The theory I've heard is that people on reality TV shows would do this so the mics could pick up their conversations better. So naturally, brainless idiots without an original thought in their dense godforsaken skulls people who watch those shows started doing it in real life too because they saw popular people doing it on TV.
It's just a theory, but it seems plausible because it's clearly not how phones were designed to function on speakerphone or otherwise.
That's where the trend is putting books spine first into a bookshelf came from too.
The tv producers don't want to spend days asking for permission to use book spine graphics in the shot, not spend time blurring the film, so they flip the books around to hide all the spine art. It's on HGTV a ton.
Probably around the pandemic when people became extra wary about hygiene - at least that's my observation. I've also noticed that people listen to voice messages like this - if you're in a loud environment and don't have headphones, it kind of makes sense. It still looks stupid, and for normal phone calls it is stupid, since both the earpiece and the microphone are optimised for having the phone on your ear.
I am not ashamed to say I will talk on the phone like this often. I dont alway hold it to my mouth though just prefer more freedom with speaker phone. But I never do it in public
Right? I have another comment at -7 because it says you can hear the speakers better that way while driving.
I get the speakerphone hate. But if someone is in their car that's less annoying than blasting it through the stereo. So who cares how someone holds their phone in this scenario? Especially when there is an actual benefit to holding it that way.
This entire post is the stupidest case of gatekeeping I've ever seen.
It's because the speakers for the iPhone are on the bottom of the phone.
Edit: I meant the speakers that are used for "hands free mode", which is what the user in the image is doing. The reason why people hold their phone like this is because it directs the speaker sound straight at them (again, in hands free mode).
As a former iPhone repair technician, I can confirm this is both true and false at the same time. There's a speaker in the normal position for the ear as well, it all depends whether the user decided to put the phone into loudspeaker mode.
This comment coming from an Android user that's just as guilty of this at times.
A couple weeks ago I saw a high schooler asking friends to grab his phone, but they couldn't hear him. So he mimed typing with his thumbs.
....
How did we lose holding a handset to your ear as the pantomime for phone???? I've heard Nirvana on the classic rock station and it didn't make me feel as old as this.
I don't like getting oils and sweat on my screen. I also don't like putting my dirty screen on my face.
I can still talk to someone and do other stuff on my phone. If I want privacy or I'm in an area where speakerphone would be annoying then fine I'll use it the old way, but generally I have headphones to bridge that gap anyways.
Yeah, I'm with you. Speaker mode is much more comfortable. But I do have some common courtesy while in public though. Nobody needs to be forced to hear your conversation.
You think your fingers don't generate oils/sweat?
You can have the phone next to your ear without having it pushing against the side of your head lol
Multi-tasking makes sense though.
I think they often have earbuds but those usually have built in microphones so I don't really know either, I think it's popular when recording voice messages too.
I think the point is that the microphone should be close to your mouth, but not in the direction of your breath, so as to avoid pops. That's why headsets have the microphone a few inches away from where your breath would go through.
Hence, the preferred holding position would have both the speaker and microphone in optimal spots.
Yeah, and my tiny Nokia from 15 years ago also had a mic next to charger very very far from my mouth. Worked completely fine though, since it's designed to do that.
google pixel 6 pro user here, nope, at the top, because fuck the consumers, that's why
on a more serious note, normally it doesnt pick up too much external audio but if i'm in a crowded place i have to turn it upside down and back up constantly to speak and then hear
ITT a bunch of fucking losers claiming to have hearing problems and would rather be a dick in public than invest in proper headphones.
Note on the claim part, I don't believe a fraction of the assholes here, just trying to justify their assholery. People with legitimate hearing issues tend to accept the support technology that's readily available these days. I spend quite a bit of time around folks who are actually hard of hearing.
Add to that the amount of headphones out there that do help with various ear issues is growing and the prices are not that heavy.
They have bone conduction ear phones now that can be picked up online. Your skull can hear for you now. This is the same technology as what hearing aids use and you can just wire it up as headphones to your phone now
When someone calls and I expect it to be 60 seconds or less, I don't wanna go fumbling in my bag for 30 seconds to find the headphones and spend another 20 making sure they hook up to my phone properly.
Plus, idk about hearing issues, but I have epilepsy and my seizures increase when I have long calls with the phone against my face OR with TWS earbuds in, which can apparently (and not too uncommonly) be triggered by the type of radiation they put off, even though it's at very low levels. But just 3 inches further from my face and no problems. I know that's not why a lot of people do it, and I still try not to in public, but there are various reasons that someone might.
I am sure this will get downvoted to the lowest level of hell, but when it comes to people doing this without a medical reason/just based on preference, I also just don't know why a minor annoyance triggers such major anger in others. If I'm on a train for an hour and someone is talking the whole time, that's annoying no matter how they're doing it. If I pass someone on speaker in the grocery store, I don't really let that 12 seconds affect the rest of my day, certainly not enough to harbor such hot feelings about it.
