15 1/2 Hours without My Mobile Phone (poll)
Have you ever needed to survive without your mobile phone for sometime? I managed to 
leave my mobile phone charging at the office the other day. That was the night I was due to attend the BBC Proms… In London without a mobile phone on me. Disaster coming my way?
This made me realise even more how irritating some phone habits are. There is a poll at the end of this post, and I will be doing another blog entry to announce the results in a week’s time.
Yeah, because what if there was a sudden change of plan? I would go to the meeting point to see my friends first, and then some problem would prevent it. I wouldn´t know about it, because I didn´t have a phone! In the mean time, no checking Twitter nor Facebook, no replying to several text messages that I had previously been sent during the day, and what if my mum called? Any emergency could´ve happened.
It was just a matter of getting on without it. An acquaintance had lost his phone at a gig sometime ago. After the initial shock, he realised that he could actually survive without it, and didn´t own a new one for some time – until he was given one for his birthday! So, I was determined to forget about it all and finish that book that I could never finish, because I usually read online.
I survived…
One of the talks in the digital space these days is the use that we make of the phones and what we use it for. Making and receiving calls is actually one of the last things that I do with it. I check social networks, etc. Hang on, was this gadget called mobile phone?
Up until very recently, all those things were `nice-to-have´ functionalities. Now, they have become the `must-have´ functionalities in all phones. In a recent report by Ofcom in UK, more than four in 10 smartphone users list their mobiles as the first device for them to access the internet. I believe that using a mobile phone implies certain change of habits, simply because we are able to do on the go things that we could have never done before, even when they may be irritating and infuriating.
All in all, I was happy not to feel the need to check everything all the time. It all led me to think about all those irritating phone habits that we all have and not many try to avoid. What are your favourite irritating phone habits?
[polldaddy poll=6407960]
I don’t spend a lot of time on the phone. My husband constantly being on the phone turned me off of that a long time ago. I prefer to talk to people on skype where I can see them. I also don’t text very often. I have my phone on me “just in case”. I check in on 4Square regularly and I use my walking app on my phone (that is what I would miss the most). I like to read blogs, facebook and tweets on the computer, not the phone.
I’m thinking I could probably survive with out it. Just don’t take away my computer. 🙂
Yes, nothing like a bad other-people’s experience to make someone steer clear of some things if at all possible.
I’ve voted for the first option just because it’s the one that p*sses me off in the extreme, but I find the rest very annoying too. Except me or someone else losing their mobile phones – that I could perfectly live with.
I also find that some people have developed really bad social habits since the emergence of mobile phones, like being late (not 10 or 15 minutes late, I mean *outrageously* late – a text message doesn’t make the waiting less annoying, people!), changing plans at the last minute, not showing up at the *very* last minute, etc. I’m guilty of these on occasion, too – it didn’t use to be like this!
Thanks for visiting! I definitely agree with cancelling dates, etc. It is so annoying.
My pet peeve is when someone answers their phone and proceeds to have their conversation at the dinner table.