Friday, December 6, 2013

In praise of the humble lanyard


lanyard 500x333 In praise of the humble lanyard
Trends on mobile devices are a dime a dozen and are often shed for a more useful trends or simply a natural evolution of the smartphone. (I am looking at you flip phones.) However the one trend that left for simply cosmetic reasons is the humble lanyard. The questions remains why bring it back?
Before you simply call me a big old geek, hear me out.  When the lanyard was popular on devices, think about how little they did and how much more durable devices were. Since they have went out of fashion, cameras on devices got much better. They are now used more for internet browsing, gaming, social networking, media consumption, etc... The point is your cell phone is used for many more things than it was just 5 years ago, which means it's in your hand more. That leads to more opportunities for you to drop your ever more costly device. As the devices become more expensive, they've also become more fragile, so every drop is a greater opportunity for disaster.
What I found more amazing about lanyards is how much more accessible a lanyard makes your device.  I completely forgot that my Nokia Lumia 1020 came with a lanyard until a few weeks ago; since then, I am amazed how much quicker I can get to my device. I always leave a little lanyard hanging out of pocket so it's quick to access when the perfect photo opportunity presents itself. Most people still have their hands in their pocket fumbling for their phone. While this doesn't sound like much, if you have any children, you know how quickly a great photo opportunity comes and goes, so the extra 2 seconds it saves is priceless.
While you look like a huge dork doing it, you can use the lanyard to simply carry the device without holding it useful when you are in a hurry or simply don't want to risk putting your phone into the "key pocket" for fear of scratches on the screen.

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