I’ve never been much of a fan of hands-free devices for mobile phones. Bluetooth ones just look stupid, and wired ones are an annoying tangle. While I do like the iPhone headphones for music (to pause or skip tracks), I’d usually rather unplug them if I’m going to take a phone call.

Maybe my behaviour is just an artefact or a relic of a different age of telephones, but I think the truth behind it is a little more complex.

It’s not to say I’m not interested in ways to make a phone more usable. There are two or three people who I will talk to on my hands free— not because of who they are, but because of how I take the call. I’ve set up some of my contacts with different ringtones— our first married dance for my wife (Al Green, Lets Stay Together) and Still Dre for my dad (a long story…) so I don’t need to look at the phone screen to see who is calling. If I need to free up my hands to take a call in the first place, then there’s no value in freeing up my hands once I’ve answered it; “old” behaviours kick in.

It’s not hands-free that saves me the hassle; it’s eyes-free. Not having to check who is calling saves me having to take my phone out of my pocket (I don’t answer to unknown numbers, “08″ call centres or— depending what I’m doing at the time— mobile numbers I don’t know) and lets me just cancel the call by fumbling for the right button. Particularly handy if I’m in the middle of an “actual” conversation or meeting that I don’t particularly want to interrupt.

With touch-screen devices, what you can do without seeing the screen can be a little more limited. The original iPod Touch, for example, had no volume keys; to turn it down, you had to be able to see the screen, find the slider and then set the volume you wanted.

So I’m very interested in the new
accessibility feature for the blind that the iPhone 3Gs introduces. As it’s a hardware feature, it’s missing from the 3G and older handsets (even with the 3.0 software update) but in short, it allows blind people to use the phone without having to be able to see the screen. Which, I suspect, with a little tine to learn how it works, could include some useful functionality for the sighted who sometimes don’t want to take their phone out of their pockets.

And as they wouldn’t need one hand to hold the phone while using the other to operate the touch screen, maybe it would even keep their hands free as they use it too…