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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

#81

Post by kelnos »

topspin wrote: post #52
Markoff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but new old people bring their habits from younger years like not using phone for making private calls.

You'll need a few years yet for that. Most old people around today used rotary phones unironically.

Hell, I'm not even that old (41), and we had a rotary phone until 1988 or so. We also had a touch-tone cordless phone, but the corded phone in the kitchen was still rotary.

I expect there are even younger people than I who used rotary phones as kids.

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

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

thereisnospork wrote: post #58
2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s crazy that anyone can force a full-screen interrupt on my personal device with no context. It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function. If you don't want that, wouldn't a pad be a better option than a phone? Besides, how would you handle calls from landlines and such?

>Besides, how would you handle calls from landlines and such? Direct to voicemail, of course, with a message saying 'text me' for automatic transcription. As they say, its a feature not a bug [to not be interrupted]. In a perfect world I'd have a secretary or AI to screen calls on my behalf, but I don't.

Ironically, you almost do. Last week I updated my S22 to Android 13, and one of the new features Samsung claims to have implemented[0] is to have Bixby pick the call for you, transcribe what the caller says, and display it on screen, giving you a choice to pick up the call, or type/select a reply that Bixby will then say to the caller. With spam call detection being an established feature for years already, the ingredients for your AI assistant are already there.

Now that I think of it, I might actually try this the next time a telemarketer calls.

----

[0] - I haven't actually tested it, nor seen it in action - just saw it being mentioned when I reviewed "Tips" app after update.

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

#83

Post by tacostakohashi »

logicalmonster wrote: post #2

I cannot read the article due to the paywall, but just to vent.....one painful phone pet peeve for me that's declined recently is the art of people leaving a useful voice mail. Ok, I get it. There's a few technically-challenged people that struggle with emails and texts and prefer to use their voice. I'm perfectly happy to deal with that. But they call and leave a voice mail that focuses on the wrong information. The…

Being forced to convey things like addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc by voice instead of text can be incredibly painful, and of course it gets worse with poor quality connections, accents, non-native languages, etc.

I almost wish there was some low-tech thing for sending text in-band in voice calls, like DTMF but for all ASCII characters, or some 75 baud protocol / tones so you could be like 'Ok, I am sending my name / email / account #. See it on your screen? great! screencap it... copy and paste it into your app now, etc!'

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

#84

Post by nihilius »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #50
baxtr wrote: post #31

This is about local connection problems, audio device with your phone: >Hello? … Wait, hello? Can you hear me? Okay, hold on. Ugh. Okay, okay, just a second. I have to get my earphones to connect. Damn it. Okay, never mind, I’ll just hold it up to my head. Hi, ugh, sorry about that. I can confirm this. However, there is another class of problems, too, which aren't mentioned. Network problems. It is the year 2022 and…

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if this is happening to you it’s your fault. You must either live in a coal mine or use terrible tech for your calls. I have voip calls all the time and they’re all what you’re asking for. It just takes a tiny amount of forethought when deciding on what tech to use.

I use Vodafone and an up to date iPhone. Voice Calls are so crappy here in Germany its not even funny. I always prefer texting over calling.

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

#85

Post by jeroenhd »

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…

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/

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

#86

Post by mjevans »

kelnos wrote: post #78
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.

> Wi-Fi isn't reliable, your neighbor's microwave can ruin everything. Agree that wifi isn't reliable, but not for that reason: microwave ovens haven't been an issue for wifi since most people switched to the 5GHz band, many years ago.

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

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

#87

Post by xxs »

kelnos wrote: post #81
topspin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll need a few years yet for that. Most old people around today used rotary phones unironically.

Hell, I'm not even that old (41), and we had a rotary phone until 1988 or so. We also had a touch-tone cordless phone, but the corded phone in the kitchen was still rotary. I expect there are even younger people than I who used rotary phones as kids.

That would depend on the country, yet I'd consider late 30s to be the age. Also I am using the phone daily to call anyone - family, coworkers. It'd appear, around here, the ear buds have not caught up.

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

#88

Post by saiya-jin »

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. Literally hundreds of models to pick your match. On my S22 ultra I never saw a single similar ad since I bought it. I wish people stopped bashing android just because they cheaped out and then found out that cheap phones are actually cheap to get revenue back in baked-in ads (there are other concerns coming from Google as creator but that's a different topic, since there is no saints among phone manufacturers and lure of ads revenue is too strong even for Apple)

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

#89

Post by xxs »

Markoff wrote: post #33
bigbacaloa wrote: post #4

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

> I thought only old people still do phone calls for private communication. FTFY Just yesterday I received spam call, my only response was answering with "Yes?", then when they started to talk about something I just hang up without a word, they wasted enough of my time and energy. Private matter I communicate 100% through IM or video calls within IM, it must be very rare ocassion that my retired father calls me on th…

>they wasted enough of my time and energy.

compared to the myriad of ads plastered everywhere. I suppose the latter has just been normalized - yet the amount of 'energy' (as in joules; or as in human frustration) is unparalleled compared to the one spent on unwanted calls, or just calls.

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

#90

Post by jl6 »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #72
gary_0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Return the phone, it's broken There's no way Samsung made a phone with no proximity sensor .. well, then again, they did make the Note 7.. https://youtu.be/0IVk8PsSgEI

I do sympathize with users who have to distinguish between the kind of brokenness that warrants returning the phone, and the kind of brokenness which is simply the norm in this space.
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