Polite Cell Phones

yEvb0 writes "Researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University are developing more polite cell phones. Strategies include programming the ringer to turn on and off according to the time of day, monitoring sound light levels to determine if the owner is a movie theater or talking to his boss, and even letting callers decide whether they'd like to interrupt based on this information."

It's Called 'Vibrate'

[eldavojohn]

Set your phone to vibrate. It's been working for me for years. Non-invasive when doing anything in my daily routine.

Is there really a reason I should have to enter my schedule into my phone? Because it's not going to happen.

They should research

[endrue]

a polite human being.
Seriously folks! How hard is it to turn off the ringer? Are we so daft these days that our phones have to be polite for us?

Polite is sugestive.

[jellomizer]

The problem with this is that you cannot take priority of the call. If I am talking to a Boss and say my Wife calls me to tell me she is having a Baby. I much rather have the phone stop being polite and call me. Also there is an issue of guessing correctly, If you are watching a movie in a theator vs. a home theator, with a good sound system. If you want to make the phone polite keep the vibrator on and make glasses (that are fasionable) that have a screen that can tell you who is calling. Don't bother with the AI Crap which will never work right, just go with a HighTech but simple solution.

Re:It's Called 'Vibrate'

[LeonGeeste]

Set your phone to vibrate. It's been working for me for years. Non-invasive when doing anything in my daily routine.

Is there really a reason I should have to enter my schedule into my phone?

The idea behind this is that people forget to do this, so the phone does it automatically. That's why they want you to enter your schedule. Of course, people *conscious* of those around them and *concerned* about the impacts of their actions on others probably *already* do this consistently enough not to need one. The people least likely to buy the "polite" phone are the ones who probably need it the most.

Re:It's Called 'Vibrate'

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Vibrate is not always the best option:
A couple examples:
At church, during a quiet time, a hip-worn cell vibrating against a Wooden Pew makes a lot of noise...
During one of my MBA classes, one guys phone was always vibrating, and it was distracting. Especially during exams.
There are many more examples, but I have to get back to work...

Re:In Communist China

[jellomizer]

How is that like the american phones. When the vibrate goes off people go and pick up the phone and start talking loudly to it. Many times it is far more interupting then the phone itself.

Re:good sales strategy

[kannibal_klown]

monitoring sound light levels to determine if the owner is a movie theater

Phones ringing are bad. Yes. But you know what? That's because people are inconsiderate jerks.

I remember going to a couple of movies in a row. Each time, not only did a phone ring, but at least once a guy would answer the phone and start talking in his "cell phone voice." In other words, twice as loud as a person would normally talk. One movie, a guy's phone went off like 5 times. Each time he'd have a loud conversation. Unforunately, this guy was HUGE and mean looking so nobody wanted to be the guy to say "shut up a--hole!"

There's no way to get around people. Even if you have the phone set to vibrate automatically (light+sound, radio flag, or GPS), some jerk will still answer the flipping thing and disturb everyone.

Re:I heard something about this long ago

[mwvdlee]

"Taking away my rights" is what happens when I throw their phone in the nearest trashcan, "Invasion of privacy" happens after that, when they feel the sudden impact of my foot in their groin.
Thankfully, restaurants and theaters are allowed to block cellphone transmissions here in the Netherlands.

Why can't the movie theatre _tell_ the phone

[wfmcwalter]

Rather than guessing we're in a movie theatre (which is what this amounts to) or places using cell-phone blockers, why can't someone implement a simple scheme to _tell_ the phone not to ring?

