susan… Just see it, as quality… not quantity! 
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Everyone else might be on their smart phones 
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Yes, it’s the trendy thing to do these days, especially among the young people.
Having said that, Marge’s sister and her husband (in their sixties) both do it…
…but then, they’re posh Southerners!
JBR, I don’t think talking in that odd way, is ‘posh’ at all!
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Art I have never really noticed until you mentioned it !
Muddy, You can’t miss it! It’s awful…especially when you have to listen to it for 3 miles… loud and non stop!
I’m going to be listening for this new uptalk now .
Down ere in Durrset there be sum funny ways of torking I can tell eee .
No, it isn’t. It’s trendy.
Posh people - really posh people - speak properly.
Yorkshire people speak even better.
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JBR, lt might have been a few years ago but it’s so last year, now! 
I believe it all began when the nation watched Neighbours.
They all talked that way, and gradually it’s infiltrated our culture too, starting with the youngsters…
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Try telling them that!
I presume people speak into the bottom of the mobile phone because that’s where the microphone is - it’s where you would speak into if you were holding the phone to your ear and mouth - although I think some of the newer models of mobiles have additional microphones in other parts of the phone too.
I often put my mobile phone on Speaker mode if I want someone I’m with to hear the conversation too, perhaps for important information or instructions we both need to hear, or if I’m using it at home, because I find it is easier to use that way - and holding the phone away from your ear with the Speaker switched on makes it much easier to use the key pad if you’re having one of those call centre type conversations where you have to keep pressing numbers for the Department you want to speak to or the type of query you have etc.
I think the reason they use their mobiles like that on The Apprentice is so the camera sound can pick up both sides of the conversation.
I wouldn’t use Speaker phone if I was in a place where it would disturb other people, though - and I definitely would switch it off if I’m in a specified “quiet coach” or “quiet area” where people have chosen to go to sleep, relax quietly or to work.
It does annoy me when I choose the quiet coach of a train and people start having a loud conversation in the seats near me - whether in person or by phone - if they want to have a natter, go somewhere else!
This topic reminds me of something I was pondering on earlier this week -
Have you ever noticed when someone is sitting alone having a phone conversation when they are on a train or in a restaurant or even outside, it seems to annoy people more than if a person is having a face to face conversation with people who are with them?
I have often wondered why I find it so annoying - a couple of days ago I had a woman, around my age, walking behind me from my village all the way into town - about a mile and half.
Throughout the whole walk, she had her phone on Loudspeaker and was chatting to someone about the most mundane things. Even above the noise of the road traffic, I could hear the conversation on both sides and I found myself feeling irritated by the fact that she was speaking on the phone for so long about nothing important, such as what time of the day they liked to make a cup of tea and whether they preferred to have a scone or a biscuit with it.
If that had been two elderly people walking along together, having this same mundane chat to while away their walk into town , I don’t suppose it would have bothered me at all - it was the fact that this lady was having this conversation over the phone as she walked along that made it seem so pointless and irritating.
Is it because people tend to speak more loudly when they are on the phone?
Is it because those overhearing the conversation cannot see the other party, so find it more irritating?
I came to the conclusion that maybe it was me who had the problem - why should it have bothered me?
A mile and a half!!!
I think I’d’ve been tempted to wait a few moments for her to draw alongside and then say politely, " Do you think you could tone it down a bit? I’m walking for a bit of p&q!"
I doubt Foxtrot Oscar would have been her response!
A previous boss of mine used to drive around with her phone on speakerphone. If she ever had someone in the car with her, and a call came through, she would tell the passenger to stay silent, and have a conversation with whoever was on the phone - without letting on to the caller that a) the phone was on speakerphone, and b) that she had someone with her in the car. Grossly unprofessional I always thought 
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it never crossed my mind to do that!
But she definitely didn’t look the type to say that! 
Tea and scones isn’t the FO type!! 
Just found this article .
Good job I hadn’t read it before asking a man to stop talking on his phone in SINGAPORE.
