[bane]

Pants with various side pockets have been around for literally decades -- in a wide variety of styles. I even had a pair of nice looking dress slacks in the late 90s with pockets that were almost exactly like this and were for holding phones, wallets, and PDAs. I think I got them at Costco since shock the pants being so fitted made them uncomfortable to hold stuff in the other pockets.

It's a nice blog post showing why they solve a problem and how to iterate, but it's about as novel as wearing a coat to keep from getting cold. I suspect you and the blog author are unusual in that you don't know about this pretty common pant type.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

I've never seen dress pants with side pockets like this (that is, not cargo pants) for sale at a major retailer. If they really are so common, what are they called and can you point me to an online store selling them?

[bane]

I believe the pair I had were from Dockers and were called "Dockers Mobile Pocket". More or less like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDAaGSshhhY

They were a big enough deal that Time Magazine put them in their "Best inventions of 2001" list: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...

In the end, I didn't really care for them and it looks like most people didn't either as they're discontinued. The cargo pocket was more fussy than just putting my stuff in the regular old pockets. I think I remember hitting things with my knees a lot in certain positions.

These days? I guess it depends on what you consider "dress pants", but for pants that don't scream "I'm working construction or shooting a gun during an invasion"...looking around for a bit, Dickies, Red Kap, Scottevest (promoted by Steve Wozniak specifically as a good pair of pants for big phones), Docker D3 line. I've definitely seen them at places like Target, JoS.A.Bank, etc.

Tactical brands like 5.11, Woolrich, Propper, etc. will also sell "discreet" or "concealed carry" cargo pants that look basically like normal slacks.

There's also a ton of plain old fitted and fashion cargo pants around too. I think Armani, Betabrand, etc. has some. They look a bit obnoxious to me I'm afraid.

[WorldMaker]

In jeans they even predate the "mobile pocket" fad, they've been called "carpenter's pockets". It seems somewhat classist to dismiss the innovation simply because it looks like "working construction" and comes from such a blue collar background. (Which makes sense, why wouldn't innovations in functionality over fashion originate in blue collar spaces?)

As a 90s nerd that fell into a habit of carpenter pants when they were briefly cool, but came to respect the "mobile pocket" functionality of having a pocket further down the leg towards the knees. It's really fast/convenient to move things (especially phones) in/out of. It's continued to surprise me how slow it has been to be adapted to other pants. If it takes the "mobile pocket" rebrand, that's fine, but it's still somewhat rude to forget the blue collar roots of the idea.

(It also amuses me that while the article addresses the cargo pants criticism, doesn't seem familiar with either the "mobile pocket" or "carpenter's pocket" name.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_jeans