I love the way Paul Golding thinks. All too often techie people (and Paul’s one of the best) make things over-complicated. Whereas Paul seems to think of the simplest and most elegant solution, in a nice out-of-the-box style.
His latest idea is switching the phone into silent mode by simply placing it face down on a desk. You could see incoming messages/calls by a simple flashing LED on the bottom and even check who’s calling as the phone wouldn’t switch back to normal for a short period of time.
That would be really cool.
It is a great idea to automatically let the mobile assume silent mode, when placed upside down on a table.
If you could let the user easily select “upside down mode” from silent to discrete it would be even better.
Some meetings can take place with mobiles on discrete.
Another problem is that sometimes you would like the mobile to go into discrete mode, when placed in a pocket. Any suggestions?
Very cool indeed, as for pocket based discreteness isn’t that as simple as making the phone light-sensitive?
The additional advantage is that it doesn’t ring in theaters or in other darkrooms where silence is preferred but with an override option.
I see a couple problems with this concept.
1. What if you want the phone face up in order to see the time or anything else that may come through (silently) on the external display?
2. What if you place your phone in a bag and it gets jostled around? Will the phone switch modes without your realization?
In general though, I applaud creative solutions such as this one, instead of having to press some unintuitive sequence of keys or adding another dedicated key.