7 ms·

Airplane Mode

249 points by flapjack 16y ago

corin_ 16y ago
I've read this three times now on the assumption that its point was going over my head - I'm now fairly sure it's not. The lesson I've learned is not to turn my phone off, in case I want to show someone pictures stored on it.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Read it again. The real message is when meeting with a friend you haven't seen in a while, make sure you set it up so you get a lot of calls, emails, and texts. Then when you go to airplane mode you seem super important, yet considerate. And then when you go home, make sure to thank your mom for the messages.
  - T_S_ 16y ago
    There's a business opportunity here: Make me look busy. Now somebody tell me its already been done.
    - wdewind 16y ago
      It has already been done. I can't remember exactly, but I believe a Samsung phone came out in Korea recently that lets you hold a button on the side that fakes a phone call to you. No iPhone app yet though. Edit: screen shot of the samsung manual (apparently this is a feature on a lot of their phones): http://craphound.com/images/e7KOe.jpg http://craphound.com/images/e7KOe.jpg
      - Splines 16y ago
        Of course, now that it's a standard feature everyone is going to wonder if you really had a phone call.
    - MasterScrat 16y ago
      http://popularitydialer.com/ http://popularitydialer.com/
    - petercooper 16y ago
      Back in the early 90s when portable cellphones were still not particularly common, my uncle used to get his secretary to call him whenever he was in a meeting with a potential client to both make him look busy and, supposedly, important enough to carry such a phone. Say what you will about the technique but he's now barely 50, retired and buying up woodland like there's no tomorrow..
      - jonsen 16y ago
        My sister once told me a story from those days. She was on a ferry and noticed this obviously important man walking around speaking loudly holding one of those new cellphones to his ear. She was very amused by his bewilderment when his phone suddenly rang.
    - bergie 16y ago
      There is an app for that: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=65241 http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=65241
  - Timothee 16y ago
    Other trick to make the other person feel special when getting a phone call: pick up the phone and, after identifying who it is, say "hold on, I need to get rid of someone on the other line", put on mute for a few seconds and come back.
  - micampe 16y ago
    Yes, it's funny. But I really hope you were only being funny, because I hate when the people of the Internet tries to make me more cynical than I already am.
  - mcantor 16y ago
    Jeez, you guys are harsh! He didn't call him the bloody Dalai Lama. He simply felt in awe of his friend's power and influence and was correspondingly honored to be treated with attentiveness uncharacteristic of the stereotypical high-powered Person of Import. It's so easy to be sarcastic about blog entries like this. I think there is little to be gained from ridiculing such a personal anecdote, voluntarily shared with the world at large.
- 51Cards 16y ago
  The lesson is more that technology frequently plays an interruptive role in our lives and that sometimes it's just a sign of respect to turn everyone else off and focus on the person you're actually with. He was honoured to be treated that way and it's something we might all consider doing at times. The alternate use of airplane more was more of a subtext.
- roc 16y ago
  ...or take notes, or reference my calendar, or use app X (that remains useful without a live internet stream), etc. What Airplane Mode says (in this context) is: I don't want to be interrupted but I still want this increasingly important pocket computer to be available. I've been doing this myself quite a bit; though more-so with my iPad. What I'd really like to see for this, is some sort of device-wide "Do Not Disturb". Something that doesn't turn off the radios, but does suppress the various 'interruptions': rings, buzzes, reminders, push notifications, etc. Because sometimes you want to focus on an app that requires a data connection.
  - hammock 16y ago
    There is a notifications profile on BlackBerry that is not visible by default but can easily be turned on that does exactly that- it's called "All Alerts Off" - WAY more silent than the "silent" profile which still blinks the little red light and pops up calendar alerts. I have seen similar notifications profiles on other mobile OS as well, perhaps called "Do Not Disturb." In any case it would be a good one to create yourself and have.
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    The iPad has an on/off button in the notifications section of settings. I don't know if it will silence mail and other preinstalled apps.
