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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

#231

Post by dfxm12 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #191
kibwen wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key word there being analog phone lines. Cell phone lines, which account for 99.99999% of all phone communication these days, are IMO worse than VOIP for sound quality (though better at latency). It's weird that kids growing up in the post-landline era will never realize how clear and amazingly low-latency phone calls used to be. If two people were seated across a table talking on a landline, they'd hear the sign…

Low-latency for local calls, yes. High quality sound, also yes. But for long distance, no thank you. I will not go back to the 90s just for that one reason alone. It was hellish calling across the Atlantic. Like 15 cents a minute with a 1.5 (sometimes 2) second delay between speaking. And having to remember the dialling sequences and complexity around looking up foreign phone numbers, both of which are now just built…

Or having to trudge around in the rain for a phone booth and having to page through a worn out phone book just to make some dinner reservations. Yuck.

Pretending like this was the only way to make a dinner reservation reminds me of the juice loosener informercial from the Simpsons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viejY6UZ5Bk

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

#232

Post by coldpie »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #164
midoridensha wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function. No, it's not. You sound like a dinosaur. A phone's primary functions are 1) text-messaging apps, 2) camera, 3) dating apps, 4) banking apps, and various others. Phone calls are somewhere around #20.

dating apps over phone calls is an absolutely ludicrous take that demonstrates a disconnect from reality

Definitely not. It depends on who you and your circle of friends are, of course, but dating apps are definitely way higher usage than phone calls among anyone I know. I use my phone as a phone less than half a dozen times per year. If the phone functionality vanished, I don't think I would mind.

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

#233

Post by rootusrootus »

2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #102
danielbln wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a 5-6 inch pad available? If not, then that's not an alternative, can't shove a 10 inch tablet into my pocket. And while it's called a phone, the primary function for many (dare I say most?) is definitely not doing voice calls, hell my phone app icon isn't even on the homescreen anymore, that's how little I use this device for phone calls and I use it for hours every day otherwise.

> Is there a 5-6 inch pad available? Android tablets? Several.

I'd be interest to know what those are. Smallest I've been able to find is 8 inches.

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

#234

Post by Clent »

ryandrake wrote: post #192
midoridensha wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function. No, it's not. You sound like a dinosaur. A phone's primary functions are 1) text-messaging apps, 2) camera, 3) dating apps, 4) banking apps, and various others. Phone calls are somewhere around #20.

The way I like to look at it is: Imagine a world where the concept of a phone call never existed. Then, suddenly someone invents an app that: 1. Allows an instant, full-screen foreground takeover over whatever else you are currently doing on the device 2. Rings and vibrates your device 3. Has a button that could allow an unknown person to send and receive audio to and from your device 4. All of this is triggered remo…

It's a pocket computer.

The phone feature is a legacy feature that goes away with 2G. Soon carriers will only be moving data.

The providers have data to show that the phone functionality is not a primary use case. It is a legacy product whose overhead has a real cost on our economy.

When do we stop paying $10-$20 a month per lines of service, for the privileging of being interrupted? When do we stop calling it a smartphone and treating as such and recognizing it as as computer, a laptop for your pocket.

I expect those born in the last century to be most resistant to the deprecation of the 'phone call' as a concept. People also reminisced about having phone lines that were partied together. Imagine what scammers would do with that today.

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

#235

Post by fknorangesite »

happyopossum wrote: post #223
joshstrange wrote: post #161

I feel like I'm in another universe from this writer. 9.9 times out of 10 my AirPods connect immediately when I pop them them before answering and if they take a second longer we are in Not to mention headphones aren't a necessity. Sure they are nice but if someone calls me and I think it's going to be quick I just answer and hold the phone up, it's not the end of the world.

> It takes some nerve to call someone without texting/emailing about it ahead of time if it's not an emergency Err, wait. WHAT?

How old are you? I'm in my 40s, but even I know this is a reasonably common gen-z social norm.

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

#236

Post by spookthesunset »

tristor wrote: post #188

I have never had any of the issues described in this article and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere. It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off l…

> American telcos make money off letting scammers operating boiler rooms in India steal money from your grandparents, so they're happy to utterly destroy any utility that a phone has.

Not sure how telcos profit off scammers. Especially since I would imagine many times their payments are fraudulent. If anything these scammers waste the telco’s time too.

This problem clearly isn’t getting fixed but I feel like saying “telcos make bank off scammers” is just too easy of a reason. There has to be some underlying reason this is a hard problem to solve.

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

#237

Post by GaylordTuring »

I very often have my Sony earbuds connected to my iPhone, but I don't really like talking through them, so when I get a call, I usually just pop them out and then select that the audio should come from the phone speaker, which works. But then, just 10-15 seonds afterwards, if I haven't put my earbuds in their case (which I might not have been able to do yet), they will reconnect, hence switching the call back to them. And this dance continues until I manage to find the case or simply give up.

To me, this makes no sense. I could understand that the phone might think that I want to switch to my headphones if I take them out of their case during my call, but why switch back to the headphones that I've actively chosen not to use just a moment ago when I haven't even put them back in the case in between?

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

#238

Post by tristor »

vlunkr wrote: post #227
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I thought it was going to be about the true hell that is calling any company now. Phone menus for at least a minute and then connected to someone with long Covid and/or new hire that has no idea what they are doing or forgot how. Then transferred to another and another and another. Covid annihilated customer service.

It was terrible before, I'm not sure Covid could have made it any worse.

I don't know if it's directly due to Covid, as the grandparent asserts, but it's pretty indisputable that the quality of customer service has eroded across pretty much every industry sector, at least in the US. This could be due to companies generally being short-staffed, but it does seem like even when you interact with someone the intelligence level (or maybe more charitably, the experience level) of the people you interact with has gone down.

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

#239

Post by rootusrootus »

y7 wrote: post #39
pavlov wrote: post #22

Phone calls should have a subject line, just like emails. It’s crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on my personal device with no context. If call metadata included a subject line, software could automatically screen out calls where the subject is empty or spammy, just like with email. It would be very helpful for missed calls. “Why did my wife call twice in the last 5 minutes, did something happen, sh…

I like the idea, but it will never take off. People are fundamentally lazy when it comes to these things. Look at the surging popularity of voice messages in some circles, shifting the burden of communication fully to the receiver. Even if you had the feature, I'd wager most subject lines would stay empty, or just contain the bare minimum like "hi".

It doesn't have to be a burden. My watch already provides me a quick-select list of responses. So when I make a call, instead of one generic send button, how about two? One of them labeled "this is a emergency" or something like that. Maybe even a little list of a half dozen of the most commonly used subjects, so I just click the one that matches.

No reason to make people work any harder than they do now.

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

#240

Post by armchairhacker »

tristor wrote: post #188

I have never had any of the issues described in this article and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere. It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off l…

> It's gotten so bad I just don't answer my phone unless it's a call from someone I know

I have my phone set to silence calls unless they are in my contacts list. I tell people this whenever I give out my phone number.

Honestly I think this should be the norm. There's no reason for a random stranger to need to call you, if they want to reach out they can text or email, and I can't imagine many urgent situations where they can't text, can't forward the message through anyone in my contacts, and can't directly get the authorities to contact me.

The only exception is automated phone calls (e.g. call from a random number for an interview or to confirm 2FA where I can't do SMS), in which case I have to temporarily disable silencing calls. But systems where you get called once from a random number and can't call back are really awful for other reasons...

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