This is the toughest interview of your career. You are recording it for one reason: quotes. Not paraphrases. Not “basically what they said.” The exact wording, delivered in the moment, with the right tone and context.
So you do what most people do. You use your phone.
Ten minutes in, your phone buzzes with a spam call. The recorder keeps going, but the app gets pushed into the background. You reject the call, look back down, and realize the recording paused. You missed the line you needed most. Then you notice your battery is nearly dead from screen-on time, background apps, and a long recording session.
That’s the hidden risk of phone recording. The audio quality matters, but reliability matters more. In an interview, the worst outcome is not a slightly noisy file. It’s no file at all.
The Technical Truth
To understand why a dedicated voice recorder for interviews/lectures is better, it helps to look at the hardware inside. It's no surprise: The microphones built into our smart devices are a marvel of miniaturization, but they’re usually designed to be most effective in one particular situation namely, when you hold your phone six inches from your mouth.
Then there’s the question of audio recording quality, an often neglected problem. Most phone apps for both iOS and Android compensate for limited storage by heavily compressing audio at low bitrates that lose details of tone, timing, and actual words. The Ticnote AI Voice Recorder records at 1,536 kbps in order to deliver the high levels of accuracy that people have come to expect. AI models need clean audio to help them distinguish between similar-sounding words and identify multiple speakers, in order to generate transcripts and do all the useful things that the Ticnote app can do. Cleaner audio generally improves transcription quality. This effectively turns a messy transcript you might spend hours editing into a publishable document.
As much as I like good audio, reliability is what really matters. The greatest sin is not a noisy recording but no recording at all. The system loses the quote if the recording pauses, crashes, or is interrupted. Our phones are sold to us as connection devices but operate as interruption devices. They have to stay on top of calls, notifications, and space management.
A dedicated recorder removes those failure points. The device isn't actually juggling messages, calls, and background apps. Once you hit record, it will continue to record until you end the session.
Battery life may be the most obvious factor in the phone vs. dedicated recorder debate. High-resolution audio recording is also power-intensive. If you’re recording a three-hour lecture on your phone, you’re stuck next to a wall outlet the rest of the day. Ticnote stands out with the ability to record for 25 hours straight on a single charge. That means you can get through a full day of interviews or multiple lectures without worrying about how much battery you have left.
Storage is only one component of the system’s reliability. Our work has put most of us in “Storage Full” purgatory. You use a dedicated device with its own 64GB storage to keep your work life separate from your personal life. You never have to sacrifice one type of memory for another: you won’t delete family photos to make room for interview files.
Psychology and Professionalism: The Focus Signal
Whether you’re sitting down for an interview or a high-level meeting, the things you put on the table in front of you speak volumes about you to everyone else in the room.
We all know what it means to be at lunch even a lunch where one party is intent on advancing social good and your dining companion plops a phone down on the table. Even if the phone is only acting as a recorder, the person across from you knows that a notification could pop up at any moment. If others get the sense that you’re only half there, they will question whether you’re fully in. In high-stakes professional environments, trust and rapport are fragile.
And putting a professional hardware recorder on the table sends the opposite message. And it demonstrates that you care enough about the conversation so nothing else competes for attention. If you present work that is accurate and respectful, you establish yourself as a professional who cares about standards that matter. And that can also mean people you interview for news articles, research projects, or whatever else — will be more likely to open up to you and speak honestly and thoughtfully, knowing that you will treat their words with care.
A dedicated wearable device means you can keep your phone in your pocket or bag, while still having access to what you need. This way, you’re not tempted to take a peek at a ping during pauses in the conversation. The tool manages the logistics in the background, leaving you free to focus on the human side of the interview.
The Magnetic Advantage for Modern Calls
But one of the biggest pain points for professionals recording phone calls remains a problem. On an iPhone, for example, it isn’t possible for apps to access live call audio, for privacy reasons, while recording is much easier in other contexts. Many people use awkward workarounds, putting the call on speakerphone and then recording it with a second device.
Ticnote’s hardware uses a more prosaic physical design to solve the same problem. It's magnetic and MagSafe-compatible, so it snaps onto the back of your phone. It taps into the internal vibrations and is designed to capture call audio without a speakerphone.
Hardware is still best for interviews and lectures. It isn't just about the microphones. Software alone can only go so far.
Upgrade Your Professional Toolkit
If recording truly is going to define your career, your research, your education, you can’t risk it on a generic multi‑purpose app. But mobile voice recording still has its drawbacks not least the risk of interruption, the limited capability of a smartphone microphone, and battery drain.
A specialized recorder constitutes a tangible investment from which the soundness of your work will benefit enormously. Every word is recorded in high fidelity, giving the AI transcription and long-term archiving team the best possible input, which is one simple way to strengthen your delivery (and put you across as more professional).
Raise your standards and invest in better recording. While lots of creators use basic gear, upgrading to a professional hardware recorder, a tool purpose-built for the task, lets you experience the confidence that comes with reliable, consistent, and high‑quality performance.
Check out the TicNote AI Voice Recorder to see it in action.