- mcantelon 16y ago
  The lesson is, to me, that if you garnish an obvious point with sentiment and a dash of high tech then it's compelling for a mass audience.
- orev 16y ago
  Turning the iPhone off is a pain. You have to hold down the button and wait for a while, then select the Power Off button. Turning it back on takes a while too. It's certainly possible that most people don't even know how to do this. Airplane mode is the obvious choice as it's faster to both enable and disable.
gvsyn 16y ago
Very respectful, and awesome closing off of the world temporarily. Another 'use' I find - in areas where you know you'll have no signal. With the cell radios screaming to contact a station, drains the battery worse than more or less any other part (unless you have the display on 100% brightness as well as on all the time)
- statictype 16y ago
  Nice to see this hypothesis observed by others. I long suspected that "failing to handshake with a cell tower" incurred a significant drain on the battery.
togasystems 16y ago
As soon as my head hits the pillow, my iPhone goes into Airplane Mode.
- bryanlarsen 16y ago
  I do that, but mostly to avoid "super-airplane mode", also known as a dead battery.
  - sukuriant 16y ago
    Why not just plug it in at night? Or, are you trying to limit the duration of your charges?
codebaobab 16y ago
Interesting. I thought Airplane Mode only turned off the cellphone radio. But, nope, I just tried it and it does turn off the WiFi as well. You can, however, manually turn WiFi back on, leaving the cell radio off.
T_S_ 16y ago
Why are people always feeling "honored and humbled" these days? I think they must be confused. Just feel honored and get on with your day.
- spitfire 16y ago
  People aren't. Obnoxious bloggers are. and this guy is particularly bad.
  - callahad 16y ago
    That's the surprising thing -- Patrick's an exceptionally nice guy in person, but his social-media wankery is, for whatever reason, completely insufferable to me. Especially when he's overtly gunning to claim Gruber's pulpit. In that way, he's much like Zed Shaw from the Zed's So Fucking Awesome days: A kind, down-to-earth guy with a strangely abrasive online persona. Citation: I attended undergrad at Patrick's last employer, and worked indirectly with him in IT Services for a year. He really is fantastic in person.
    - T_S_ 16y ago
      I didn't mean to pick on Patrick. This "honored/humbled" thing has been going on in our culture for a while now.
      - pangram 16y ago
        According to Google, it's been on the rise since the 40's. http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=honored+and+humbled&year_start=1850&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=honored+and+humbl...
        T_S_ 16y ago
        Pretty interesting graph. It started growing exponentially in the 90's.
- deleted 16y ago
spitfire 16y ago
The nokia E-series E72 has the neatest feature. If you put it face down it silences all alarts. Nokia had a great ad campaign for real face time using this - "Somethings are more important than email". The iphone and android badly need these features.
- jhamburger 16y ago
  That seems a little silly to me but I do wish the toggle switch on the side of the iphone was a 3-step silent-vibrate-full instead of just full and vibrate.
- booticon 16y ago
  Funny enough, I just saw an app for Android that does this: http://lifehacker.com/#!5599116/how-to-turn-your-android-phone-into-a-fully+automated-superphone http://lifehacker.com/#!5599116/how-to-turn-your-android-pho... (God I hate LH's new design)
- lmz 16y ago
  HTC has a feature like that for its "HTC Sense" phones. From http://www.htc.com/www/htcsense/index.html http://www.htc.com/www/htcsense/index.html : "Ever fumbled with your phone because it went off at full-blast during a meeting? Well, don't worry! Now as soon as you lift your phone up to see who's calling, the ringer volume gets lower. Want it silenced completely? Just flip it over."
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    It also lowers the volume if you pick it up, and if you flip it over during a call, it switches to the speaker. Very handy.
  - bmelton 16y ago
    There used to be an Android app that did that. Though I can't remember the name of it, it was incredibly handy. I lost it at some point and, not remembering the app name, have failed to re-download it.
kevindication 16y ago
The irony is that Airplane Mode doesn't permit you use your phone on an airplane (at least per US airline policy, despite the FAA indicating that airlines may let passengers use phones in airplane mode). At least it lets you have a conversation without being interrupted.
- martey 16y ago
