As in, you’re in a meeting and a call comes in. Normally just hitting the volume button quiets the ringer (or has been my experience).
However, I’ve been in two meetings this month where a cell phone went off and the user just ignored it (one was audible and the guy slowly left the room with it, the other was on vibrate and the phone loudly vibrated away on the table). Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good look at what type of phone either was.
Anyway, back to the question: does anyone know of or have had a mobile phone that did not have a way to silence the ringer when ringing? I’m guessing that may have been the case in the early days of mobile phones?
Virtually every cell phone has a no vibrate - no ring silence option. This has been standard for at leat 10+ years.
Most of the time people simply forget to slience the phone. Silenceing a ringing phone can take 1-4 key presses, and some people just decide to wait it out rather than scramble for it…
I don’t know if anyone can ever come up with the pre-history of cellular telephony – going back to the 1980’s, when people rode to work on dinosaurs, just one week after Jesus flew away with a quick BRB, LOL, but … even if a very old model won’t mute the ring, surely any model has an off switch. Like asto: said, maybe people are just simply too rude/selfish/untechnical/forgetful to turn their phone on and off.
I’m not debating whether it’s right or wrong to remember to shut your mobile phone off, or even to silence it when ringing. I’m genuinely curious if any phones sold do not have a way to silence the ring when ringing. I admit, kinda a dumb question, but I’m still curious.
On the LG VX5500 (a couple year old phone), if I have the phone set to answer/connect when I open it up, then no, I can’t silence an incoming phone call.
To do that, I have to change the setting so that in order to answer an incoming call I have to open the phone and press a button. If it’s set up that way, then there is an option to allow me to either mute the ringer for this call, or to send it directly to voicemail.
My phone probably has a way to silence the ringer, but I have no idea what it is. It wouldn’t surprise me if a large majority of phone users, or even a majority, also don’t know how to silence their phone’s ringing once it’s begun (other than answering it). Probably a vastly larger number than the number of phones that don’t have a way to do that.
I’m using a Japanese smartphone with Android 2.2. If a call comes in, I get three options: Answer, Hold, Voice Messaging. Choosing “Hold” would let the phone keep ringing without any sound, “Voice Messaging” sends them to a recording.
I used to have a cell phone (a Crackberry) that had an oddly complicated process for powering down the phone (as opposed to simply locking it or putting it in standby or some such). As a result, it would occassionally go off after I thought I had turned it off (I may have been mashing the power button or something on accident when I put it back in my pocket).
So now when I sit down in a meeting, I just pull the battery out of the phone regardless of the model I’m using.
My RAZR, and probably most other Motorola phones, setting it to “silent” or “vibrate” is very simple - but the process irself makes a ring noise. :smack:
Some [del]engineer[/del] software designer didn’t think it all the way through.
My phone has several profiles which allow different ring tones/ message alerts, etc, one of which is silent - no ring, no alert tone, no vibrate.
If I haven’t set that profile, there is an option that appears when it receives a call, “mute”. That cuts off the ringer and vibrate for that call. There is also an option to reject the call which sends it straight to voicemail.
I suspect the issue you had is because the owners of the phones don’t know about the options that could silence their phone either while certain settings are applied or on a temporary basis for each call. They are also more important than anyone else in the room, or so they think.
<nit>
As a former Motorola software engineer, I can honestly say that we didn’t have much say in the functionality of the product. It wasn’t uncommon for us to implement something we didn’t like, because the requirements said so. Occasionally we could fix them…but most of the time, we were stuck with product definition’s requirements document.
I recognize that you differentiated “designer” and “engineer”…but it wasn’t even the “software” team defining this stuff.
All the LG phones I have had worked the same way. Press and hold the "" key for a few seconds and the ring status cycles to the next one in this list:[ul][]standard ring[]vibrate only[]ring off[/ul]
As someone who uses a motorola phone as a work issued phone, I wonder if anyone at that company knows how a phone should work. It’s an i570 with a user interface that basically says “Fuck you, user”. And that’s for both hardware and software.
Hell, every phone I’ve ever had (a short list of 4 (old LG dumbphone circa 2003, Windows Mobile 5 phone, iPhone, and current Android phone)) have all silenced the ringer by pressing the volume key (I always have done volume down, no clue if volume up always silences.)
I’m guessing a lot more phones than people realize do this, but people have a habit of never reading their manuals or finding out the features of their phones, so I’m going with the “they don’t know how to silence it when it’s ringing” option. I find it hard to believe no phone has that option.
That’s what I thought (about using the volume button to silence the ringer), but wasn’t sure if it’s a “standard” thing or just common to the phones I have had (primarily LGs and now 2 iPhones).
I had an LG VX5500 and could silence the ring by pressing one of the volume buttons on the side.