Pocket Dials
Many of us have been plagued by our phones making calls on its own. Some call this Pocket Dialing, others Butt dialing, but what ever you call it, it can be annoying. For me it got so bad my wife started calling me the king of butt calls, so I figured I needed to find a way to fix it.
I normally have my iPhone in my front pants pocket. How, I wondered, after an hour or more in my pocket my phone could wake up and start calling others. There was one time I heard my pocket talking and realized I had face timed someone. Most of the time the volume is too low to hear your pocket (or purse) talking so I knew it was happening more than I realized. When the screen is off the iPhone is inactive and calls cannot be started, so I thought about ways the iPhone can wake up on its own. There are a couple of settings that will do this.
The first setting is Settings/Display & Brightness/Raise To Wake. When this is turned on the phone will automatically wake up when the phone changes from horizontal to vertical. This sounds like a nice feature as it will automatically wake the phone up when you pick it up. Problem is the phone can do this in your pocket with normal motions. Once awake the phone can do strange things without your knowledge. I now have this feature turned off.
The second setting is Settings/Notifications/Show Previews. There are three options for this setting. I had mine set to “Always” initially and that automatically wakes the phone when a notification comes in. There are countless options for notifications and with this setting my phone was constantly waking up in my pocket. I changed this setting to “When Unlocked” so I only get notifications when when my iPhone is already awake. It will no longer wake up on its own. The third option is “Never,” which effectively disables notification alerts. This setting would also work for this.
Since I changed the above two settings, I am not aware of any annoying pocket dials. Additionally, there was another major benefit to these changes. Every time the iPhone wakes up, the screen turns on, and battery power is used. I have noticed a big change in battery life since I made the changes. Note: The notification changes can also help extend the battery life on an iPad. I used to think it was nice to see the screen turn on when things happened but I now think the cost for that is too high and hopefully if I call you, it won’t be a mistake.