  Other than old articles from 2007 and 2008, and a couple of undated anecdotes, I was not able to find any information from any American airline suggesting that phones were prohibited on flights regardless of whether they had an Airplane or Flight mode. What current information I could find about mobile phones generally refer to using them with in-flight wifi, which seems to directly contradict your statement.
  - kevindication 16y ago
    My experience is flight attendants that don't know the current policy, and assume that all phones have to be off. Maybe I'm just unlucky.
- vyrotek 16y ago
  When I fly Southwest they specifically announce that you are free to use your phone if it has Airplane mode. Good enough for me.
- wrs 16y ago
  I fly frequently on a few different US airlines, all with the same basic announcement: - All electronic devices must be powered completely off during the first and last 10 minutes of flight. - Laptops and phones can be on during the rest of the flight if all radios are off (including WiFi and Bluetooth). - The growing exception to the above is on planes with WiFi, where you can turn WiFi on during cruise. No other kinds of radios are allowed, even receive-only radios.
- brk 16y ago
  I use my iPhone, HTC Incredible and 3G iPad (in airplanes modes) all the time on US flights. It's never been an issue. I think that if an inadvertently left-on cell phone could truly disrupt an airplane we'd see MUCH stricter enforcement. Otherwise you're implying a band of terrorists playing Angry Birds in all-radios-on mode stands a significant chance of downing an airliner...
antimatter15 16y ago
I feel like this is a misuse of Airplane Mode. If your photos, etc. are "on the cloud", via Dropbox or something, they may require internet access to use. I think a more appropriate feature, which as far as I'm aware, doesn't exist, would be a no-interruption mode (probably needs a better name) that holds all notifications and calls during the time it's enabled.
- xutopia 16y ago
  You can enable just wifi when you are in Airplane mode. That's what I do.
- prawn 16y ago
  "Do not disturb" mode?
run4yourlives 16y ago
My first thought was, wow, what a show of respect for me and our time together. It saddens me that not being a rude ass is somehow worthy of blog-post out of the ordinary praise these days.
- adnam 16y ago
  And then get >200 points on HN
khookie 16y ago
Airplane mode is also good for keeping your sperm count up when it's in your pockets.
- albemuth 16y ago
  Is it really that bad? I'd like to see a study on this, at the moment I'm just a bit freaked out from reading 4HB but I'll definitely try to remember doing this
  - adnam 16y ago
    What is 4HB?
    - khafra 16y ago
      The Four-Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss. There's a chapter on gaining progeny, for those who want that; he observes that when you put a cellphone next to rats for an hour a day their sperm count and free testosterone are lowered.
      - adnam 16y ago
        Tim Ferriss observed this? Or in which peer-reviewed journal did the study appear?
        khafra 16y ago
        Strangely, I couldn't find a place in the book where he directly cites the dozens of studies he says he read; but he does quote from this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578660 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578660
        bugmenot 16y ago
        Yes, very strange. That's way out of character for Tim.
PhatBaja 16y ago
This makes sense but is not "hacker news". It should not have made it to one of the top news - it's just obvious common sense.
- zackattack 16y ago
  it's actually a great social hack i) communicates you are important / busy enough to be getting lots of inbound communication ii) makes the other person feel important that you value their time iii) it's a trick because it's a totally natural and awesome transition into being present with another person.
  - bugmenot 16y ago
    Since when is paying attention to someone "a great social hack"? When people came to visit my grandfather and he stopped milking the cows to have a conversation with them, was that "a great social hack"? Not everything is a "hack" of some modified variety. Sometimes we already have a word for it, in this case, "manners". It's like there's a competition to overuse the word "hack" and nobody told me about it. /getoffmylawn
kevinburke 16y ago
More or less why I got an iPod touch instead of an iPhone. Still have a crappy $10 phone off Ebay.
noonespecial 16y ago
Tow knights, upon meeting, show their mutual respect for each other by extending their hands away from their weapons and towards one another. A modern equivalent is born?
_corbett 16y ago
I put my phone in airplane mode for exactly this reason--it's not just being super busy, but I have lots of push notifications setup which in my daily life are helpful but while I'm sleeping or socializing not. However I need various other functions on the phone (e.g. my alarm) so turning it off not an option, moreover switching from airplane mode->non much faster.

