go figure!
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I think I have a solution for you, and it's going to be a
| mother.
| knicholes wrote:
| Me: "Call Josh" Car: "Calling James. If this is correct say,
| 'Yes,' otherwise, say, 'Correction'" Me: "Correction" Car:
| "Calling Gretchen"
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Not that you should have to do this, but you can tell Siri
| (using your own voice) how to pronounce your contacts' names.
| She'll transcribe it into IPA or something.
| mathieuh wrote:
| You can give contacts nicknames and Siri will recognise that
| instead of their main name.
|
| So if you set Thorunn's nickname to be "thorin" Siri will be
| able to recognise it. Basically just go through your contacts
| and give them all nicknames that are English phonetic
| spellings of their real name.
| mtmail wrote:
| The US situation is fascinating. I got 5 calls this years and 3
| were my bank (callcenter, real human) I didn't want to talk to.
| No spam-block or similar software on my phone. I checked and I
| have 16 phone numbers blocked total on the phone, that must
| have been collected over 8-10 years. Germany.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > I have never had any of the issues described in this article
| and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since
| AirPods came out.
|
| I have had many of the issues described in this article and
| I've been using AirPods/AirPods Pro/AirPods Max w/ an iPhone,
| iPad, and a MacBook since AirPods came out.
|
| I now use a Bose headset. It works. My AirPod devices do not.
| klooney wrote:
| I got a Pixel phone and spam calls have almost disappeared (1 a
| month). They seem to be doing something around extra screening
| that's pretty good and useful.
| daggersandscars wrote:
| If you're using a non-Pixel Android phone, you may be able to
| get the same benefits by switching from your manufacturer's
| Phone app to Google's. Doing this on a Samsung S22 Ultra took
| me from tons of spam calls to none.
| creeble wrote:
| Where does one find this magical app? I see lots of "phone"
| apps in Play Store, but I can't identify one specifically
| from Google.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Not to jinx it but I haven't gotten any robocalls recently. I'm
| in Canada and I wonder if the regulations the CRTC introduced
| around STIR/SHAKEN might have made a difference already?!
| poxrud wrote:
| I'm also in Canada and get about 5 scam calls per day.
| barbazoo wrote:
| That sucks. Maybe I'm just lucky then. Possibly it depends
| on the carrier?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Top tip (eu based). Don't hang up. Let the robo talk.
|
| Often, a human comes on afterwards. Don't talk to them. If I'm
| at home (alone) i try and load some porn on the pc and have
| that play to them. Otherwise, go to the bathroom.
|
| They're paid to talk to you....if you're not talking, some
| supervisor will notice and eventually you get blacklisted.
|
| Waste their time, not yours.
| robomartin wrote:
| > 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5.
| Robocalls
|
| I have always thought that a simple --and likely very
| effective-- way to combat robocalls is to charge a nominal fee
| for all calls not in your address book. That fee could be $1 or
| more. It really doesn't matter how much other than having to be
| enough to be costly for those making unwelcome calls.
|
| The charge is levied both ways. If someone you don't know calls
| you, they pay $1. If you call them back, you pay them $1. The
| phone company handles this, of course. An alternative is that
| the charge is registered to their account and credited if you
| call them back. Being that billing is monthly, the net effect
| is that no money exchanges hands unless calls are not returned.
| If you did not respond, the next time the same number calls you
| the charge is increased by a nominal amount, say, 25%.
|
| Oh, yes, of course, the money goes to you, minus a, say 30% fee
| to the phone company. This accounting happens at the end of the
| month, not call-by-call.
|
| If someone wants to make a million unsolicited calls, it's
| going to cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most of
| that money will go to the people they are spamming because they
| will not return the calls. Anyone in your address book is
| exempt from these transactions.
|
| Without diving deeper, this seems like a simple, clean and
| perhaps even elegant way to deal with the issue. Let the free
| market do it. If spammers want to give you hundreds of dollars
| per month just to make your phone ring, so be it.
