The rise of the smartphone has turned the workplace into a bring-your-own-device kind of world. In many cases, IT shops would like more control over the devices employees use for work, even if they are employee-owned. That's why the idea of the dual-persona smartphone—two phones on one device, separating work and personal applications—has become popular. But while dual-persona phone technology is being driven by employer demand, it turns out users want them too.

We polled Ars readers earlier this week to find out if you would like a phone that completely separates work and personal applications from each other. To be honest, we figured dual-persona phones wouldn't be that popular because of the inconvenience of putting work applications in an entirely separate part of one's phone. The poll results show otherwise.

The question we posed was "Would you use a dual-persona smartphone?" With 3,710 votes in our unscientific poll, 33.56 percent of readers said, "Yes, sign me up. I want a phone for work and personal stuff, but with a wall of separation between." Another 22.37 percent said, "Yes, but only if my employer paid for it." A further 18.54 percent said, "I'd consider a dual-persona smartphone if it's implemented in a more user-friendly way than current versions."

Adding those three together, that's 74.47 percent of you who either want a dual-persona phone right now, or would use one if it was employer-sponsored or if it could be implemented in a more user-friendly fashion.

The rest essentially want to keep things the way they are. 10.27 percent said, "No. I want to use my phone for work and personal stuff, but without any separation between the two." 8.87 percent said, "No, I would rather have one smartphone for personal stuff, and a second one for work." Finally, 6.39 percent said, "No way, I don't want to use a smartphone for work, period."

Now that we've seen the results, let's take a look at some of the comments that explain why readers voted the way they did.

Leaving work at work

One big motivation for wanting a dual-persona smartphone is the ability to compartmentalize work and personal lives. Once you leave the office, do you really want work messages showing up in your notification stream, demanding a response?

"I would love to be able to keep my work phone on lockdown once I leave work—that way I am not always connected to work and can more easily ignore it in the evening," reader cristobal1206 wrote.

"Such a solution would be ideal!" wrote sonolumi. "Great for keeping the work side tidy, focused and well away from the clusterf... pages of trial apps and games I always seem to accumulate. Yes the untidiness is my fault, but anything that could help keep the important stuff away from my work would be welcome (yes, you did read it right)."

But is it secure and separate enough?

Some readers questioned whether current technology to separate the personal and work portions of a phone is really robust enough to protect users and their employers. The goal is to have absolutely no data leakage from one side to the other and to allow businesses to impose restrictions only on the work side. But is that the reality?

Billyk writes, "As one who has to carry a smart phone for work I like the idea... Rarely does the execution meet with what my idea of it should be though. My first issue would be if that my work phone was subpoenaed for a legal issue would the non work portion be discoverable?"

Bash adds that "[t]his would never work for defense contractors or government agencies requiring some kind of secure access to their networks. Too many possibilities for security holes…"

Concerns about security and privacy lead some to think that carrying two phones is the best option.

"Maybe I'm weird, but if I needed to use a smartphone for my job, I'd much rather have my own personal phone for my stuff and a physically distinct device for job stuff," Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer writes. "But I'm paranoid about privacy, and also wouldn't want to surrender control of my personal devices to my employer (nothing against them, it's just a matter of principle)."

Bluloo writes, "I wouldn't want the same phone for work and personal use, unless the company guaranteed the user (in writing) complete control over/rights to privacy of all personal information on the device, and guaranteed that it would never be used (by them) to harm me."

"Of course you would want a phone where anything work-related is walled off," writes yosifcuervo. "It's about basic security. I happily engage in dangerous behavior on my phone all the time, and I really don't care about the consequences (what's the worst that could happen...?). When it comes to work, and access to internal networks and infrastructure, the bar must be set much higher. The consequences become much more real, and the potential damage that careless and uneducated users can do is already the bane of IT. The fact that there aren't good solutions for this already is the only reason it isn't required by default by any self-respecting IT department."

Hercules doesn't want to use a personal device for work in any capacity, writing, "If you want me to work after hours, you buy me a data plan and device. I'll carry two. I will never volunteer mine for company purposes. Otherwise you don't really want me to work after hours."

