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VIRTUALISATION Mobile phone data precarious: survey
VIRTUALISATION Mobile phone data precarious: survey | Mobile phone data precarious: survey |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Tuesday, 13 October 2009 | |
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5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
The online study polled more than 1100 people around Australia. Some of the results weren't particularly surprising. For example, one third of 16 to 20 year olds believe it's worse to lose their phone than their keys or wallet. Well, yeah, if a teenager loses their keys or wallet, they can (generally) turn to mum and dad to bail them out of the fix. And men are more likely to lose their phones than women. Rather than any innate sex-based differences, I'll put that down to they way most women seem to carry a phone in one of two places: either a handbag, or the back pocket of their jeans. Watch men stash their phones, and they go just about anywhere - jacket inside pocket, shirt pocket, front or back trouser pocket, side pocket of cargo pants or shorts, and so on. Not only is it easy for a phone to slip out of some of these locations, the more places it can go, the harder it is to get in the habit of checking the phone where it should be. And throw in the (predominantly) male habit of placing phones on restaurant and cafe tables, and it's easy to explain why, among 16 to 19 year olds, 50 percent of males have lost a phone but only 20 of females have done the same. It's easy to misplace a phone. They're small, they slip between cushions, get hidden under magazines, or left in pockets. 77% of respondents say they regularly call their own mobiles to find where they put them. (Apple's Find My iPhone feature can be used to tell the handset to sound a tone for two minutes to help locate it.) But loss or serious damage to mobile phones is more common than you might expect. The study found nearly a quarter of people have broken their phone, dropped it in water, or lost it completely. Another difference between the sexes is that - if the study is to be believed - one quarter of males store 'secret phone numbers' (hidden from casual discovery) in their phones, while only one twelfth of females say they do the same. |
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