You have to insult people who have different head string and body fabric than you do. How else can you feel validated about your choice of head string and body fabric??
I like man buns! You better let me braid it once in a while though, while in an ADHD fuelled craze. V-necks though... never cared for the style, but you do you?
Wow I almost feel singled out by this. But I presume that this is supposed to be in public. Which by every account is a dick move.
However I do this in private, I.e. in my car or at home. And the reason I do it is because I can't hear a call without using the speaker phone. Hearing issues aren't fun.
However the easier solution is headphones, but calls over Bluetooth can make things worse, from battery life to sound quality.
Wired headphones are the preferable solution to this but we all know what happened to those.
TL:DR I do this because of my hearing issues. In public this is a dick move, but headphones aren't the solution they use to be.
but headphones aren’t the solution they use to be.
Not true. There’s air conduction, bone conduction(which is the same technology for people who actually do experience hearing loss), wired, non wired, in ear, over ear, on ear, noise cancelling and these are not that expensive that you can get it online so it’s super accessible.
It’s not the early 2000s anymore where you only get buds or on ear or whatever apple bullshit comes with your phone.
Agreed, though sadly this doesn't apply to me. Hearing issues doesn't always mean hearing loss. I have Auditory Processing Disorder or Auditory Dyslexia means my hearing is good, but I don't always understand what people are saying.
Speaker phone makes it easier for me to understand what the other person is saying. But again its a dick move to use it in public.
In my defense, I've had a phone hang up or do weird stuff because it couldn't tell the difference between a fingertip and an earlobe way too many times. Like, a shitty phone has nearly altered the course of my life because of this, and that's not okay.
You should be able to hit the power button while on a call and turn off the display, then put it to your ear. Much less effort than the people around you have to make to keep from slapping you
It's not just shitty phones, nice phones have this problem too.
I cannot for the life of me find the earpiece on new phones, my face dials and hangs up and does all kinds of weird shit if I try to have a conversation on the phone the way you're supposed to.
I do this when I'm on the phone and alone. Or I set my phone on my tits. But only when I am isolated. I don't want to bother people with my phone on speaker.
I know this is a joke but if I found my match but they had a minor flaw I would probably try real hard to make it work and maybe even explain to them that their bad habit annoys me slightly. Nobody is perfect and theres always room to improve for those willing to try
I remember my first time seeing someone use a Jabra bluetooth ear piece. 2003 in a college dorm, a girl was walking back and forth but her phone was probably in her hoodie. I was bewildered, wondering why she was talking aloud to herself.
I've seen someone speak like this, then put the phone back against their ear to listen and pull it back down to talk again. Like wtf just leave it up there
Pizza eaters are rude as hell, too. I'd guarantee that there's significant overlap with the people who play music in public from their shitty phone speaker.
I have had bozos legitimately try to tell me it's the holding it up to your ear that's illegal, so if you hold it sideways and talk at it you "can't" get pulled over for it.
I also witnessed, from the other end of the telephone, one of my clients getting pulled over and trying to tell the cop he couldn't be ticketed because the phone was on speaker -- but still in his hand.
I don't mean to be rude, and I totally understand if it works better to use a speakerphone (some people have ear issues and can't have things pressing against their ears). But if the issue is a phone is only held against one ear, can't you use headphones or earphones that also transmit sounds to both ears?
The clever part is that most phones do have a microphone at the top nearby the earpiece. The stupid part is that that mic is for noise canceling the ambient noise. So the phone is hearing them, but the person at the other end of the line is getting a distorted and full of artifacts voice that is barely comprehensible.
Talking like this? Fucking irritating in public. Speaker so loud everyone can hear, not even trying to lower their voice
Like the area is loud so they gotta turn up and talk loud. You know what else solves this? Taking it off speaker and holding it to your ear like a phone.
Their phone flat out in front makes their profile larger, and I know that seems silly but that's another foot and a half in an already cramped bus.
I have to do this when my grandma calls. Not because I have loudspeaker mode on, but because SHE has, but still talks with it against her face so she comes out extremely loudly on my end.
If it's loud enough, I'll put my phone on speaker and still hold it normally, because the regular speaker on my phone fucking sucks and I can never hear shit.
It's a bit harder when you started your relationship before smartphones (yes there are people that old)
I keep telling my wife not to do that and just talk normally because the microphone is designed for that ... instead, when I call her, I know she's holding the phone like this because it sounds like someone is shouting at me.
How do I use the phone and microphone to talk to people on my smartphone? ... simple ... I don't, ever.
Maybe I should be single, but this is my preferred way to speak on the phone when I'm not bothering anyone, and the enviornment is relatively quiet. It frees up my hands for a better range of motion if I'm doing anything else, and it removes my common accidental hang-up when my ear or face touches the display.