Of those phones which do ring in an inappropriate place, the owners of the great majority have simply forgotten to turn their phone off (they're forgetful, not sociopathic). Movie theatres, concert halls, libraries and other please-keep-quiet places could have short-range radio equipment inside which sent a "this is a quiet zone" signal. You'd program your phone (and it would come programmed by default) that when it was receiving that signal it would go onto the vibrate-only ring preference. When the signal was lost, it would revert to your default. So when you entered, and when you left, there would be no need to remember to set the phone correctly (the nagging ads always remind me to turn my phone off, but very often I forget at the end and leave my phone off for the remainder of the day). Similarly noisy places like train stations and airport concourses could broadcast a "this is a noisy environment", which your phone would typically interpret to mean that it should use a loud, shrill ringtone.

There >are Phones should, incidentally, have an "answer with hold" button. So a doctor in the movies whose phone rang (silently) could take it out, notice that it's the hospital's number, and push "answer with hold". The caller would get a short recorded message saying "this person is aware of your call, and will be with you shortly - please hold" - that way the doctor can take the call, but doesn't have to talk into the phone until they've walked into the theatre lobby, where they can take the phone off hold and talk.

Quiet times

[tpr]

My motorola flip-phone thingy has this delightful habit of starting to bleep (bleat) about the battery charge level and somehow it manages to work out the most annoying possible time at which to start. Say, 2am or so. It very rarely seems to bleat during tpical wake times.

Please, Mr Cellphone software developer, give me an option for a timerange when the phone will be silent. Yes, I'm sure I could turn it off but really, what are the odds of remembering? I know the odds of my wife remembering to turns hers back on are about 0 - from long experience.

Finally! (sort of)

[MaceyHW]

I've been wondering for years why cell phones don't allow you to program ring schedules. TFA mentions this feature in passing as something that's already out there, but I've never seen a phone with it. Is it only in top-end phones, or has it trickled down in the 18 months since I bought my last phone? I should say that I've always purchased mid-range cell phones, I only upgrade when my contract is up or the phone breaks, so I never have the latest and greatest.

With that one exception, the features described in TFA seem virtually worthless. Is it really worth feeding my cell phone speed and breaking information from my car so that it doesn't ring for the 15 seconds out of the day that I'm breaking hard? Yes maybe some day when my phone already connects to my car and it's trivial to pass this information along, but such a small percentage of cars and phones interact with eachother now that it seems ridiculous.

Certainly there are some features that could prevent phones from ringing at impolite times, for example, Wired article from like 1998 talked about how this emerging standard called 'bluetooth' would allow theaters and other areas to set up "quiet zones" which you could set your phone to automatically respect and switch to silent or vibrate. There's no need for my phone to have a set of expensive sensors to help it guess what I'm doing at the moment. KISS.

The real problem with cell phone politness is the user. If people could just remember that answering a cell phone implies that the conversation is more important than what they're doing at the moment, and then stop and decide if it actually is, 90% of cell phone annoyance would disappear. Also, learn to love vibrate mode. /rant.

Re:It's Called 'Vibrate'

[Helios1182]

Perhaps it would be easy to simply move the cell phone away from the hip? Stick it in a shirt pocket, move it to be on your lap. Some problems are so easily solved without technology. As for the MBA guy, well, I suppose you were lucky it was on vibrate. The prof or you could have mentioned something, especially in the exam. Otherwise, there will always be inconsiderate people, and technology can't fix that.

synchronous and asynchronous

[circletimessquare]

the greatest thing about email is it is asynchronous. i can communicate with someone else on my schedule, without my thoughts being interrupted by random claptrap. that's why my first cell phone ever was a blackberry, and before that the idea of a cellphone in my life horrified me. it didn't represent freedom to me, it represented being chained whereever i went. even now, my blackberry is silent, no ring or vibrate whatsoever, i just look at the screen every 5 minutes or so. i can't imagine a life interrupted and ruled by the random claptrap of a cellphone ringing

Polite phones don't help when people are rude.

[jonnythan]

http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,2028 1,18104683-5001022,00.html [news.com.au]

Seriously, the problem isn't the gadgetry, it's the people who use the gadgetry. In the link above, a woman's cell phone rings in a movie theater, then she whips it out and starts talking on it during the movie. Polite ringers won't do a damn thing when it's people that are the problem.

