Wireless Wonders

No news, just comment about mobile phones and services, from a veteran practitioner...3G, GPRS, WAP, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc...

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Women's coats and mobiles... (idea #75)

My wife seldom answers her mobile, which I'm not really complaining about, as I don't answer mine much either (well, some of them anyway - I have quite a few). The problem is that she frequently doesn't hear it ringing, despite my repeatedly putting the ring volume to its highest setting. Somehow it manages to keep diminishing.

The real problem is that she carries it in her handbag. In a crowded situation, like a shop or any outdoor place, this can muffle the ringtone quite a lot. Typically (I think) handbags seem to be packed with lots of things. I dare not inventory for you, although I wouldn't be allowed in any case. Remarkably, handbag-stuff seems to have particularly effective acoustic baffling properties. A full-on "7/7" ringtone volume can sound like a mouse-squeek "0.5/7", or worse.

Casually, I suggest why not put the phone in the inside coat pocket, like I often do, where it seems to be quite audible much of the time. I was told that there aren't any inside pockets on women's coats. I didn't quite accept this claim, so I checked. She was right. I don't know if other countries have a different approach to women's apparel, but in the UK, women's coats, unlike men's, don't seem to have inside pockets. My idea is not to assume that only men carry "stuff" that needs pockets and for the designers of women's clothes to fix this problem please.

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