Usability needs improvement... but some good options exist

Some readers questioned whether dual-persona technology can be implemented in something resembling a user-friendly fashion. The common approach for today's dual-persona technology is to put all work applications and data into a password-protected container that is accessed by the user by clicking an app icon. Thus, work e-mail and other data is found in separate applications from the ones you use in your personal life. The employer can enforce restrictions, such as not allowing copying and pasting between work and personal apps, or preventing work documents from being e-mailed outside the company.

Trem writes, "I still think the usability has a long way to go before it can be both secure and easy to use. How do you explain to your users about the split personalities and how it works. How do you make sure that users know which mode they're in? When a user browses and hits share, how do you make it clear that the funny NSFW video is shared on your private Facebook and not the work account? I believe that this kind of issues will be fairly common with the design of current solutions."

A little more bluntly, Leather Rope writes, "From an IT perspective too many users are just dumb. They can barely dial. Duality would be beyond them."

Our article mentioned VMware's upcoming virtualization for smartphones, and the application Divide, which is already available and can be used to create dual personas on both iPhones and Androids.

Several readers also mentioned the existing Good for Enterprise and dual-persona technology from RIM that's slated to release with BlackBerry 10 in early 2013.

bruindrummer writes, "At my company our first attempt at this very thing was Good for Enterprise and I loved it. It had its own password, and all of my work information was sandboxed from my personal device." Unfortunately, bruindrummer notes that Good was replaced with Traveller for Lotus Notes in a cost-saving measure.

DaedalusIcarusHelios is looking forward to similar functionality in BlackBerry, writing "The upcoming BlackBerry 10 natively supports this feature, and it is very seamless and easy to use. It would require BES 10 though to have the segregated work section (apps, etc.) that is encrypted. You can have both personal and work running apps in the active frames (running apps that look like widgets or tiles), so you can switch between them easily."

IT pros are cautiously optimistic

We also asked IT professionals to weigh in on whether dual-persona phones are a good idea from a business and technology perspective. Not surprisingly, they described the challenges in deploying dual-persona phones to the workforce, but said it ultimately might be worth the effort.

"I think this feature will become more and more popular over time," writes Cdclndc. "I have a company issued BB and I've been happy with it. Its selling point to me is I don't have to pay a dime for my phone or service/data. That said I would like to be able to divide the system and have a personal 'sandbox' away from work.

"The real trick comes from a business standpoint. While only a very small percentage of people where I work have company phones, almost everyone has a smartphone. We have been opening up company e-mails onto these regular phones because some people asked if they could do that for various reasons. When it all came down to it, it was in the company's best interest (from a management standpoint) to allow this. Why? So people could handle work correspondence when away from the office or while at home in the evening. It's essentially free work. You can not only keep people who wish work services on their phone productive (granted limited) outside the office all the while not having to pay for the device or data plan, it's a win all around for them."

How dual-persona phones get implemented obviously depends a lot on how security requirements vary from business to business.

Marlor writes, "At work, we lock down our iPhones to within an inch of their life. They have the apps we choose, and nothing more. All traffic is routed via our VPN and logged, even if the phones are used outside of the workplace. Only these locked-down phones are allowed on the network... As a result, many users have two phones: one for work, which is locked-down, and a personal phone that isn't used on the corporate network or connected to corporate computers.

"A dual-persona phone is a nice idea, as long as the barriers between the two personas are reliable, and as long as it can be locked-down to only connect to the corporate network when it is in 'work' mode. We usually lock down mounting of USB devices using DriveLock, so being able to do so for the phone depending on its persona would also be necessary."

Odds and ends

Some felt the poll options didn't capture exactly what they were looking for. Hoos offered an interesting alternative to the work/personal divide, saying, "I want a wall between my private life and my online persona. Currently, I do use different logins for different activities because my private life encompasses details (banking, family, etc.) that I don't want intermixed with my online life. For example, I do not want Facebook's photos polluting my contacts. (Yes, I understand that one can work around that. It's just an example and it's still not something I want.)"

Meanwhile, some commenters said they're interested in dual-persona phones for other reasons, such as being able to hand a phone to a child without worrying about the kid messing up any of the adult stuff. That already exists on some platforms, with Kid's Corner on Windows Phone, and the multi-user support in Android 4.2.

All in all, the poll results and comments showed strong interest in the concept of dual-persona devices. That doesn't mean everyone wants one—some emphatically do not. But as time goes on, the dual-persona option will become more prevalent, and it will be there if you want it.