I have a new nickname… “King of the Butt Dials”. At least once per day, but usually three or four times per day, I butt dial someone. Often it’s the last person I’ve talked to, but it can be some random person I’ve spoken to from the past. I believe it’s related to the fact that I wear a holster. (Please let’s not get into wearing and not wearing phone holsters. I don’t have anywhere else to put my phone when I am out walking around that will keep it safe. Trust me on this.)
I assume it has something to do with my replacing my iPhone back in its holster, since that’s when the butt dial occurs. My fingers must be touching the screen in such a way that I’m telling my phone to dial some phone number either from my recent calls or favorites list. I can’t figure out what I am doing and therefore disable this wonderful feature. I have an iPhone 8 Plus running IOS 16.77 if that matters.
Has anyone had this problem and found a way to disable this kind of auto-dialing? There must me a way, but I haven’t found it by Googling yet. Please help!
I carry my Samsung Galaxy in a holster, and don’t seem to have this problem. One thing I’m very vigilant about is hitting the button on the side that puts the phone to sleep before I stow it.
All great suggestions, but trying to teach a new dog new tricks is not easy. If II knew what button I was hitting perhaps I could find a way to disable it. Putting my iPhone back in its holster is an automatic action, and not something I ever think about.
But do you switch your screen off before as @Dogginit suggested? Because that does the trick.
ETA: I’ve been using smartphones for 10 years now and always switch off the screen, and in that time I only once “butt-dialed” (in fact, I sent a picture of the inside of my jeans pocket, so only darkness, to a friend via WhatsApp).
I have a similar problem with my Pixel 6a that I carry in my front shirt pocket. Not with dialing, but with random apps opening: it doesn’t matter which way the screen faces,towards my body or away, when I’m walking or hiking the slight jostling will inevitably open one or more apps. Not a huge deal but kind of frustrating. I was hiking the other day and my timer alarm went off which took me right out of my nature-induced reverie.
The ultimate solution would be to turn the phone off, but that’s not a good option since I use the camera so often and I don’t want to turn it on every time I want to take a picture.
It can be really hard to stop an automatic action like that because by definition, your conscious mind is not really engaged. But once you “reprogram” it, shutting the screen off will be part of the new automatic action. To (temporarily) stop it from being automatic while you add the extra step, you need something to interrupt the automatic-ness of the action, and mentally link that interruption to your intention to add the screen-off step.
It might be as simple as moving your holster over a few inches so that you fumble for an instant, or you may have to move it further, or find something else that makes your mind engage. It may sound odd, but location and kinetic memory can be very strong – you might be able to take a few moments and consciously, mindfully, hold your phone in your hand as if you just finished a call, think “I need to turn the screen off” do so, then holster the phone as usual. Repeat several times, then see if you can remember to do it after an actual phone call.
Once you are reliably remembering to turn the screen off, try moving the holster back and see if the new action becomes automatic. It might take a little while for the old location to work again, but it should click-- probably all at once – make sure the new step is included, and you’re golden.
Sidenote
You can use this sort of trick to remind yourself of all kinds of things. E.g., when I go down to the basement to do several different things, if one of them involves bringing something back upstairs, I sometimes will take a moment at the bottom of the stairs to think a couple of times, “when I go up the stairs, I’ll have x in my hand.” I’ll usually be reminded when I’m at the bottom of the stairs again. It can work even better if you say it aloud, because you add in auditory memory (hearing yourself) and additional kinetic memory (forming the words).
Thanks for the advice. I will definitely try that and try to retrain myself. Breaking old habits can be very difficult for me, especially when the habit is unconscious.
Could be worse. Forget Zero Dark Thirty propaganda, the story I heard was that Bin Laden was caught when he butt-dialed the CIA.
Apparently his courier with the satellite phone would always call family in Saudi Arabia from a city in Pakistan. One day, for a brief moment, the phone went live at a different location, a distance away - long enough to transmit its location to the satellite before it was turned off; presumably someone accidentally hit the “on” button. When they looked at the location, the CIA found Osama’s hideout.
iPhones have a little known feature. They will detect a magnet next to the screen and automatically lock. This is used when the phone is in the Apple iPhone wallet. Close the wallet and the phone locks.
So two possibilities. Buy the wallet. I would recommend them. They protect the phones really well, and I pushed myself into downsizing the cards and stuff I carry to three cards and a bit of folding cash. Never looked back. Gets you the advantages of a folding phone without the grief.
Or, glue a small magnet on the outside of your holster in the location that causes the phone to lock. This probably won’t work as well as using the wallet, as there is still potentially a gap in the holstering action before the magnet is detected within which your fingers might cause trouble. I don’t know where the magnet needs to be, but I’m sure a bit of trial and error should find the right location.
Darn, I spoke too soon. The feature only exists in iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and 11 Pro. They dropped it again and subsequent phones don’t have it. It appears that when they introduced magsafe to the iPhone it wrecked things. Sorry about that.
You might find that just using a wallet like cover solves your main problem anyway.
Gives me more reasons not to update to a new phone.
I think that’s my only choice at this point. I was hoping there was a simply way to turn off that “feature”, since Apple is pretty good at providing ways to turn things off. If I knew what sequence of buttons or screen touches caused these random auto-calls, that would help too.
The fact that is isn’t a widespread problem tells me that most people are trained to turn off their phones before returning them to their holster versus the way I clumsily put it back in my holster and touch something that causes the auto-call to happen.
