Why ‘Sent From My iPhone’ is Cool Again

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Research suggests that if someone knows you're typing from your phone, they will actually be more accepting of grammatical errors.

When I got my first iPhone, I immediately when to my signature in the Mail app and changed it. No one needed to know it was "Sent from my iPhone." It's cool tech, but I'm not bragging. Even my new sendoff, "Sent via mobile," felt a little pretentious.

"Forgive me," I begged, "I'm typing on a keyboard on a phone. Woe is me."

It ends up, that may be more acceptable than we once thought. Lara Williams at The Guardian dug up a research paper suggesting that using Sent from my iPhone delivers a different message.

It's one that says: "Hey, man, I'm trying here."

The paper, "Sent from My iPhone: The Medium and Message as Cues of Sender Professionalism in Mobile Telephony" by Caleb T. Carr and Chad M. Stefaniak suggests that having that sendoff makes readers more forgiving of grammatical and spelling errors.

"Negative attributions are attenuated by cues reflecting the transmission medium (i.e., a message's mobile signature block)," the authors wrote in the paper's abstract. So it's not just your iPhone. Even "sent from my Samsung Galaxy S7 on AT&T LTE" can signal that you're on mobile, and the respondent should give you a break.

MORE: Here Are the 10 Best Smartphones Available

To a degree, this may be true. When you text me from your phone, I assume some mistakes happen. There's also new ways of communicating, like emoji. And a majority of my friends no longer users periods when single sentences on their phones. Some don't use capitalization at all.

We're also in an age where more and more people are ditching feature phones for smartphones. Saying you have a new Moto Z isn't stuck up, it's just a fact of life.

Do I need the commercial your phone's vendor put in there? Probably not. You can do better. But hey, if it makes you feel better, there's no shame at all. I'm just glad you're answering me on the go.

via The Guardian

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Andrew E. Freedman
Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is an editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming as well as keeping up with the latest news. He holds a M.S. in Journalism (Digital Media) from Columbia University. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Kotaku, PCMag, Complex, Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag among others.