249 points by flapjack 16y ago

I've read this three times now on the assumption that its point was going over my head - I'm now fairly sure it's not. The lesson I've learned is not to turn my phone off, in case I want to show someone pictures stored on it.

kenjackson 16y ago
Read it again. The real message is when meeting with a friend you haven't seen in a while, make sure you set it up so you get a lot of calls, emails, and texts. Then when you go to airplane mode you seem super important, yet considerate. And then when you go home, make sure to thank your mom for the messages.
- T_S_ 16y ago
  There's a business opportunity here: Make me look busy. Now somebody tell me its already been done.
  - wdewind 16y ago
    It has already been done. I can't remember exactly, but I believe a Samsung phone came out in Korea recently that lets you hold a button on the side that fakes a phone call to you. No iPhone app yet though. Edit: screen shot of the samsung manual (apparently this is a feature on a lot of their phones): http://craphound.com/images/e7KOe.jpg http://craphound.com/images/e7KOe.jpg
    - Splines 16y ago
      Of course, now that it's a standard feature everyone is going to wonder if you really had a phone call.
  - MasterScrat 16y ago
    http://popularitydialer.com/ http://popularitydialer.com/
  - petercooper 16y ago
    Back in the early 90s when portable cellphones were still not particularly common, my uncle used to get his secretary to call him whenever he was in a meeting with a potential client to both make him look busy and, supposedly, important enough to carry such a phone. Say what you will about the technique but he's now barely 50, retired and buying up woodland like there's no tomorrow..
    - jonsen 16y ago
      My sister once told me a story from those days. She was on a ferry and noticed this obviously important man walking around speaking loudly holding one of those new cellphones to his ear. She was very amused by his bewilderment when his phone suddenly rang.
  - bergie 16y ago
    There is an app for that: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=65241 http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=65241
- Timothee 16y ago
  Other trick to make the other person feel special when getting a phone call: pick up the phone and, after identifying who it is, say "hold on, I need to get rid of someone on the other line", put on mute for a few seconds and come back.
- micampe 16y ago
  Yes, it's funny. But I really hope you were only being funny, because I hate when the people of the Internet tries to make me more cynical than I already am.
- mcantor 16y ago
  Jeez, you guys are harsh! He didn't call him the bloody Dalai Lama. He simply felt in awe of his friend's power and influence and was correspondingly honored to be treated with attentiveness uncharacteristic of the stereotypical high-powered Person of Import. It's so easy to be sarcastic about blog entries like this. I think there is little to be gained from ridiculing such a personal anecdote, voluntarily shared with the world at large.
51Cards 16y ago
The lesson is more that technology frequently plays an interruptive role in our lives and that sometimes it's just a sign of respect to turn everyone else off and focus on the person you're actually with. He was honoured to be treated that way and it's something we might all consider doing at times. The alternate use of airplane more was more of a subtext.
roc 16y ago
...or take notes, or reference my calendar, or use app X (that remains useful without a live internet stream), etc. What Airplane Mode says (in this context) is: I don't want to be interrupted but I still want this increasingly important pocket computer to be available. I've been doing this myself quite a bit; though more-so with my iPad. What I'd really like to see for this, is some sort of device-wide "Do Not Disturb". Something that doesn't turn off the radios, but does suppress the various 'interruptions': rings, buzzes, reminders, push notifications, etc. Because sometimes you want to focus on an app that requires a data connection.
- hammock 16y ago
  There is a notifications profile on BlackBerry that is not visible by default but can easily be turned on that does exactly that- it's called "All Alerts Off" - WAY more silent than the "silent" profile which still blinks the little red light and pops up calendar alerts. I have seen similar notifications profiles on other mobile OS as well, perhaps called "Do Not Disturb." In any case it would be a good one to create yourself and have.
- epochwolf 16y ago
  The iPad has an on/off button in the notifications section of settings. I don't know if it will silence mail and other preinstalled apps.
mcantelon 16y ago
The lesson is, to me, that if you garnish an obvious point with sentiment and a dash of high tech then it's compelling for a mass audience.
orev 16y ago
Turning the iPhone off is a pain. You have to hold down the button and wait for a while, then select the Power Off button. Turning it back on takes a while too. It's certainly possible that most people don't even know how to do this. Airplane mode is the obvious choice as it's faster to both enable and disable.

