Herewith, an semi-official guide to smartphone use at the office. It's not law, just my humble opinion on the hierarchy of smartphone crimes against etiquette. Before you start hating, I'll try to anticipate the most burning questions.
On the issue of phones on the meeting table, an etiquette guide at AskMen.com comes down firmly on the side of never: "Do you leave your BlackBerry out on the table? Shame on you." I couldn't care less. Silence your phone and put it next to your legal pad -- it's perfectly OK in my book. As for strolling around the office answering email, I also have no problem so long as the walkers keep an eye out. What gets my gripe, really, is noise: Ear-blasting ring tones, people who regularly log significant chat hours at their desk, and colleagues who find meetings a suitable time to answer private calls. And in interviews, of course, the answer is always no.
That's me. What did I get wrong? What did I miss?
Unfortunately many places, especially financial services, Boss-types tend to have eagle-eye out for cell/bb/iphone/etc use around the office. Of course, these are the same firms that severely limit employees' access to many websites/services (some which even have legitimate business(esque) uses!), so the shift to personal devices should come as no surprise.
Frankly I think this is ridiculous (yes, I'm really distributing proprietary/client/deal information, sheesh), but its forced many of us to develop clandestine email/txting/long "bathroom break" techniques to cope.
Ah yes. The bathroom break technique. Always a viable escape hatch.