|
| Yes, of course, there could be an incentive there for the phone
| company because, in the aggregate, that 30% might add-up to a
| nice pile of money. I'm sure there's a creative way to manage
| that. Perhaps something like a metric based on that income that
| penalizes them for not doing a better job of filtering the
| calls. This is where detailed analysis of the proposal is
| necessary.
| tristor wrote:
| > Without diving deeper, this seems like a simple, clean and
| perhaps even elegant way to deal with the issue.
|
| I like your idea in theory. In practice, many of the calls
| are originating from countries which would not comply with
| any regulatory framework requiring this, and are in many
| cases intentionally complicit in scamming. Additionally, it
| would require telcos to know every number in your address
| book, something I think is frankly none of their business.
| progman32 wrote:
| I don't understand why a scammer wouldn't just add the number
| to their address book before calling.
|
| Also as an individual this would be kinda scary. Not to
| mention the fact I have to share my private address book, but
| also if my friend forgets to add me I can randomly have to
| pay?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > American telcos make money off letting scammers operating
| boiler rooms in India steal money from your grandparents, so
| they're happy to utterly destroy any utility that a phone has.
|
| Not sure how telcos profit off scammers. Especially since I
| would imagine many times their payments are fraudulent. If
| anything these scammers waste the telco's time too.
|
| This problem clearly isn't getting fixed but I feel like saying
| "telcos make bank off scammers" is just too easy of a reason.
| There has to be some underlying reason this is a hard problem
| to solve.
| ralph84 wrote:
| The telco of the user who places the call pays the telco of
| the user who answers the call. Every scam call that's
| actually answered is money in the pocket of the telco that
| serves the scam victim.
| filoleg wrote:
| > I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked
| how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this
| elsewhere.
|
| Not trying to defend US or its telecoms here, but I think it
| has more to do with scammers trying to maximize for profit.
|
| Just like with malware heavily targeting Windows instead of
| macOS/Linux, or some apps prioritizing iOS instead of Android
| (by either launching as iOS-only and then introducing an
| Android version later, or just not holding up the quality and
| polish of the iOS version on Android). It isn't because Windows
| is inherently more insecure, and not because Android is a worse
| platform. It is simply because it makes sense moneywise.
|
| Why would a scammer focus on targeting low-disposable-income
| countries, if they, on average, can extract as much money from
| one US person as they would have to from 10-15 people in
| Phillipines. For scammers, it seems to be simply more
| profitable and efficient to target US residents.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Are you implying US is the only non-low-disposable-income
| country? lol. This isn't a problem in say, Switzerland,
| Australia, Japan, etc., as it is in the US.
|
| Also, the most spammed country appears to be Brazil, and it
| is far from the top of the disposable income lists. Many
| among the most spammed countries don't register on the top
| disposable income lists.
|
| There's something else at play here. Likely
| legislation/regulation.
|
| Spam info:
| https://www.truecaller.com/blog/insights/truecaller-
| insights...
|
| Disposable income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_h
| ousehold_and_per_c...
| ggreer wrote:
| Your spam info link is to Truecaller, which measures how
| much _their users_ in each country get spam calls. That 's
| definitely not a random sample of each country's users, so
| it's hard to say whether their conclusions are correct.
|
| I hadn't considered the money angle before, but it makes a
| lot of sense. The poorest US state (Mississippi) has higher
| per capita disposable income than the 6th highest-ranked
| country (Norway). Every state other than Mississippi has a
| higher per capita disposable income than Australia. There
| are a ton of Americans, they're rich, and almost all of
| them speak the most popular language on the planet. The US
| has a high fraction of immigrants (12% of the population),
| so many Americans aren't immediately suspicious of accents.
| Compared to other countries, the US is a big juicy target.
|
| 1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/303534/us-per-
| capita-dis...
| filoleg wrote:
| > Are you implying US is the only non-low-disposable-income
| country?
|
| Not at all. The rest are just not that viable for a
| multitude of reasons. How many people do Switzerland and
| Australia have, compared to the US? Much less. And Japan
| isn't english-speaking, so I dont expect foreign scammers
| putting effort into learning japanese just for that. They
| already struggle enough with english.
