So what happens when you have your phone out using other apps besides the phone app? You never lock it when you put it back in the holster then either?
I have this holster
It’s an Otterbox. The phone clips into it. Never had any problems. It’s secure, but also easy to access. It includes a rubber and plastic ‘shell’ for the phone that makes the phone pretty much indestructible, and easier to hold. Otherwise I find phones fragil, and rather slick to hold.
Yes. My friends all know that I prefer texting. If they call and leave a voicemail, I’ll read their message and text back.
My iPhone is set to send any calls not from contacts directly to voicemail. The phone is also set to not “ring” from contact calls. Text messages vibrate.
That that I think about it, I usually lock my phone before putting it back in my holster except after I finish a phone call, however if I was in Gmail and I didn’t lock my phone before putting it back I doubt there would be any real problem.
Quite wrong IMO.
Remember the real process here. Random taps are being registered on the screen as you’re walking around. Many of the taps won’t be on active spots and will be harmless. Other taps will randomly land on live buttons or links or … .
Now open GMail, tap [select all], now tap [delete]. Yeah, you’d probably think that was a problem if it happened in your pocket unwittingly.
Sticking your phone in your pocket or holster with the screen live is like handing it to a toddler. Shit will happen.
I can’t disagree with any of that, and I am trying to retrain myself to habitually lock my phone before putting it away, regardless of what I was doing with it, but old habits die hard.
Thanks to everyone for your advice. The bottom line is there is no way to turn off the call back feature because it’s how an iPhone works. While the phone app is active on the screen, if you touch it in a particular way, it will make a call. It’s designed to work that way, and because I wasn’t locking the phone before clumsily putting it back in my holster, I was inadvertently causing the phone to either dial back the last caller, or someone at random. Either way, I was causing it to happen and there is no way to disable that “feature”. All I have to do, is retrain myself to lock my phone before I put it back in my holster, and the problem goes away… forever. The only problem will be breaking a 30+ year habit, but I’ve come up with a few ways to do that, so I will no longer be known as the Butt Dial King in the future. Case closed.
I can attest. I drove home from work one day and when I got home took my phone out of my pocket. It was displaying the distance my Uber driver was from a park I passed regularly on my drive home! Somehow, after putting my phone in my pocket when I got in my car, the jostling had opened the Uber app and “ordered” a ride! (to my “location” when the confirmation was placed).
And no, I hadn’t been using Uber that day (though no guarantee it wasn’t open in the background from a previous day).
donald! - that you?
Yeah, there was one day when after doing a lot of walking at work (and had my phone in my pocket for the pedometer app, so I could whine about how many miles I’d logged on the clock) I discovered that my phone had opened two or three dating apps and had swiped on people.
I was mortified.
O.P. concur that moving your holster enough to jostle your muscle memory may be the best solution.
It’s kinda like the super-old-skool memory trick of tying a string around your finger, or switching your watch to the other wrist.
Anything that pings your unconscious radar.
It won’t remind you what you need to remember to do, just that you need to do a thing.
That’s what you get for having those tools of the Devil on your phone you … hussy … you!! 
Rowwr!
This is exactly the one I have, except my phone is a Samsung S22. I’ve used the Otterbox case and holster beginning with my first smartphone, and I’ve never had an issue with a cracked screen or butt-dials.
With the OtterBox holster I mentioned above. It’s impossible to dial the phone without removing it from the holster first.
It’s a quick click with your thumb to remove it and have it in your hand. May not work for everyone, but is great for me. I am almost always wearing a fleece as outerwear, and it also covers it. It’s never accidentally popped out of the holster.
I have not checked. But I would be surprised if there was not an app that prevents this problem?
That’s impressive that you were developing this habit over a decade before the iPhone was introduced in 2007!
My late wife never locked her phone before putting it in her purse and frequently butt dialed (purse dialed?) people. I would gently remind her whenever I saw her do it, but somehow it didn’t stick. I could never understand the behavior. It seems as weird to me as sticking a lit match in your pocket.
My wife used to butt-dial me with her Blackberry all the time. And, unless you had a flip phone in the old days, you were able to butt dial all day long with cell phones.
I’ll reiterate getting a flip phone.
All the pre-smart cell phones I had had a key combination that locked the keyboard which I always applied like I now turn off the screen of my smartphone automatically.
I was truly ahead of my time.
On my android I have the [swipe a pattern to unlock the phone] feature activated. Not for any additional security, but to prevent the locked phone in my pocket from being randomly unlocked by a bump on the “wakeup” button, followed by uncontrolled butt-dialing, butt-texting, and email deleting.
The swipe-a-pattern is just hard enough that it’s never randomly activated on its own.
It doesn’t offer an real security to a half-smart thief: if you hold the phone at an angle to the lighting you can clearly see the finger oil trail connecting the dots from the dozens of unlocks since I last washed the screen completely clean.