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The first minute of every phone call is torture now

theatlantic.com

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Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#131

Post by bearmode »

codalan wrote: post #40

The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape. Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feature or to learn about X, when I'm urgently trying to make a call. It's so f-ing rude and intrusive. And it's designed to trick you into enabling shit without giving you time to think it over. It's such a scummy thing to do, but hey, it's Google. Imagine having…

I have literally never experienced this on my Galaxy S10, or any Android before it. Is this new?

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#132

Post by bearmode »

jiggawatts wrote: post #107
jeroenhd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What phone are you using? That sounds like a terrible experience, I'll need to make sure I avoid it. For what it's worth, you can install a new dialer from the Play Store. Or you can grab an open source one from F-Droid. The Simple apps are quite popular because they just do one thing and do it well, i.e. https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.dialer/

Or just use an iPhone. This is the problem with Stockholm Syndrome. You think you're on the right side the entire time.

No thanks, I'd rather shoot myself in the eye than have to use Safari.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#133

Post by bearmode »

gary_0 wrote: post #45
Markoff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not problem of a bezel, but either crappy software or bad sensor, never happened to me through 11+ years of using Android phones with touch screen. Better choose decent phone next time, mind sharing what phone causes you this trouble?

Samsung Galaxy S10e (with recent software). It wasn't cheap. And all my previous Android phones were fine too, but this one only has the little hole in the screen for the camera. There is no sensor.

I have an S10, literally never had an issue with this

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#134

Post by aaron695 »

marak830 wrote: post #100
codalan wrote: post #40

The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape. Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feature or to learn about X, when I'm urgently trying to make a call. It's so f-ing rude and intrusive. And it's designed to trick you into enabling shit without giving you time to think it over. It's such a scummy thing to do, but hey, it's Google. Imagine having…

Why do these bullshit comments always seem to end up on top?

No post body was provided.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#135

Post by calvano915 »

lozenge wrote: post #118
saiya-jin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have strong suspicion you are not talking about Google's android dialer but some chinese ad-infested knock-off. When I used to have crappy Xiaomi, I had ads everywhere - settings, basic 'android' apps, most probably dialer too, definitely SMS sending app and so on. Threw it away and never looked back. There are premium androids who give users completely different experience, be it Samsung, Sony, Google etc etc etc.…

Samsung phones were actually highly ad laden until they realised it was hurting their brand about a year or two before you bought yours. I'm expecting ads to slowly slip back in.

Huh? I've had numerous Galaxy phones since S8 and there's no issues with ads throughout the OS.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#136

Post by amanaplanacanal »

xnickb wrote: post #76
kergonath wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone calls from unknown numbers go straight to voice mail. Same for some people who think it’s fair game to call me and bore my ears off with their life whilst I am working. Problem solved.

How is it solved for someone who has to have phone calls? Since when saying "it's not a problem for me" solved any problems?

If you are being paid to answer your phone, then answer your phone. I’m not, so I don’t.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#137

Post by the_third_wave »

saiya-jin wrote: post #88
codalan wrote: post #40

The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape. Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feature or to learn about X, when I'm urgently trying to make a call. It's so f-ing rude and intrusive. And it's designed to trick you into enabling shit without giving you time to think it over. It's such a scummy thing to do, but hey, it's Google. Imagine having…

I have strong suspicion you are not talking about Google's android dialer but some chinese ad-infested knock-off. When I used to have crappy Xiaomi, I had ads everywhere - settings, basic 'android' apps, most probably dialer too, definitely SMS sending app and so on. Threw it away and never looked back. There are premium androids who give users completely different experience, be it Samsung, Sony, Google etc etc etc.…

Xiaomi makes fine hardware with overly intrusive firmware installed on it which they sell for competitive prices. The solution is the same as with any other Android device: install one of the many AOSP-derived distributions on it and you have fine hardware with clean firmware offering OTA updates and more freedom than any vendor-supplied distribution offers, not to mention waaaay more freedom than the Apple/iOS combo offers.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#138

Post by senectus1 »

filoeleven wrote: post #92
senectus1 wrote: post #54

I can't remember the last time i actually held a phone to my ear... I always always have a bluetooth headset/car around. these days I wear an AfterShokz "bone conducting" headset pretty much as soon as I get up in the morning till i go to bed. I listen to podcasts/audiobooks/music and make calls on it all day... no issues.

Huh, I didn’t know that bone conduction had progressed that far. Do you have a headset with or without the boom mic? Is it always paired to one device, or do you switch between a few? If you do switch it around, does the handoff work well? Asking because I’ve loved the idea since I first heard about it, and might pick up a headset myself now that I know they’re of decent quality.

No boom mic. it is fine in most scenarios.

The model i have is paired with one phone. not sure if the newer models have multi pairing.

Music is kinda crap on them. but everything else is fine.

I also have a set of Bose QC45's for Teams and decent music listening. that also supports multi pairing

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#139

Post by joshspankit »

ksec wrote: post #130
gary_0 wrote: post #12

Because phones aren't allowed to have bezels anymore for some reason, I'm constantly hanging up on people because there's no room for a proximity sensor to turn off the screen so my cheek presses the "hang up" button. It tries to use the front camera as a makeshift sensor, but it doesn't work very well. Recently I reacted with incredulity when the people on the other end could properly hear me through a newly-connect…

Yes. It is either Hang up, Mute, or Worst, suddenly on speaker phone so the sound would blow up my ear. There are many other aspect of "calling" that has gotten worst, including call quality, codec and signal etc. My thinking is that no one calls anymore and no one gives a damn about phone calling. I still remember I used to buy Motorola Phone just because of their Crystal talk.

Personally I think it was two things reinforcing each other:

On one side, a natural decline in people using the phone (replaced by texting/apps)

On the other side: the cell companies no longer “encumbered” by laws around landline reliability, cramming ever more phone calls in to the same amount of bandwidth

The cell companies could have the clearest call quality by a wide margin, if they chose to. TBH, (and I know I’m an outlier) even though I talk to people for maybe 5 hours a month, I would still switch providers to one that offered call a quality equivalent to being in person

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#140

Post by specialist »

dzink wrote: post #57

There needs to be a Big(O) table for UX. Number of user interactions and decisions to get to each functionality in each screen size. Then comes prioritization. You can only fit so many buttons and boxes close to the hottest zones of user interaction, especially on Mobile, and even less of them in advertising-powered products. When someone prioritizes the wrong use case on premium real estate and pushes back buttons t…

I haven't done user interface design, in anger, for 20+ years. Before the kids renamed it "UX" (old wine, new bottles).

Anywho. We used to consider Fitts' Law, Hick's Law, and so forth. Celebrity UI designers (ahem) like Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini and Jakob Nielsen would belabor these seemingly obvious design considerations ad nauseum.

Your Big-O suggestion could be a nice heuristic for scoring and ranking design alternatives. Cool.

Not that design intent ever mattered. The age old tale remains the same. Grind, iterate, validate. (Does anyone do usability testing any more?) Voilá!

Then some PHB doing drive-by mgmt decrees "Those buttons should be cornflower blue. I like the old font better. Just change it all back."

I eventually rage quit UI work. Preferring to have my good taste, experience, skill, and efforts denigrated in other domains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick%27s_law

It now occurs to me the audience for all that UI design advice was our bosses, not us practitioners. For appeals to authority. For populating our bookshelves, to exude the facsimile of learnedness.

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