There is a clear relationship between driving behavior and crash risk, with using mobiles during driving one of the key factors related to crash risk and severity. Towards the limitation of driving simulators in an unnatural setting, 296 samples of mobile phone operations during driving were extracted in Shanghai naturalistic driving study data, and the process of using mobile phones was divided into five operations: dialing, answering, talking and listening, hanging up and viewing. The study respectively analyzed the strength of driver’s control activities, the sensitivity of the control operation and the stability of the control state during each operation. Studies have shown that some operations will lead to a decrease in driver’s control activities and affect the stability of vertical control. These findings help develop more reasonable traffic safety management measures.