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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

#421

Post by midoridensha »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #252
coldpie wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the disconnect is that you're not able to see outside your bubble. Your average iphone or android user is using the phone function far more than dating apps

No, they're not. In the country I'm living in, *no one* uses phone calls except for rare things like delivery people calling because the box doesn't fit in your apartment's delivery boxes. Absolutely no one under the age of 50 uses voice calling to talk to their friends or family; they all use LINE texting.

I haven't taken a phone call in over a month now (from the Amazon delivery guy). I use dating and texting apps every day. For actual talking to friends/family, I use voice and video chat functions in chat apps.

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

#422

Post by chiph »

rchaud wrote: post #157

The article makes a great point early on: hearing voices over VOIP is markedly different than over analog phone lines. The robotic voice and the weird compression when your connection isn't good are common for me. Worst of all is the 0.5-1 second delay I still sometimes hear, on local calls no less! If the same call was being had over a phone line and we were in the same country, the audio fidelity would be excellent…

If you want to see an example of cellphone latency, watch your local news. When they send a reporter to cover a remote story these days, they nearly always use a cellphone as a camera (cheap, ubiquitous, good image quality, and they don't need to pay a separate camera operator).

When the anchor in the studio says "And now over to Lester, who is reporting from the scene" - there's a 1-2 second delay before we hear and see Lester respond.

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

#423

Post by danfoxley »

eeperson wrote: post #400
svachalek wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Same with turning on a TV these days. People used to flip a switch, now it's a highly technical process that takes a few minutes.

It doesn't have to be. If your devices support HDMI-CEC[0], then you can turn on 1 device and everything sets itself up. For example, I can turn on my PS4 and it automatically turns on the TV and sets the correct input. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control

My Samsung TV "smart" feature overlays for 1+ minute when using HDMI-CEC.

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

#424

Post by ghostpepper »

namaria wrote: post #416
ghostpepper wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be correct that we made the right choice with the tradeoff, but saying that the old system worked better (for those who could use it) is not nostalgia. Audio quality (and communication ability) on zoom is objectively far worse than it was over analog copper lines.

Why are you comparing zoom calls to analog phone calls? My transcontinental, zero marginal cost whatsapp phone calls are pretty good.

I haven't used that - how is the latency?

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

#425

Post by throwtheacctawy »

papascrubs wrote: post #147
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…

To be fair, a good chunk of Android in total is a UX hellscape. This coming from a lifelong Android user. One of Android's greatest strengths (customization) is also it's greatest weakness.

No post body was provided.

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

#426

Post by mjevans »

Spivak wrote: post #162
mjevans wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's your neighbors, ALL OF THEM, trying to watch 4K on 2 TVs per household all at once.

And why shouldn't they? That's like the whole reason to even have a high-bandwidth internet connection.

They should - but hard-line Ethernet connected.

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

#427

Post by DangitBobby »

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #274
wruza wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't tell her the truth, make her puzzled. Few days ago I had to help my grandma with hiding some utility cables behind a cover on a new door. I decided that a guy from tv cable company would be the most experienced with this and called their support. Please describe your issue? TV has no signal (it has). Are you at home? Yes (no). Let me check it... hmm, it's okay on our side. Did you try to rescan channels? Yes (o…

Ignore the voice tree. Just shout profanities or "representative". Decent systems will pick up your frustration and divert you to the human queue.

If it's a subscription service, you can just say you're calling to cancel. If anything will get you on with a person, that will.

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

#428

Post by bigbacaloa »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #18
bigbacaloa wrote: post #4

I thought only old people still used the phone for making calls.

Define “old” :) Also even those of us who don’t ca that much, do receive calls since some entities still prefer to call you (government, medical, education). It’s either that or snail mail - despite the fact that most of them have my email address.

Like many comments in this site, this is very US centric. Where I live (in Europe) no government entity calls anyone. They might send an SMS as confirmation or notification, but formal communications are sent electronically. Nobody under the age of about 45 calls on the phone as a regular matter.

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

#429

Post by d21d3q »

mellavora wrote: post #93
arnaudsm wrote: post #23

My golden rules to make videoconferencing more reliable : - Use ethernet. Wi-Fi isn't reliable, your neighbor's microwave can ruin everything. - Use wired headphones. 0 latency. 0 connection time. And disables the mic noise-cancelling algos. - Use classic phone calls when required. It's more robust and latency is even better.

Could you let us know what headphones offer a control to disable noise-cancelling algos?

Look for USB conference headset
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