PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Mobile Phones in the Cabin? Perhaps Not!
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Old 5th Nov 2007, 15:04
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PAXboy
Paxing All Over The World
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Hertfordshire, UK.
Age: 67
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Angel

A2QFI The reason that people tend to shout on a mobile is because of the small speaker on the phone and the ambient noise around them. This makes it difficult to hear the distant person and the brain thinks that they also cannot be heard - and causes the person to speak louder.

This is why a pax sitting with earphones listening to muzak or the movie, when asked a question by the CC or other, will also speak too loudly. You can try this at home. Turn up the radio and then make a phone call - you will have difficulty hearing and will talk louder. Have someone steadily up the radio volume and you will instinctively speak louder still. The person at the other end of the phone can probably hear you just fine because a mobile phone has a better microphone than it does speaker. This problem has been exacerbated by the fashion and marketing drive to reduce the physical size of mobile (cell) phones, the speaker also gets reduced in size and the small phone does not cover the whole ear in the way that early phones did, thus allowing sound to get in around the side.

(Sorry for lengthy explanation but 27 years in telecommunications tends to do that!)
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