Being a polite person, I turn my mobile phone off at the movies, theater, seminars - in general, any event where a phone going off might annoy an audience. However, since I went back to school, I find myself turning my phone off much more often (class every night) and forgetting to turn it back on. I hate thinking I've gotten no calls, then realizing that I just happened to leave the darn thing off, and I missed several important calls.

Mobile phones have alarm clocks, so I know they have timers. It shouldn't be that hard to make one that automatically turns itself back on after a set period of time. So, I'm going to a four-hour class, I set my phone to turn itself back on in four hours. I'm at a movie, I set it to turn itself back on in two hours. I could be polite AND not miss calls.
-- clynne, Jul 23 2001

An improvement I came up with in class tonight: You could pre-set your phone to turn off and on at given times, so, for example, at the start of the semester, you program in your class schedule, and don't think about turning it on and off until the term is over.

I think this would be a harder feature to do than the simple turn-back-on timer (it'd need more memory, and probably require far too many button-pushes for the average user), so it's probably just an "I wish," rather than a truly halfbaked addendum. Still, it'd be nice, and it's possible with existing technology, just unlikely due to market demand.
-- clynne, Jul 24 2001


Prehaps you could do it by boundaries.

If you cross a boundary into or out of a cinema or your phone can detect it and take the appropriate action. Therefore you can visit a cinema it would all be done automatically unless you choose to override it.
-- Aristotle, Jul 24 2001


I have my StarTac ALWAYS set to vibrate, rather than ring. Beyond simple politeness, this has the added benefit that if I hear a cell phone ringing, I know it isn't mine regardless of what the ring tone sounds like.
If I'm in the middle of a conversation with someone, I usually won't interrupt the conversation to take a call - I let it ring into voicemail. If the caller doesn't leave a voicemail, I check the caller ID and return the call. All of this works for me because only my friends and family have the number.
-- mwburden, Jul 24 2001


I had a motorola text pager a few years ago - that had a turn on/off time on it. I think it was because in those days they were mostly used by doctors/drug dealers who were only on call at certain times of the day.
-- Pallex, Jul 24 2001


Vibrating phones are nearly useless for me. Since most of my clothes don't have pockets big enough for a mobile phone, I keep it in my purse. Additionally, my phone doesn't have a "vibrate" option.

I'm sure many other women choose to keep their phones in their purses for similar reasons.
-- clynne, Jul 24 2001


clynne, what you need is a vibrating purse into which you can plug your phone. then your purse can vibrate, and you won't miss that important call.
-- mihali, Jul 24 2001


I thought about a vibrating purse, but then I realized that it would inevitably start vibrating and jumping around when it was open, and spill all of its contents everywhere, and I'd start wondering if my life were a TV sitcom again, and then I'd go crazy, and need to start carrying huge quantities of pills around in my purse, which would all jump out and spill everywhere making an even bigger mess when my purse vibrated...

Yikes!
-- clynne, Jul 24 2001


Somewhat baked. My Ericsson phone can go in and out of silent mode at predetermined times. It does not power-down, it just won't make any noise during those times.
-- namuh, Jan 21 2003


A whole semester's schedule should be able to be programed into phones, so that it goes on and off at predetermined times depending on the day of the week. While the memory/buttons issue is a good one, it should be very easy to do with palm-pilot/cell phones....
-- hopewhit, Jan 22 2003


Another possible feature, voicemail countdowns.

"You've reached Friendly Fire's phone. Please leave a message, or alternatively, call back in 'ONE' hour and 'TWENTY' 'FIVE' minutes."
-- friendlyfire, Mar 15 2003


yeah, i don't really think the memory is a significant problem. you can easily store a date (as an offset from a past time) in 4 bytes -- so estimate that people probably wouldn't need more than 25 on/off slots. that's nothing. 50 slots.

how many people would go to the trouble to program 50 things? very few. but i'd use one over and over for guest lectures, the movies, etc.

as to aristotle's comment, i know that Nokia is working on a cellphone supressor in conjunction with the city of San Jose -- like a damping field that a movie theatre could install in order to kill everyone's reception. maybe aristotle's idea is a polite medium.
-- MacBellend, Mar 16 2003



random, halfbakery