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Confirming #2: I live in Switzerland (low crime rate etc...) but I would not even dream of leaving my phone visible in the car. Btw. in the 90' I used to detac

Confirming #2: I live in Switzerland (low crime rate etc...) but I would not even dream of leaving my phone visible in the car. Btw. in the 90' I used to detach each-single-time that I parked the car the front panel of the car's radio to then carry it with me (leaving the storage box in front of the passenger seat open, to show that I didn't just put it in there) to discourage people from breaking into the car to extract the radio (front panel & main car radio were individually coded to only work together, that's at least what I believed). What a silly thing to do, hehe, but to be fair the price of a fancy radio at that time was similar to today's phones ("Pioneer" and "Sony" were high on my list - some models had quite complex display animations/colors/equalizers/etc & sound modes).

zerocrates 5y ago
The detachable faceplate for anti-theft reasons was (is?) a very common feature for aftermarket radios/head-units/whatever in the US. Built-in ones have just increasingly moved to not being a discrete, accessible, interchangeable component, another way around. I still remember when my dad had bought an aftermarket tape-deck-only radio, a Sony I believe, well into the era of the ubiquitous CD player (he just wanted a working tape deck). Someone broke into the car at some point and stole it and I can only assume they were very disappointed after looking closer.
- dzolob 5y ago
  To this day I’d be afraid to park my car out in the open with that piece of hardware attached to it.
- toyg 5y ago
  Italy, mid-80s, early summer. My primary school organises a day trip to a city nearby. During the trip, a classmate from a “difficult” background ends up getting slightly hurt, banging his head against a wall. When we eventually get back to our hometown, his parents don’t come to pick him up, and somehow that means everyone else has to wait on the bus. Eventually, his dad shows up, drunk and high (on heroin, we’ll found out later) with a car radio under his arm - and everybody knows he doesn’t have a car, he’s literally just stolen it…
kccqzy 5y ago
And when I bought an ebike, the dealer told me to always remove the battery and carry it with me when I park the bike in public spaces.

zerocrates 5y ago

The detachable faceplate for anti-theft reasons was (is?) a very common feature for aftermarket radios/head-units/whatever in the US. Built-in ones have just increasingly moved to not being a discrete, accessible, interchangeable component, another way around. I still remember when my dad had bought an aftermarket tape-deck-only radio, a Sony I believe, well into the era of the ubiquitous CD player (he just wanted a working tape deck). Someone broke into the car at some point and stole it and I can only assume they were very disappointed after looking closer.

dzolob 5y ago
To this day I’d be afraid to park my car out in the open with that piece of hardware attached to it.
toyg 5y ago
Italy, mid-80s, early summer. My primary school organises a day trip to a city nearby. During the trip, a classmate from a “difficult” background ends up getting slightly hurt, banging his head against a wall. When we eventually get back to our hometown, his parents don’t come to pick him up, and somehow that means everyone else has to wait on the bus. Eventually, his dad shows up, drunk and high (on heroin, we’ll found out later) with a car radio under his arm - and everybody knows he doesn’t have a car, he’s literally just stolen it…

kccqzy 5y ago

And when I bought an ebike, the dealer told me to always remove the battery and carry it with me when I park the bike in public spaces.