I figure every adult going thru TSA probably has a phone on them and on top of mine never being checked, never has anyone I've traveled with or the people in front of me that I usually watch. This covers about 10 different airports. The TSA ineptitude must be widespread if they are supposed to check every single one.
That is very unusual. I don't know of anyone that hasn't had their phones checked. Also between about April through June, I was flying 5-7 days each week and sometimes going to two and three different states in one day.. I probably went to at least 50 different airports and at least 25 different states and everyone had to show their phones worked. That included our group and people not traveling with us. I was also traveling with some known people in government and some not known and we were still checked.
They have been doing that with all electronics for a few years now as part of DHS's enhanced security. Not sure when it started.. Here is an article I found with a Google search and this is a little over two years old. Since that time it has increased to more than just random people picked for extra screening and is happening more than just specific busy airports that tend to have more people coming and going all over the world. People have not been able to take their phones on the plane when found to have dead batteries.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcweb...es-get-through-airport-security/#25727815508d
Now many TSA agents at many airports fail the internal secret tearing that TSA does across the country. TSA does dry run testing on secret to see if agents will catch things or check things that have become known risks or known things that were tried by actual terrorists and they were caught or succeeded in attacking. TSA is notorious for letting known security alerts get passed and focus on baby diapers, mom carrying pumped breast milk that is presented exactly the way the DHS requires it to be or using enhanced security searches on an 80 year old person and ignoring the people that are metaphorically wearing a t-shirt that says "I love Al-Qadea, Death to America, I am a terrorist and will blow up this plane" as they go through security. That is one of the problems with TSA taking over airport security from the FAA after 9/11.
TSA was failing over 95% of the security tests across the nation and just one year ago after some big shakeups at TSA due to the failures, they had not improved. A really important snippet from the article last year, about those failures:
"An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.
The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.
According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints."
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2015/11/04/surprise-tsa-is-still-sucking-terribly-n2075370
It isn't really surprising you haven't experience them checking electronics because they fail almost every secret test, but they are supposed to be checking electronics, especially phones and laptops since it is policy of DHS to check this. The fact that you and others aren't seeing this done is exactly why TSA is failing these tests and proof that airplanes have bigger issues, much bigger issues than Note 7's that haven't been exchanged, that they need desperately to be concentrating on.