In the vast airport full of space and chairs he chose the snooze lounge to drone on and on to his girlfriend until I could stand it no more .
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If you can’t read it above here it is.
SINGAPORE – Last December, Gerald Khor took a stand: He turned around at a cinema and asked a man yakking loudly on a mobile phone to turn it off or take it outside.
Such direct confrontation is almost unheard of in this orderly state. And what followed was just as unusual. The offending conversationalist waited outside the theater with his pals after the movie ended and beat up Mr. Khor.
The incident outraged Singaporeans, and in the process elevated Mr. Khor to folk-hero status. He’s been featured in newspapers and has made the rounds on the talk-show circuit. Strangers stop him on the street to congratulate him. “People even roll down their windows at intersections to shake my hand,” says the slight, bespectacled 29-year-old lawyer. "They come up to me in hotel lobbies and say, ‘More people should do what you did.’ "
As mobile-phone ownership has spread across urban Asia, politeness has gone out the window. People chat on the phone during movies and plays. They make loud, lengthy calls in restaurants. They even talk on their cells during weddings and funerals. While Europe and the U.S. have their share of cell-phone abuse, social pressures help keep errant callers in check: Annoyed Westerners think nothing of telling someone what to do with their cell phone. But here, grin-and-bear-it Confucian ethics prompt most Asians offended by bad mobile-phone manners to hold their tongues.
Yet a groundswell of discontent is propelling some here to take a deep breath and … say something.
“There’s a lot of anger out there,” says Noel Hon, Singapore’s answer to Miss Manners and chairman of both the government-run Courtesy Council and the Singapore Kindness Movement. “Generally, Singaporeans won’t say anything if a phone goes off in, say, a church. They’ll just frown,” he says. “But that’s starting to change.”
In Hong Kong, Richard Soon, 48, is way beyond the frowning stage. He told one theatergoer to turn his phone off or risk choking on it. And on a recent flight to Beijing he growled at a fellow business-class passenger who, despite the airline’s rule against using cellular phones on board, was chatting away. “I was bigger than him, so he had to put up with it,” Mr. Soon says.
The citizenry is being asked to put up with a lot these days, thanks to the explosion of cell phones in Asia. Since 1997, cell-phone ownership in Singapore has jumped 98% to 1.5 million units, representing about 39% of the population. Over the same period in Hong Kong, ownership has risen 81% to 3.8 million, or 58% of the population. Users take their cell phones with them everywhere: One of Mr. Khor’s friends recently dropped his Nokia into the toilet while multi-tasking in the men’s room. “The guy on the other end was pretty disgusted” when he found out later why the conversation was suddenly cut short, Mr. Khor says.
Especially in the world of business, it’s no calls barred. Mobile phones routinely go off during meetings, and it isn’t uncommon for people to actually take the call. “I’ve even had candidates take calls during job interviews,” says Dharma Chandran, a senior consultant at Hewitt Associates in Singapore who was raised in Malaysia and schooled in Australia. “In my experience, that never happens in the U.S. People turn their phone on silent, or more often, just turn it off” during business meetings, he says.
Some Singaporeans are so attached to their phones, they flout the rules of institutions as austere as the National Army. One reservist recently secreted a phone in his fatigues during practice maneuvers in the jungle. The platoon was wading through a waist-high river when the phone started to ring. “I just couldn’t believe it,” says the platoon’s officer, who declined to be named. “He actually took the call and kept yakking away while everyone just stared at him.” Singaporean men serve two years in the army and then are called back for up to two weeks each year until they are 40. “Some of them may be boss of a company; they could miss a decision on a million-dollar deal, so I try to give a bit of leeway. But this was ridiculous,” the officer says. The offending soldier got his just reward, however. After the call, he tripped mid-river and lost his phone in the water.
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I remember Singapore as being such a neat and orderly state, with strict rules about some anti-social behaviours, I am surprised to learn they have not introduced strict rules about not using mobiles in theatres and places where phones ringing and answering calls may disturb other people.
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