Idea for next invention...

[corellon13]

Let's invent polite people. Problem solved.

I've been waiting for this

[QBasicer]

I've been waiting for programmable ring times for a long while. To me, as a student, it just makes sense. I would rather have my cell phone switch between loud and vibrate according to the times I'm in school (so I don't have to try and remember to turn it on loud when I'm walking home, a time when I would never feel a phone vibrating). A day based schedule would work best, with an option in the contact list for an alternative schedule or override.

Who is the target market?

[phpWebber]

Polite people don't need it. Rude people won't buy it or learn how to use it. Seems a wasted effort.

Technical solution to an a***hole problem

[BenjyD]

The problem isn't the phones, it's the morons who use them. I can't get on a bus round here without some group of braindead teenagers watching music videos or oh-so-amusing 'comedy' video clips using the phone's external speaker turned up full. The kind of person who thinks that is acceptable behaviour is not going to bother with a polite phone.

maybe...

[penguin-collective]

Researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University are developing more polite cell phones. Strategies include programming the ringer to turn on and off according to the time of day,

Maybe "researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University" should make the effort and head down to their local electronics store to see which of the features they are so busily researching are already available in shipping phones.

As for the rest of the scenarios, leaving your phone on "buzz" works just fine. In particular, if it's in your pocket, it's silent, when it's on a hard surface, it makes a lot of noise--just what you want.

Location based knowledge

[nairb774]

Why not have a feature that if the phone (via GPS, cell towers, what not) knows that you are in a theater or in a *place* then it would automatically change to vibrate or some other defined setting? Just an idea.

Re:synchronous and asynchronous

[dangerz]

i just look at the screen every 5 minutes or so. i can't imagine a life interrupted and ruled by the random claptrap of a cellphone ringing

You can't imagine your life interrupted and ruled by a cellphone ringing, yet you look at your phone every 5 minutes?

I can easily say that the only time I ever even remember I have my cellphone on me is when it vibrates when I'm at work. At home, I switch it to ringer and it's all normal. I'm not latched to anything. If I don't want to talk, or I can't talk, I simply don't pick up. There's no law saying you can't pick up the phone. If I'm in a meeting, I put the damn thing on silent and it won't vibrate or ring.

If I forget that I have it on silent, when I'm done work at the end of the day I'll look at it to put it on ringer and see what I missed. Those that are really important know my work number. Everyone else can wait.

Typical American technological solution...

[mccrew]

This same story was on NPR this morning, and I listened with increasing incredulity to the ridiculous technological lengths that the American tech crowd goes to find a technical solution to non-technical problems.

There were discussions about having people wear various light and sound sensors so the phone could make an "intelligent" choice whether to ring or not, or going through an extensive training period where the user tells the phone whether to ring or not, and the phone "learns." Like with anything online these days, the topic went to how much private data was the user willing to give up in order to allow the callers to decide whether to make the phone ring or not.

Hello??? The problem here is that people are thoughtless. No amount of tech is really going to change that.

This reminds me of that old joke of the difference between the American space program and the old Soviet space program. The Americans spent lots of money to research and develop a pen that would work without gravity, while the Soviets used pencils. Nothing new under the sun.

Re:It's Called 'Vibrate'

[paeanblack]

Vibrate is not always the best option:

When a cell phone on vibrate is going to be too distracting to others, THEN TURN IT OFF!

You have two options:

1) Accept that cell-phone use in certain situations is inappropriate and don't use them.
2) Don't put yourself in those situations.

You used church as your example. Why are you there? To talk to God? (sorry, God, I need to take this call...wtf?) Or are you there just to be seen? (yeah, I'm here to look good, but I'm going to be an ass and disrupt the service dealing with my phone...wtf??)

Seriously, if your cellphone going ringy-dingy is more important than the service you are attending, why are you there?