Pop Socket - Ergonomic?

Truthfully: I was not keen on getting a pop socket. Pop sockets are those that attach to the back of your phone to give you another way to hold your phone.  I felt that they made the phone too bulky. I received one from one of the companies I work for and decided to try it. I like the concept.

This blog is dedicated to Paul Bommarito who constantly talked about ways of not gripping your phone and how to hold your phone to reduce neck flexion. I hope he would be proud of me for discussing this topic.

A pop socket allows you to hold your phone in a different way in your palm without gripping your phone between your thumb and fingers. On a personal note: One night before I installed the pop socket, I was playing solitary or pyramid on my phone and my thumb started to bother me - I know we are not supposed to look at our cell phones at bedtime but playing a game helps me fall asleep and let my mind relax from the day. With a pop socket, you can constantly change your hand position while holding the phone. If you hold the pop socket for too long, there will be contact pressure on your fingers, so you need to change its position. Some different hand positions are holding between your index and middle finger, middle finger and ring finger, and gripping the pop socket itself.

There are many shapes of pop sockets so you need to find one that fits most comfortable. The strip pop socket allows you to extend the fingers and relax the thumb while holding your phone. There is the ring pop socket that allows you to put the ring on one finger while holding your phone lightly. This one is nice since you can put it on your finger and turn it upside down and it stays in your hand or use it as a handle when you are carrying other things. There is the one that pops out and than lays relatively flat on your cell phone. All of them should allow you to take your fingers off the phone and allow the thumb to relax on the phone or float.

One negative feature is it does not fit in your car cell phone holders, but you can pull out the pop socket and put it in the holder but rest the pop socket on the top of the cell phone holder, and then lock down the bottom of the phone. You can buy cell phone holders that hold the pop socket to your dashboard.

You can also use the pop socket to hold the phone at an angle on a desk while watching a YouTube video or checking your e-mail. This REDUCES the neck flexion to look at the screen but there is still neck flexion.

Tell me how you use your pop socket and which one do you use?

If you have any further questions, contact me at kgranataclark@ergonomicsandyou.com, my website is www.ergonomicsandyou.com, or you can schedule some time with me to discuss this topic at https://calendly.com/ergonomicsandyou/1-1-consult.