gvsyn 16y ago

Very respectful, and awesome closing off of the world temporarily. Another 'use' I find - in areas where you know you'll have no signal. With the cell radios screaming to contact a station, drains the battery worse than more or less any other part (unless you have the display on 100% brightness as well as on all the time)

statictype 16y ago
Nice to see this hypothesis observed by others. I long suspected that "failing to handshake with a cell tower" incurred a significant drain on the battery.

togasystems 16y ago

As soon as my head hits the pillow, my iPhone goes into Airplane Mode.

bryanlarsen 16y ago
I do that, but mostly to avoid "super-airplane mode", also known as a dead battery.
- sukuriant 16y ago
  Why not just plug it in at night? Or, are you trying to limit the duration of your charges?

codebaobab 16y ago

Interesting. I thought Airplane Mode only turned off the cellphone radio. But, nope, I just tried it and it does turn off the WiFi as well. You can, however, manually turn WiFi back on, leaving the cell radio off.

T_S_ 16y ago

Why are people always feeling "honored and humbled" these days? I think they must be confused. Just feel honored and get on with your day.

spitfire 16y ago
People aren't. Obnoxious bloggers are. and this guy is particularly bad.
- callahad 16y ago
  That's the surprising thing -- Patrick's an exceptionally nice guy in person, but his social-media wankery is, for whatever reason, completely insufferable to me. Especially when he's overtly gunning to claim Gruber's pulpit. In that way, he's much like Zed Shaw from the Zed's So Fucking Awesome days: A kind, down-to-earth guy with a strangely abrasive online persona. Citation: I attended undergrad at Patrick's last employer, and worked indirectly with him in IT Services for a year. He really is fantastic in person.
  - T_S_ 16y ago
    I didn't mean to pick on Patrick. This "honored/humbled" thing has been going on in our culture for a while now.
    - pangram 16y ago
      According to Google, it's been on the rise since the 40's. http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=honored+and+humbled&year_start=1850&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=honored+and+humbl...
      - T_S_ 16y ago
        Pretty interesting graph. It started growing exponentially in the 90's.
deleted 16y ago

spitfire 16y ago

The nokia E-series E72 has the neatest feature. If you put it face down it silences all alarts. Nokia had a great ad campaign for real face time using this - "Somethings are more important than email". The iphone and android badly need these features.

jhamburger 16y ago
That seems a little silly to me but I do wish the toggle switch on the side of the iphone was a 3-step silent-vibrate-full instead of just full and vibrate.
booticon 16y ago
Funny enough, I just saw an app for Android that does this: http://lifehacker.com/#!5599116/how-to-turn-your-android-phone-into-a-fully+automated-superphone http://lifehacker.com/#!5599116/how-to-turn-your-android-pho... (God I hate LH's new design)
lmz 16y ago
HTC has a feature like that for its "HTC Sense" phones. From http://www.htc.com/www/htcsense/index.html http://www.htc.com/www/htcsense/index.html : "Ever fumbled with your phone because it went off at full-blast during a meeting? Well, don't worry! Now as soon as you lift your phone up to see who's calling, the ringer volume gets lower. Want it silenced completely? Just flip it over."
- StavrosK 16y ago
  It also lowers the volume if you pick it up, and if you flip it over during a call, it switches to the speaker. Very handy.
- bmelton 16y ago
  There used to be an Android app that did that. Though I can't remember the name of it, it was incredibly handy. I lost it at some point and, not remembering the app name, have failed to re-download it.

kevindication 16y ago

The irony is that Airplane Mode doesn't permit you use your phone on an airplane (at least per US airline policy, despite the FAA indicating that airlines may let passengers use phones in airplane mode). At least it lets you have a conversation without being interrupted.