|
| To be fair, all of that is just me trying to reason through
| it myself, so there definitely could be other reasons at
| play here as well.
| [deleted]
| aikendrum wrote:
| This is nothing to do with low or high income countries.
| Europe exists. I've lived (and had local phones) in Ireland,
| Germany and the UK. I've never had a spam call. I've had less
| than 10 spam texts ever. The US (from an outsider
| perspective) just doesn't seem to enforce consumer
| protections in general.
| zinekeller wrote:
| > Why would a scammer focus on targeting low-disposable-
| income countries, if they, on average, can extract as much
| money from one US person as they would have to from 10-15
| people in Phillipines.
|
| I don't think anyone disputes this, but apart from Canada
| (which has a largely similar telco structure) no other
| developed country has this plague of undesirable robocalls.
| You could probably net a similar payout in the UK or Germany
| but as far as I'm aware there isn't a robocall problem in
| Europe (and the only problem that is remotely telephone-
| related is those scare scams where a malicious ad displays a
| number to be called, not the other way around).
| Decabytes wrote:
| I've experienced the issues with the weird connections issues,
| not being able to hear people etc, but the worst for me is when I
| call someplace and I have to suffer through the options spoken to
| me by a chat bot. Or worse it asks me to "say what I am calling
| about" in a few words, and it doesn't understand. Or I have to
| get through three different levels of menus before the option to
| speak to a representative comes up.
| [deleted]
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Outside of mobile computing/internet, I do not use my phone. I am
| sure with very minor adjustment I can get away with getting rid
| of a phone number entirely.
|
| So many services are just plain better with the internet as the
| abstraction vs. a phone number.
| iwangulenko wrote:
| Tech recruiter here from Switzerland, and our mobile coverage is
| probably one of the best in the world.
|
| One of the things I hate most is that I often can't hear people.
|
| Selling people jobs on the phone is stressful enough, but
| extremely annoying if I don't get feedback whether the person
| even heard what I said.
| drcongo wrote:
| I have experienced precisely zero of the things listed in this
| article.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Should we expect phone calls to scale the way software does?
| Maybe we should lower our expectations or find a way around it
| codalan wrote:
| The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape.
|
| Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly
| interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feature or to learn
| about X, when I'm urgently trying to make a call. It's so f-ing
| rude and intrusive. And it's designed to trick you into enabling
| shit without giving you time to think it over.
|
| It's such a scummy thing to do, but hey, it's Google. Imagine
| having to make an emergency phone call, but you can't until you
| tap through all the prompts. Google basically broke core
| functionality to do this, and there's no way to disable this
| nonsense.
|
| Seriously, I just want my phone to be a phone, not some feature
| riddled shit app that does everything (poorly).
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I have strong suspicion you are not talking about _Google 's_
| android dialer but some chinese ad-infested knock-off. When I
| used to have crappy Xiaomi, I had ads everywhere - settings,
| basic 'android' apps, most probably dialer too, definitely SMS
| sending app and so on. Threw it away and never looked back.
|
| There are premium androids who give users completely different
| experience, be it Samsung, Sony, Google etc etc etc. Literally
| hundreds of models to pick your match. On my S22 ultra I never
| saw a single similar ad since I bought it. I wish people
| stopped bashing android just because they cheaped out and then
| found out that cheap phones are actually cheap to get revenue
| back in baked-in ads (there are other concerns coming from
| Google as creator but that's a different topic, since there is
| no saints among phone manufacturers and lure of ads revenue is
| too strong even for Apple)
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Xiaomi makes fine hardware with overly intrusive firmware
| installed on it which they sell for competitive prices. The
| solution is the same as with any other Android device:
| install one of the many AOSP-derived distributions on it and
| you have fine hardware with clean firmware offering OTA
| updates and more freedom than any vendor-supplied
| distribution offers, not to mention waaaay more freedom than
| the Apple/iOS combo offers.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Yeah but as father of small children, camera that is always
| in the pocket is hugely important for me. AFAIK Xiaomi
| camera app/drivers/whatever is the proper name is a signed
| blob that has no source available, so something more basic
| is used instead in those free distros. Thus photo quality
| suffers since its finely tuned for given sensors/lens/cpu
| combo. At least that's how I grokked it few years ago.
