The Trials of Techology

On Saturday while I was wandering around the Tottenham Court Road area mulling over the complexities of DVD player pricing and purchase, I realised that for once I had both my phone and the hands-free set in the same jacket. Since my phone plays i-tunes and I have three or four albums on it, I thought that I should give it a listen for once. Very good the sound was, too, and the earphones are very comfortable.

I’m not one to use the hands-free set habitually as you will have guessed; I am generally quite happy to hold the phone to my ear and talk in time-honoured tradition. Of course, I found myself talking on the hands-free because my sister phoned me while I was deep in the listening of ‘Let Me Roll It’ from Band on the Run. I was vaguely impressed that it worked, but that’s by the by.

The experience made two things obvious to me; one I have wondered about for sometime and the other was just amusing.

In reverse order: it is clear that despite hands-free sets becoming more and more pervasive over the past six to eight years, people still make the initial assumption that you are a nutter talking to yourself in public. I was looking in the window of a shop when Barbie called. The chap standing a few feet from me jumped out of his skin and scuttled away when I started talking to her. I assume that he thought I was engaging my reflection in conversation. I don’t blame him, I’ve done similar and you can’t always be sure that the person speaking isn’t a nutter with axe-wielding propensities, so better safe than sorry.

The other thing is the one that has baffled me for some time, but now I know the answer, particularly if you have a flip phone. I always wondered why people held their phone in front of them while speaking on hands-free. It always seemed a bit pointless; just leave the phone in your pocket. That’s the point after all!

Except that if someone calls you as opposed to you them, you are inevitably caught by surprise. So you answer the phone the way you usually do, because it doesn’t occur to you to press the button on the hands-free. If your phone is a flip, you answer by opening the flip and call off by closing it. On hands-free you suddenly realise that a) you didn’t need to open your phone to speak to your caller and b) you have no idea whether closing the flip will cut you off or not, so you end up walking around talking to your reflection in the window and holding the phone like the most delicate of Star Trek tricorders, careful not to end the call by mistake.

There is a secondary benefit of course: you can wave the handset around grandly whilst declaiming to your reflection in the shop window. Proof indeed, that you are not a nutter.

The Trials of Techology

On Saturday while I was wandering around the Tottenham Court Road area mulling over the complexities of DVD player pricing and purchase, I realised that for once I had both my phone and the hands-free set in the same jacket. Since my phone plays i-tunes and I have three or four albums on it, I thought that I should give it a listen for once. Very good the sound was, too, and the earphones are very comfortable.

I’m not one to use the hands-free set habitually as you will have guessed; I am generally quite happy to hold the phone to my ear and talk in time-honoured tradition. Of course, I found myself talking on the hands-free because my sister phoned me while I was deep in the listening of ‘Let Me Roll It’ from Band on the Run. I was vaguely impressed that it worked, but that’s by the by.

The experience made two things obvious to me; one I have wondered about for sometime and the other was just amusing.

In reverse order: it is clear that despite hands-free sets becoming more and more pervasive over the past six to eight years, people still make the initial assumption that you are a nutter talking to yourself in public. I was looking in the window of a shop when Barbie called. The chap standing a few feet from me jumped out of his skin and scuttled away when I started talking to her. I assume that he thought I was engaging my reflection in conversation. I don’t blame him, I’ve done similar and you can’t always be sure that the person speaking isn’t a nutter with axe-wielding propensities, so better safe than sorry.

The other thing is the one that has baffled me for some time, but now I know the answer, particularly if you have a flip phone. I always wondered why people held their phone in front of them while speaking on hands-free. It always seemed a bit pointless; just leave the phone in your pocket. That’s the point after all!

Except that if someone calls you as opposed to you them, you are inevitably caught by surprise. So you answer the phone the way you usually do, because it doesn’t occur to you to press the button on the hands-free. If your phone is a flip, you answer by opening the flip and call off by closing it. On hands-free you suddenly realise that a) you didn’t need to open your phone to speak to your caller and b) you have no idea whether closing the flip will cut you off or not, so you end up walking around talking to your reflection in the window and holding the phone like the most delicate of Star Trek tricorders, careful not to end the call by mistake.

There is a secondary benefit of course: you can wave the handset around grandly whilst declaiming to your reflection in the shop window. Proof indeed, that you are not a nutter.