Why have a specific mobile phone rule? There are two aspects to their menace in the chess arena - disruption and cheating.
The disruption aspect is covered at least in part by Article 12.6 of the rules:
It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any manner whatsoever. This includes unreasonable claims or unreasonable offers of a draw.
Cheating on the other hand should be dealt with by banning the cheat from the game entirely - rules should outline what is acceptable and penalties should in general be directed at handling those who whilst acting in good faith inadvertently transgress.

However mobiles are a sufficient menace, with some people unable or unwilling to accept that their use is inappropriate in some settings, that it does seem sensible to have some standard sanction to express our displeasure and apply pressure to their advocates to live without them for the duration of a chess session. By far the worst aspect of the current rule is that it is not applied uniformly - a ringing mobile does not lead to automatic loss as much chess is played without an arbiter present to enforce the rules, those at fault fail to resign, and opponents say nothing for the understandable reason that they want a game or the bad one of being afraid to do so. Consequently the rule ends up being 'optional', surely the worst possible outcome. Not only do those who seek to enforce the rule leave themselves open to generating bad feeling, but those who don't may end up with a weakened sense of the need to follow other laws of the game.

No doubt there are several standard penalties that could be specified; indeed some leagues simply issue a warning on the first occasion a phone rings. A standard time penalty could be used. For example the clocks could be adjusted by a net 5 minutes in favour of the non-offender. This time is deducted from the offenders clock except that where the non-offender has less than 5 minutes left on his clock part of the adjustment is used to increase his time to 5 minutes, and where the deduction would reduce the offenders time below 5 minutes their time is reduced only to 5 minutes with the balance added to the non-offender. Or choose your own numbers. This does not of course compensate players on other boards for the distraction, but defaulting others for a distraction which may well be no greater than others that are heard at many venues is hardly the most satisfying experience.

Is it easier to attack or defend in chess?
Champions of defence will point out that all they need to do is sit there making moves that enable them to prolong the game and wait for the attack to be misplayed or proved unsound. Aggressors will say that even if the attack is unsound, just one mistake by the defence may prove fatal, whereas mistakes by the attacker whilst being damaging to his chances are far less likely to be immediately terminal.

And what of second thoughts? Are they better than first ones, or does it merely appear that way?

Which brings me to RR's latest game with white when he takes on Cheddleton's Phil Birks in a second division clash. We join the game after RR's 10th move of a cautious opening.

RR v Phil Birks after 10 Nbd2

The tension in the centre is the main feature of the position, and I had been expecting b6 from black over the last few moves so that he has the choice of hanging or isolated pawns should I ever capture on c5. However Phil opts to increase pressure on d4 -
10 ... Ne4, 11 Rc1 Bf6 and RR gets to win a pawn:
12 Nxe4 dxe4, 13 Nd2 cxd4, 14 Nxe4 Be5, 15 f4 d3, 16 fxe5
How does one decide whether to play Bxe5, which will presumably also see the liquidation of the enemy knight, rather than the pawn capture played. Swapping pieces when material up can hardly be wrong, yet I decided that the latent threat posed by my dark-squared bishop despite the advanced e-pawn being blockaded would still be more powerful than black's knight. Doubled isolated pawns would not normally be regarded as contributing much to a supposed one pawn advantage, but here they provide a lot of central control.
16 ... dxe2, 17 Qxe2 Qa5 and black has a fork of a- and e-pawns.

RR v Phil Birks after 17 ... Qa5

(My first thoughts (and original plan) had been for Bc3 in this position, but convinced myself that I didn't like the look of Qd5 hitting the knight; an unfounded fear as home analysis revealed. Rejecting also Bd4 and knight-in-the-hole Nd6 RR came up with)
18 Qh5 h6 (Prevention is better than cure: now white doesn't have Ng5, whilst after Nf6+ black can safely play Kh8.
Or is it? Qxa2 and clearly white's b-pawn is not long for this world. Black's queenside will win any long game so black needs an attack before black can get his knight to the defence. Where is it?
18 ... Qxa2, 19 Nf6+ gxf6, 20 Qh6 (gxf6 and black has time to play king in the corner and Rg8) and the game ends as a draw with repeated checks.)
19 Rf6 (As previously noted Nf6+ achieves nothing (other than to unguard d2). I though I had done well to find this move, though Phil had been expecting it. What neither of us saw was the continuation
19 ... Qb4 when 20 Rxh6 gxh6, 21 Nf6+ Kg7 and black lives)
19 ... Rfc8, 20 Rxh6 Kf8 (gxf6 not possible in this line - white can recapture with the queen as his knight is not threatened.)
21 Rxe6 Ne7, 22 Rf1 g6, 23 Qh7 1-0
Crass materialism never being far from RR's thoughts, for his last move he spent time looking at
23 Rxe7 Kxe7, 24 Rxf7+ Kxf7, 25 e6+ with Qxa5 to follow and a very substantial material advantage. However the line is not forcing, besides which surely there is a kill here.
23 Qh8+ Ng8, 24 Nf6 fxe6 and black gets to scramble for a few more moves. Hence the chosen move after which it is clear there is no escape.