|
| Since then I've realized phone is by far the most important
| device in my life, so not cheaping out on it anymore and
| seeing the difference in every photo.
| lozenge wrote:
| Samsung phones were actually highly ad laden until they
| realised it was hurting their brand about a year or two
| before you bought yours. I'm expecting ads to slowly slip
| back in.
| calvano915 wrote:
| Huh? I've had numerous Galaxy phones since S8 and there's
| no issues with ads throughout the OS.
| ahoy wrote:
| Same. I've had an s8 and and s20, neither have this ads
| issue described.
| bearmode wrote:
| I have literally never experienced this on my Galaxy S10, or
| any Android before it. Is this new?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I've literally never experienced this with the Google dialer
| app.
| aulin wrote:
| You're probably talking about some chinese dialer on top of
| android, Google one is clean and essential.
|
| One thing I always struggle with is that phone becomes
| painfully slow and heats up like crazy on a call. The one thing
| it should do without effort seems like the heavier one on the
| hardware. Wonder how they managed to do phone calls 20-30 years
| ago if it's such a compute intensive task.
| papascrubs wrote:
| To be fair, a good chunk of Android in total is a UX hellscape.
| This coming from a lifelong Android user. One of Android's
| greatest strengths (customization) is also it's greatest
| weakness.
| midoridensha wrote:
| Are you sure that's Google and not your device manufacturer or
| your carrier? The dialer on my Android phone seems OK. I'm not
| going to claim it's the best UX ever, but it certainly doesn't
| interrupt me with dialogs about anything. Android phones are
| infamous for having carrier-required crap pre-loaded.
| codalan wrote:
| Pixel 7 Pro.
|
| Right now, this is my only major gripe on an otherwise great
| phone.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I switched from LG to a pixel. I don't regret the better
| hardware or more frequent updates, but so many tiny things
| were substantially better on the LG.
|
| Biggest peeve: on the LG phones I had, you could use the
| volume buttons / menu to silence or turn down individual
| applications. On the pixel, out of the box you only get a
| global media volume control.
|
| Also have experience with the stock phone dialler putting up
| prompts while I am in the middle of doing something else,
| which never happened on LG. The other big annoyance is the
| timer portion of the clock app is significantly harder to
| use.
|
| All that said, I will happily take stock android on the pixel
| any day over any Samsung product.
| pannSun wrote:
| Notice how in this conversation, no precise program name or
| version was brought up. "The stock dialer on an LG", "the
| dialer on a Pixel"...
|
| On a computer (a _real_ computer), the first words would be
| something like "On Firefox 106.0.2 64-bit", but phones
| have such abysmal user control that most of the time we
| _don 't even know what programs we're running_.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Yea, I feel like there's a big cargo cult element to the
| claims of carrier skins being crapware by default. I
| remember the moment I realized that the moto x (first post-
| Google moto phone) and the contemporary galaxy s both had
| solid advantages over the pixel. Eg Samsung beat pixel to
| the quick settings menu by YEARS (and by extension iOS by
| even more years), and this is now an industry standard.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| Pixels are great as long as you don't need to call 911.
| marak830 wrote:
| Why do these bullshit comments always seem to end up on top?
| aaron695 wrote:
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "Engagement"
| jeroenhd wrote:
| What phone are you using? That sounds like a terrible
| experience, I'll need to make sure I avoid it.
|
| For what it's worth, you can install a new dialer from the Play
| Store. Or you can grab an open source one from F-Droid. The
| Simple apps are quite popular because they just do one thing
| and do it well, i.e.
| https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.dialer/
| codalan wrote:
| Pixel 7 Pro, but I wouldn't avoid it because their dialer
| sucks. It's still a really good phone when compared to the
| iPhone/Samsung Galaxy/etc., and it's the only Android phone
| series I'd consider in the future.
|
| When I had a Samsung Galaxy, I installed the full suite of
| Simple apps onto it because the included apps sucked so bad.
