- Please! This is a crisis! I really need to borrow your phone!

tempmail said:

What is your strategy when someone asks to borrow your phone?

Say your phone contains some information that you really do not want that borrower to see (be it a secret contact, a photo, bookmark, whatever), but the situation makes it practically impossible to deny lending another person your phone for a couple minutes - out of your sight.

Say you are out of office with your menacing boss and he gets the message his wife has been in a car accident. And then his phone battery dies. He urgently needs to borrow your phone for several minutes.


What do you do?

A) You simply say: "No! My phone is my private property! You may not borrow it. I do not care if you wife is dying. No!"

B) You hand him the phone, praying to God that he not open the SMS application or photo gallery to discover the secret affair you were having with his daughter last night.

C) You activate "guest mode" and hand him the phone, knowing he will not be able to see any of the information he should not see.

D) You transform him into a newt using an ancient magical incantation.


Come to think about it, my question can probably be summed up like this:
What kind of "guest modes" are available for Android, and how do they work?

Thanks!

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Honestly there shouldnt be a bunch of stuff on your phone you should feel the need to hide...if there is you should stop, or accept it'll always be a pain for you.

My rule is pretty easy.

Random people I don't know: I have absolutely no hesitation intelling them no, they can't use my phone.

Friends/acquaintances/co-workers/etc: Hit the phone button & let them dial. My phone doesn't leave my sight.

My rule #1: I don't leave anything that's crucially private on my phone. They're simply not the most secure devices in the world, whether you lend them out or not.

My rule #2: Being overly paranoid is ridiculous, and it sucks. Follow rule #1, and just lend the damn phone.

That's the reason i still keep my ancient Nokia 6630 as a backup along with my Galaxy S, there are instances when i was asked/requested to lend my phone for a matter of a call i rarely let anyone touch my Galaxy S

i'm just paranoid about my phone.

if you lug a basic phone and one asks you for a help in calling then its good to have a cheap backup phone which serve these purposes easily.

Never mind all that, i lent my brand new phone to a friend of mine the other day to make an emergency phone call, and 10 seconds later she dropped it face down in some gravel, and now it's all scratched up.

I got an 'oh, sorry' so that's all right then :-(

daveybaby said:

Never mind all that, i lent my brand new phone to a friend of mine the other day to make an emergency phone call, and 10 seconds later she dropped it face down in some gravel, and now it's all scratched up.

I got an 'oh, sorry' so that's all right then :-(

Click to expand...

I know how it feels, heart bleed when somebody F*** up your prized possession.

I'm shocked that anyone would be worried about someone going through your phone.
Who would do this?
I have lent my phone out many times, and always hit the phone button for them. Not because I dont trust them. Simply because if they're not familiar with a smart phone, they'll first get stuck on the lock screen, then get lost trying to dial.
So as soon as they're done, they should hand the phone right back to me... and they always do.

I dont have anything extremely private on my phone. But I still wouldn't want my sister to grab my phone and see what my wife really thinks about her in a text conversation we've been having.
But other than things like that,I have nothing I'm ashamed of, but still dont want anyone looking through my phone... and anyone I know wouldn't do it (I hope)

if it was a stranger... why would I let them out of my site with my phone.? if they ask why cant they talk in private.. i take my phone.. and say good luck.

friends... i trust.
if i cant trust them... then not a friend.

Who would go through your phone with you standing right there. If this person was in an emergency situation he wouldn't take time to rifle through your phone right in front of you. I would be more worried about your evil, juicy mouthed boss slobbering his cigar smelling spit all over my phone.

I just borrow the phone to anyone. He really can't go anywhere without me explaining how to enter....
I've set up NO ICONS on homescreen, NO ICONS in app drawer.
I have LauncherPro with 3 docks at the bottom, each icon with 2 functions. Normal push and swipe gesture

Messaging inbox is swipe, normal push is write a new one...
photo gallery is swipe, normal push is clock lol....

say he "accidentaly" swipes.
1. Why would he try to open the clock?
2. Swipe is difficult even for me who I'm used with the phone and the gesture for quite some time...
3. Never happened

It's the best setup ever, not mentioning most of the important icons are changed...
Nobody knows how to use it unless I take it and do it for them. Even a fan of android, you need to know the combinations...

Wanna go browsing? swipe the market icon, if u push it normal, you go to settings (weird huh?)

wanna see the photos? swipe the clock app, if you push it normally you go to calendar.

It's connections I have in my head (like ... clock for me makes me think of a calendar, or... something I NEED TO DO at a specific time).

Need to write a quick text? Push it, if you swipe it you go to the inbox, which is not a normal inbox, it's a password protected inbox (just letter "A", but still, it's a password and most people give up even if they end up there by mistake).


It's just the way I setup my phone. Even if someone steals the phone, he's gonna have a really, really hard time figuring out how to use it. By the time he found out how to use it I'll be on to him with the tracking app i have installed.

status bar is hidden, hard to see gps or disable it. hard to even go to settings if you don't know how )