I have a note-taker running on almost every video call I do. It's completely normal now. Nobody comments on it.

Put a phone down on the table between me and someone I'm sitting opposite, and it feels rude. I wouldn't do it. I've been trying to work out why, given it's obviously the same thing.

Part of it is that people talk differently when something is recording. On a video call that's already priced in, because everyone is half-performing to a camera anyway. In person you get candour, and the offhand remark someone makes while they're thinking, and that's most of the reason to be in the room at all.

The rest of it is just that it isn't a normal thing to do yet. There's no established etiquette, so it reads as odd, and being the person who does the odd thing changes the conversation before anyone has said anything. That part will probably fade.

I think the best way round it is to not record the meeting at all. At the end, say something like 'let's just whip through what we talked about', and record that. Two minutes of the two of you agreeing what was decided and who's doing what.

It loses the texture of the conversation and keeps the actions and the decisions, which is the part worth going back to. By then the real conversation has already happened, so the recording isn't changing how anyone talks. It's an easier thing to ask for too, because summing up at the end is something two people do together anyway.

The phone still comes out. It just comes out once the conversation everyone came for is finished.