| Simple gets it mostly right from a UI/UX perspective, and I
| was happy to support the author by purchasing the apps in the
| Play store.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Or just use an iPhone.
|
| This is the problem with Stockholm Syndrome. You think you're
| on the right side the entire time.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| And instead of option to pick dialer, be stuck with the
| crappy one provided by Apple(lack of spam detection, lack
| of business directory), with no option to change. Great
| idea.
| bearmode wrote:
| No thanks, I'd rather shoot myself in the eye than have to
| use Safari.
| deepdmistry wrote:
| You can use any browser on iPhone.
| zdragnar wrote:
| You can use any browser _skin_ on an iphone. They 're all
| the same web view.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Right, but the underlying engine doesn't matter much
| practically speaking. I don't think I've ever run into a
| situation where the browser on iOS limited me from doing
| things I would want to do on mobile.
|
| I use FireFox on iOS because it syncs with FireFox on my
| laptop.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I disagree, plenty of posts here that start with "doesn't
| work on my iPhone".
|
| Apple forces you to adjust to their terrible browser
| engine by taking away your users' ability to install
| another browser. Many websites put in the effort to make
| their stuff work on Apple devices but that's far from a
| given.
| gausswho wrote:
| The things two prisoners whisper through the gates...
| dotancohen wrote:
| That's a great dialer, but unfortunately one cannot choose a
| default phone number for a contact with it. So for contacts
| with multiple phone numbers (and that's most of my important
| contacts, your use case might be different) one must choose
| with number to dial each time that person is called.
| m4lvin wrote:
| That must be the Google Dialer app. The one in LineageOS which
| I guess comes from AOSP is perfectly fine and never bothers me
| about anything. Come to the dark side! ;-)
| dzikimarian wrote:
| I am using stock Google dialer and don't have such experience
| either.
|
| Anyway, OP can always pick the one that works for him.
| There's lots of options.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| What about iOS where you cant copy in a number and then edit
| it? Every time I want to call a foreign number and need to add
| a country code I need to make a new contact and then edit that.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| This!! Why the hell cant you move the cursor thingy and edit
| the number?? We are on iOS 15 or whatever and they cant get
| this feature right??
| dylan604 wrote:
| This one drives me crazy in all iOS phone number entry type
| situations. once you've dialed in the the 10 numbers, it
| makes it into whatever that little bubble is called that
| makes it no longer editable. you have to delete the whole
| bubble of 10 digits, and start typing the whole number again
| instead of being able to edit the probably single digit that
| needs correcting.
|
| However, I'm old enough to remember the pain of recognizing a
| mis-dialed number from rotary phones. Old enough to remember
| only needing to dial 5 digits. Then the pain of having to
| dial the full prefix going to 7 digits, growing to full
| horror going to full 10 digit. luckily by 10 digit, touch
| tone was in place.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| My parents _technically_ don 't have a four digit local
| number any more, but it's the same+ national number as it
| was back then. BT moved two digits from the exchange code
| to the local part when they digitised the exchange.
|
| +: All UK national numbers gained an extra '1' after the
| leading '0'; I'm asserting that change doesn't count.
| wruza wrote:
| Ohh. And if you think you're so clever and type that prefix
| before Paste-ing, it doesn't just paste, but replaces all
| digits you have typed. I also love it when sites omit a
| country code in their numbers like "(xxx) xxx-xxxx". Well, at
| least it's not a jpeg.
| superkuh wrote:
| My Nokia 6030 dumb phone answers calls instantly with no fuss,
| has physical buttons, is tiny in my pocket, indestructable, and
| lasts a week on a battery. It is what every phone should aspire
| to be. It's a shame so many people try to stuff computers into
| theirs.
| SN76477 wrote:
| Technology promised a sort of communications revolution, but
| communications are now a fragmented mess.
|
| 50 years ago if you wanted a job, you looked at the news paper.
|
| Today if you want a job, you need discord, indeed, craigslist,
| hackernews, and a countless amount of other sources.
|
| It has become counter productive for the end user.
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