This question reminds me of Kraftwerk's method of using a phone. I'd love a mobile phone that did this;

>When the German electronic band Kraftwerk were in the studio, they refused to be disturbed. Working for hours on end, patiently perfecting their sonic arrangements, required zero interruptions. So much so that they even took the ringer out of the only telephone in the studio. So what happened when someone wanted to call them? Simple. If someone wanted to speak to them when they were working in the studio, the band would instruct that person to call at a precise time - not 2 minutes before and not a couple of minutes after, but exactly at that time. Then, at that precise time, a member of the band would stop what they were doing, walk across the studio, pick up the none ringing phone and say ‘Hello’ and the call would begin. That’s the only way you could get to speak to them. You made an agreement. You said what you were going to do and then you did it.

http://www.youneedstandout.com/blog/2014/10/20/how-to-call-k...

Intriguing, but in order to lift the phone at the precise time they'd need to have some form of alarm or notification. At which point, their concentration would be interrupted.

So really I don't see the point.

Even if they set an alarm, that is a lot less distracting than the phone being able to ring at any time. Besides, any time I set an alarm, I’m already aware of approximately when it will go off and the alarm is just to pinpoint the exact moment. Ie if the alarm is to go off at 2pm, I don’t think about it until maybe 1pm or later as the time starts to approach.

One known and pre-timed distraction is a lot less distracting than many unknown randomly-timed distractions.

As a kid my barber didn't have a phone. He figured if he was on the phone he wasn't servicing his customers so he never had one installed (he retired just a cell phone came down to where normal people could afford to use them for voice calls). A couple times a his family did call the bar across the street and the waitress would walk over and relay the message (he probably closed shop for the day every time that happened).

Telephones are useful for a lot of things, but they are not quite as critical as you think.

They're not as critical as you think if someone in your immediate vicinity that the person who's trying to contact you knows how to contact has one...

You mean that musicians would have to be keeping track of time? How very distracting for them.

For me, when playing/recording, it would really distract me (more than e.g. having a phone in silent mode so that when flow mode ends, I notice I'm hungry and need to wake up to the outside world, I can see who has tried to call).

The Kraftwerk description sounds a bit eccentric to me. Their business model is about being eccentric, so no surprise there.

>For me, when playing/recording, it would really distract me

I think this might be easier if you are working as a group and have a big clock on the wall. I am a rubbish instrumentalist, but do hang around with a hell of a lot of musicians, and 'how long was that' does seem to be one of the most commonly asked questions of each other when they are in a studio. Also, if paying for a studio, they generally become very good at estimating the current time.

Sure, but I think things like "we can now do one take and then it's phone call o'clock" would set an unnecessary pressure to the performance. That's just me of course.

Their manager can bang on the door?

This would only work in Germany.

Why? Are people in other countries unable to follow precise instructions, especially when money is involved?

I was referring to the required punctuality and I wasn't being entirely serious.

You would be surprised at the lack of ability of people in general to do that

Sounds like it'd be easier to just replace the ringer with a light.

To call other people?

Calls I make are split ~50/50 between personal, to people who know me and have my number, and business, when I either want to buy something or resolve some issue. Calls I receive are split 40/60 between personal and spam. And I'm in Europe. In the US, from what I hear, that would be closer to 10/90.

There's a huge asymmetry in phone use. Marketers and scammers make the phone network near-unusable to regular people, by ensuring most of the calls they receive are unwanted.

Where in Europe are you?

I'm in Germany and I'd say I get one call a month from somebody who wants to do a survey or something like that.

And I also might get one spam SMS per month which I report to the "Bundesnetzagentur", which will then take care of that as this is prohibited in Germany.

Poland.

I regularly get a survey call and "congratulations, you won a vacuum cleaner/spa/whatever" call roughly once a month. From time to time, I get some company I'm technically in business with call me (through an outsourced call centre), trying to upsell something useless. I used to get a lot more of calls like these a couple years ago, but I vaguely recall something in the legislation having changed since then, and most spam calls disappeared.

That said, a year ago I started my own business, and now the cold calling just doesn't stop. In Poland AFAIK it's illegal to spam individuals, but it's legal to spam businesses - and now I have, for example, Polcard (card processor) representatives calling me roughly once a month, asking if maybe I'd like a POS terminal. I keep saying them, I'm a contractor, I only do B2B and don't need a terminal - they note this down, and call again the next month.

So currently it all adds up to ~10 +/- 5 unwanted calls a month. It's still usually more than personal calls I receive (but less than personal or business calls I make). Rise of the mobile-connected IMs pretty much put a stop to most personal phone calls among the people I know.

> In Poland AFAIK it's illegal to spam individuals

Still happens despite of regulations and it wouldn't be that bad if you just could get the info from person calling you, who got your number and demand removal from database but as you probably know, they love to hang up the second they hear this question. I've heard that the newest trick is to give the victim the premium service number saying "that's how you can get your phone number removed".

Personally, I'm still dealing with periods during year when all 3 phones in my house from Orange are receiving calls from same spam number - two mobile contracts and one landline. I explicitly demanded which was check-marked on my subscriber's account that I do not wish receiving spam calls even if that means my bill is cut by 5 PLN and I'm missing chance to win something (sic!); so it seems even service provider doesn't bother with legislation here.

> they note this down, and call again the next month.

It's probably due to rotation of people - one shift comes in and then next one and nobody cares what called person has to say. It's still a potential "client" for them and the mindset here is "maybe after n-th time they'll gave up and purchase our stuff", I believe

This seems to be somewhat similar in Germany. I got lots of calls from companies trying to sell me SEO optimization or whatever when I was in charge (and listed on the website) for the online business of my former employee. But I received little to none mails from those companies because cold-mailing is prohibited by German laws against unfair competition. Seems to be somewhat broken that you may telephone-spam somebody but are not allowed to do so via mail.

> I vaguely recall something in the legislation having changed since then

There actually was a change in Polish legislation - Telecommunications Act 172.1 (Ustawa Prawo Telekomunikacyjne art. 172 par. 1)

BTW, if I receive spam SMSes on my German number that are sent from the UK, can I report those to the Bundesnetzagentur, or do I need to find the relevant UK authority?

I would just give it a try. Probably the BNetzA knows best who to contact in case they can't get hold of that number.

According to their website they only take complaints about commercial spam. The spam I'm referring to comes from a non-EU political party, which probably makes things more complicated.

Mostly I use it as a network connection for the Messages app on my computer, and as a mobile computing platform/camera/text message system.

Occasionally I use it for a general network connection when I don't have wifi.

I call my parents every once in a while, though. It's a nice to have feature.

- taking and sharing photos

- to get directions

- to send and receive text messages

- to listen to music and media

- voicemail

and lastly

- to make and receive phone calls agreed upon in advance, usually text

Honestly the only times I use the phone portion of my cell phone is to validate my WhatsApp account, 2FA for various websites that don't support FIDO, and talking to recruiters, and texting people who I don't have a better method of contacting them (fb, WhatsApp, email etc)

I could probably dump my phone number except for WhatsApp. That's basically replaced my phone for all friends and family. I haven't turned on my ringer in months.

Phone is bundled malware that came with my handheld computing device that is not easily removed. I am not really sure what it is for.

The Internet and occasionally texting.