 |
A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
| About Mark Hurst | Mark's Gel Conference | New York Times Story on This Is Broken | Newsletter: Subscribe | RSS Feed |
Search this site:
Categories:
- Advertising
- Current Affairs
- Customer Service
- Fixed
- Food and Drink
- Just for Fun
- Misc
- Not broken
- Place
- Product Design
- Signs
- Travel
- Web/Tech
Previous: Santa sign | Main | Next: Austin, TX
December 19, 2003 03:40 AM
Broken: Cellphone shutting-down beep
Hanan Cohen writes:
Everytime I give a lecture I ask the attendees to turn off their cellphones ("Is there a heart surgeon among us? All the rest, please shut down your cellphones.") Then begins an orchestra of beeps, of cellphones shutting down!Why do cellphone makers think that shutting down is the right time to sound a beep or a tune? Can't they think of the possibility that the shutting down of a cellphone takes place in time when beeping or chiming is not desirable, like in a concert or a class?
New Nokia cel phones have an excellent feature...timed profiles. You can change the phone to "silent" and have it go back to the normal profile at a certain time.
Also, it doesn't beep when you change it to silent mode.
In most designs, turning phone off is not intended for silencing. Usually, there is a special function like turn silence on/off. Or as mentioned above, new phones have different profiles which can be configured to lower ring volume or turn it off.
This is what people should use instead of of shutting it off.
The Motorola T720 phone beeps at you when you
(1) turn it off
- OR -
(2) try to turn DOWN the volume.
However, the battery cover easily comes off, and the phone SILENTLY dies when the battery is removed.
What was Motorola thinking??/
Sounds are meant to make it easier for you to navigate without looking at the keypad. If they didn't have the damn beep when you shut it off, someone would complain that there phone gets accidentally shut off and they have no way of knowing until the look at it. They might complain that there is "no feedback" when they turn down the volume. "THEY" will complain about anything and everything, given the chance. That would be why companies make electronics so easy to customize for those who care to. RTFM
My favorite is the ones that step through the volume levels with presses of buttons on the side of the phone. Great idea, yes, and generally good for raising the volume.. But, as already pointed out in comments, when *lowering* the volume, it's likely you're already in a situation where the..
*GLEEB!!!* GLEEB! Gleeb. gleeb. (imagine font sizes getting smaller there too..heh)..
might not be appreciated.
I have seen on multiple occasions where students would be shutting off their cell phones in class (being as stealthy as they can) and then you hear a VERY LONG LOUD OBNOXIOUS ATTENTION GETTING TONE that makes everybody look in the direction of the tone and gets the student, trying to shut off the phone so that nobody would know that he has it, in trouble.
REAL SMART THINKING PHONE COMPANIES!!!!!!
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Santa sign | Main | Next: Austin, TX
The Sanyo 4900 allows one to set the volume of the startup/shutdown tone, or turn each one on or off in turn. Alas, these two options are buried in two different menus.
More annoying to me is that it plays this annoying little harmonica trill every time you make a configuration change. "You just turned off the sound! *Trill!*"
The ONLY way to disable this trill is to turn off 'Key Beep'. Indeed, the soft beep at every key press goes away, but also so does the confirmation trill.
Arrrgh.
Settings
+Sounds
--+Ringer/Key Vol.
----+Start-up/Pw-off
----+Key Beep:
--+Others
----+Start-up Tone:
----+Power-off Tone:
Posted by: Michael Dwyer at January 2, 2004 04:13 AM