martey 16y ago
Other than old articles from 2007 and 2008, and a couple of undated anecdotes, I was not able to find any information from any American airline suggesting that phones were prohibited on flights regardless of whether they had an Airplane or Flight mode. What current information I could find about mobile phones generally refer to using them with in-flight wifi, which seems to directly contradict your statement.
- kevindication 16y ago
  My experience is flight attendants that don't know the current policy, and assume that all phones have to be off. Maybe I'm just unlucky.
vyrotek 16y ago
When I fly Southwest they specifically announce that you are free to use your phone if it has Airplane mode. Good enough for me.
wrs 16y ago
I fly frequently on a few different US airlines, all with the same basic announcement: - All electronic devices must be powered completely off during the first and last 10 minutes of flight. - Laptops and phones can be on during the rest of the flight if all radios are off (including WiFi and Bluetooth). - The growing exception to the above is on planes with WiFi, where you can turn WiFi on during cruise. No other kinds of radios are allowed, even receive-only radios.
brk 16y ago
I use my iPhone, HTC Incredible and 3G iPad (in airplanes modes) all the time on US flights. It's never been an issue. I think that if an inadvertently left-on cell phone could truly disrupt an airplane we'd see MUCH stricter enforcement. Otherwise you're implying a band of terrorists playing Angry Birds in all-radios-on mode stands a significant chance of downing an airliner...

antimatter15 16y ago

I feel like this is a misuse of Airplane Mode. If your photos, etc. are "on the cloud", via Dropbox or something, they may require internet access to use. I think a more appropriate feature, which as far as I'm aware, doesn't exist, would be a no-interruption mode (probably needs a better name) that holds all notifications and calls during the time it's enabled.

xutopia 16y ago
You can enable just wifi when you are in Airplane mode. That's what I do.
prawn 16y ago
"Do not disturb" mode?

run4yourlives 16y ago

My first thought was, wow, what a show of respect for me and our time together. It saddens me that not being a rude ass is somehow worthy of blog-post out of the ordinary praise these days.

adnam 16y ago
And then get >200 points on HN

khookie 16y ago

Airplane mode is also good for keeping your sperm count up when it's in your pockets.

albemuth 16y ago
Is it really that bad? I'd like to see a study on this, at the moment I'm just a bit freaked out from reading 4HB but I'll definitely try to remember doing this
- adnam 16y ago
  What is 4HB?
  - khafra 16y ago
    The Four-Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss. There's a chapter on gaining progeny, for those who want that; he observes that when you put a cellphone next to rats for an hour a day their sperm count and free testosterone are lowered.
    - adnam 16y ago
      Tim Ferriss observed this? Or in which peer-reviewed journal did the study appear?
      - khafra 16y ago
        Strangely, I couldn't find a place in the book where he directly cites the dozens of studies he says he read; but he does quote from this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578660 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578660
        bugmenot 16y ago
        Yes, very strange. That's way out of character for Tim.

PhatBaja 16y ago

This makes sense but is not "hacker news". It should not have made it to one of the top news - it's just obvious common sense.

zackattack 16y ago
it's actually a great social hack i) communicates you are important / busy enough to be getting lots of inbound communication ii) makes the other person feel important that you value their time iii) it's a trick because it's a totally natural and awesome transition into being present with another person.
- bugmenot 16y ago
  Since when is paying attention to someone "a great social hack"? When people came to visit my grandfather and he stopped milking the cows to have a conversation with them, was that "a great social hack"? Not everything is a "hack" of some modified variety. Sometimes we already have a word for it, in this case, "manners". It's like there's a competition to overuse the word "hack" and nobody told me about it. /getoffmylawn

kevinburke 16y ago

More or less why I got an iPod touch instead of an iPhone. Still have a crappy $10 phone off Ebay.

noonespecial 16y ago

Tow knights, upon meeting, show their mutual respect for each other by extending their hands away from their weapons and towards one another. A modern equivalent is born?

_corbett 16y ago

I put my phone in airplane mode for exactly this reason--it's not just being super busy, but I have lots of push notifications setup which in my daily life are helpful but while I'm sleeping or socializing not. However I need various other functions on the phone (e.g. my alarm) so turning it off not an option, moreover switching from airplane mode->non much faster.