If the environment becomes noisy or people are around, I of course switch back to old-school DJ-gesture phone call mode.
Why are you holding it up to your face? I use speaker too if I'm busy and my hands are full but i put it down on a table. This has no advantage, you still have to hold it
I sometimes move around in my house while talking, since I'm a nervous guy when it comes to phone calls. Having the phone at chest or waist level makes it a lot quicker to change hands or even use lower arms or elbows to hold things or open doors or whatever. It's just less constraining, even if it's marginal.
If the phone is too far from your face, they can't hear you as well. You don't have to talk as loud to be heard when on speaker phone. Besides, I have a hard time hearing when I don't use it, and I can clearly hear them when it's on and near my face. They hear me better and I hear them better; definitely an advantage.
Well my first impression was that this person is looking over a ocean view while talking over phone which i totally can relate as I would do to not disturb the peace.
I wanna know their witch doctor because that guy is easily three times older than he looks. Everyone I know above 60 does this. Give me that fountain of youth and I’ll keep your secret.
I kinda live in a small town so maybe different lifestyles. I find it funny when they still have it on speaker but hold it up to their ear like a regular call because they don’t want to bother everyone else. I try to let them know sometimes and they look confused for a brief second before continuing their conversation on the phone with the speaker on, I guess they’re really focused on the call.
They’re pretty comfortable with voice to text too, completely oblivious of their surroundings as they proofread and curse the phone out for miss understanding them. Or they type it out one letter at a time with their index finger heavily relying on the suggestions. My grandfather sat in the car replying ok to a text message and it took him like two minutes to navigate his phone.
I do this a lot (not in public) because it’s way too easy to hang up with your ear and it fatigues my arm after like half an hour. It’s fine as long as you don’t shout into the phone.
Means you have a broken phone - they have sensor that turn off the screen when you're talking to someone and it's next to your ear. It shouldn't happen to you.
The way they put the string on top of their head means they're a bad person because it's different from how the commenter puts their head string, obviously.
To be fair, I'd be more concerned with the unkempt excuse for a beard being a sign of other, less visible issues. Sure, the bun is cringe AF, but adult-level hygiene is clutch for ranking as The One. 🤗
edit: ooh, touched a nerve with some? Go wash yourselves.
Not sure if it convinces anyone but my reason is that I start becoming conscious of my ears being squished on the smartphone surface and it starts paining 2 mins later. Slightly lifting the phone up makes the audio worse. So I put it on speaker and do this if I can't find a headphone or earphones.
So every person I see talking like this seems to do it at twice the volume than if they put it to their ear, and then you get the added bonus of listening to the other idiot on the call as well, again, at twice the volume that it needs to be.
It seems more like performative art than a phone call at that point.
So every person I see talking like this seems to do it at twice the volume than if they put it to their ear, and then you get the added bonus of listening to the other idiot on the call as well, again, at twice the volume that it needs to be.
Oh bro, we're on speaker baby. You in the conversation too.
Usually because the other person is on speaker, and having a conversation on speakerphone while others are around that aren't on said call with you is seen as being rude to a lot of folks
Well, talking like this keeps the phone from radiating into the head from zero distance and angling it in this way puts your mouth closer to the microphone, so if it's over, I say, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out. "
Neither of those things provide a measurable or meaningful improvement to anything. The phone is designed to be directly against one's head within allowable safe levels of radiation. And the microphone/audio processing is designed to pickup sound from the standard phone position.
I'd say 'you do you'...but actually, you shouldn't.
I like doing this. I know they can't hear me better but it feels like it makes sense you know? It gives me a peace of mind when talking on the phone, even if many times I still need to put it to my ears
How does it feel like it makes sense? Maybe it is because I was alive before cell phones but one side is for your ear and the other is for your voice. Doing this requires you to be on speaker phone which is super annoying in public.
but this is correct, that's where the mic is, it's more comfortable than holding it to my ear [especially the modern smartphone shape], and i like knowing i'm talking straight into the mic
The microphone was not designed to be talked straight into it like that. It was designed for someone to hold the phone like a human. The mics are designed to help pick up audio from the direction of your mouth when your phone is in the normal position, not the one you're using. By attempting to maximize efficiency and talk into it, you're actively making it worse for the other people you're talking to.
You do know that when you switch to speaker phone it’s often switching the microphone setup, right? Like it’s going from earpiece to conference call setup… it’s not like it stays the same and blows out the other end. We have the technology to control noise input and background. This was ~ maybe ~ true of older phones, but it certainly isn’t today.
I talk on the phone like this due to being a walker & talker. So I pull up my work systems on my phone to update notes and email people as I’m talking. If that were the case the dozens of phone calls a day would tell me I’m way too loud.
You've heard that people that sound uncomfortably loud, garbled and distorted, barely comprehensible, with intermittent popping and hisses over the phone? That's you.