Time For Flight Mode On Your Mobile Phone
from the doesn't-always-need-to-be-connected dept
A few months ago, we pointed out that, thanks to a growing number of "smart phones," flight attendants were often having trouble with passengers who wanted to use the PDA functionality of their phones, but had the wireless transmitter turned off. Unfortunately, there's no easy way for anyone to see quickly if the phone really has its wireless abilities shut off, or if the person is just saying that to keep the flight attendants off their back. So, now, the Consumer Electronics Association is trying to come up with a standard way to easily display that a mobile phone is in "flight mode" -- where the user can make use of applications on the phone, but isn't transmitting a wireless signal. Next thing you know, they're going to need another way of indicating to everyone that the camera part of a camera phone isn't on...
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Samsung already does
When in Airplane Mode, all icons related to signal strength, etc. are removed from the display and the words "Phone Off" are prominantly displayed at the top of the screen and on the outside LCD display so I don't even have to exit my game to show that it's off.
The only drawback to it is that exiting out of Airplane Mode forces the phone to reboot which takes up to 60 seconds, so it's really no faster than just turning the phone off when they tell you to and turning it back on after you land, and I usually carry my PocketPC with me for gaming and reading while on a plane, so I don't really need the phone turned on...
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Not practical.
I think a better solution might be to equip flight crews with transmitter detectors. These things are the size of pagers and can discretely vibrate when detecting a transmitter. This would also detect active phones in pockets, purses, carry-on luggage, etc.
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Re: Not practical.
The detector would probably not be a good idea. Think of how long it would take to push back from the gate if a signal was detected and it was in the luggage compartment of the plane.
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Re: Not practical.
Tons of people do this already with regular phones - forget to turn it off and it's running the entire flight, without causing problems. Think of how many people are on the plane... if even 0.5% forget to turn off the phone in their bag, then every flight has 1-3 phones on during the flight.
Now with many laptops available with HSPDA/CDMA connectivity, how do flight attendants ensure that those are put in flight mode during flights?
I've heard of flight attendants making people turn off their iPods because they think it's a cell phone.
It simply comes down to form factor... small devices are all starting to look like and absorb features of cell phones and vice-versa. If you want to use one of these on a plane (with the wireless features turned off), then you're at the mercy of ignorant flight crews. If you want to use your laptop (even nefariously with HSPDA on), nobody will care. Of course laptops and cell phones are blurring their boundaries (with big rich-featured PDA phones that look like mini-laptops, and UMPCs), flight crews will find it impossible to tell who is violating the antique FAA rules (which are already way behind if you look at the list of banned devices).
We are heading [slowly] toward one of the two scenarios:
1. an all-out ban on electronics that aren't provided by the airline (built into the seats or portable units for rent)
2. an all-out un-ban of everything (once they retire all the old planes that aren't shielded against in-cabin radio interference)
Because it's impossible to bucketize all the new converged gadgets into banned and non-banned categories, they will have to ban or un-ban everything at once.
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Mythbusters investigate
I have a Blackberry 7230 which had a radio off function, and it takes about 30 seconds to a minute to find a network after landing in a new city.
When the radio is off it says OFF next to the antenna symbol, how one would modify the operating system to frig this I have no idea, perhaps a Java programmer would know?
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Re: Mythbusters investigate
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Re: Re: Mythbusters investigate
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I just love to read these internet forums...everyone's a know-all.!
1 - I am a pilot, and any other pilot will tell you that it is annoying to have the cell-phone buzz in your ears.
2 - All FCC approved phones have been carefully checked for errornous transmission. Not all the phones in the world have. Or what if someone brings a cheap copy on board. So it is easiest to ban all 'transmitting' devices.
3.- There are new devices out daily. Again, easiest to ban all tranmitting devices.
4. - The other reason for the ban is that airborne cell phones are able to 'lock' into multiple cell stations at once. This causes network problems.
So let's put this one to rest.
Joker
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