Slashdot Mirror
Antenna Boosters for Cell Phones?
Hollinger asks: "Earlier this summer, I bought a brand-new Samsung 8500 PCS phone. It looks great, sounds great (more on that in a sec) and is very small. However, I have one problem. I thought that my new apartment was in the middle of a PCS deadzone. However, friends with other model phones (less expensive, mind you) can get a good, clear signal. This leads me to wander about the signal strength of my own phone. I've been shopping around to see if anyone has reviewed any of the 'Internal Antenna Boosters' that I've seen ads for, but I can't find any. Has anyone on Slashdot tried one of these? Do they work, and if so, how well?"
Have you tried A.R.S.E.W.I.P.E? Maybe it's your head that's blocking the signal.
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
I threw it away when I read about the damage a normal mobile phone can do. You sure as hell do not want to increase the amount of radiation entering your cranial cavity.
You're not talking about the internal antenna, are you? One of my co-workers bought it. He saw no improvement. At the very least, I'd expect that there would be a few models so the antenna could be tuned for the frequency used by the phone. To my knowledge, there is no such product. If you want more detail, call Miss. Cleo.
To quote a friend at Motorola, "If a cheap add-in would help your signal, don't you think we'd ship phones with it installed?"
But if you buy one, you might also be interested in this product for your TV.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
The major telco in my country successfully lobbied the government to make boosters illegal.
Though this was widely viewed as a way to block access to cheaper less established industry players (with less coverage), there are legitimate reasons to not use these. The first very important reason is health. The second is if everyone started using them they would eventually cause problems with all the telcos spectrum allocation plans. Because spectrum is so precious, most telcos use an aggressive frequency reuse plan, reusing frequency's in a n=7 pattern. Imagine 7 hexagons on a map, fitting together in a circular pattern. One hexagon (location) on the bottom of the map would use the same frequency as one on the top. This efficiently reuses the frequency spectrum without causing interference, since both stations are far enough apart that multipath fading would have occured between their individual signals.
In other words they work, but I wouldn't reccomend using one, unless your brain needs a tan.
I went to my local Target store, and they have a section that has a lot of the As Seen On TV crap in it (like the OxyClean, the Lionel clocks, etc...). Well, the one I went to recently had the one that they've been advertising on TV. Since it's Target, I can always bring it back if it doesn't work. So I bought it. It was $20.
It comes with both an internal antenna booster and one of those earpiece covers that supposedly blocks radiation. I just applied the internal antenna.
It doesn't work miracles per se, but I regularly see a 1-2 bar improvement (out of 4) on my cell phone, depending on the coverage. I wouldn't advocate everyone going out and getting these, but my cell phone's reception was definitely helped.
As far as the headaches and stuff that people seem to be claiming about - I haven't noticed anything like that yet. Then again, I use my cell phone 15 minutes a day tops.
Dare i ask why you need to use your portable cellular phone at home in your apartment where im assuming there is a normal phone available?
But if you must use it, do you have acess to the roof? Get up there and see if you have service. Try the same near windows or on a balcony. Check around for interference, I doubt that because your friends phones work fine.
Have you tried an external antenna? Perhaps connecting the antenna on your fone to a larger antenna/array.
In a recent discussion on an EE mailing list, the radio heads argued that since these boosters are often placed between the handset and the battery pack, then no benefit could be derived since the metal pack shielded them, effectively creating a small faraday cage.
/really/ increase your transmission inside your house then I've got some special oxygenized air I can sell you, since RF travels through oxygenized air far better than through lead. It's only $5 per can, and if you want to get in on the business, I can sell you a special oxygenator so you can make your own and make a bundle!
Others noted that perhaps they could couple some RF from the inside of the unit to the edges or the antenna (which tends to be located close to the battery pack), but that that would only serve to increase the distortion of the radio transmission, even if it did increase the transmission power. Of course, if they did increase the power, then they are certianly not legal to use since nearly every phone you can buy is already at the FCC and FDA limit.
But if you want to
-Adam
weeeelllll - maybe, just maybe people hate having 2 phone bills? or maybe they hate the idea of paying $35 a month for a land line when for $40 they can get a cell that goes everywhere?
and we all just have cell towers we can "plug"
into at will - right? right!
I have a suggestion - have you tried a beowulf cluster of antenna?
Maybe is the only way to describe them. I've seen passive repeaters, things you stick in a car window and are supposed to proved a boost. But only for the 800mhz cell frequencys, not the 1900 PCS band. Still they might be worth a shot if you have a regular cell phone.
My Nokia 5190 had a little rubber button you could remove and put an external antenna on. Run the external antenna up a tree, and reception was good. Often one bar better, but the real improvement was in clarity. Everytime you move without the antenna you introduce static, while with it you come breath and still hold a converstation. (always a good thing) The newer Nokias don't have this though, and I just broke my old phone. Still if you can stay within range of the cord this might get your service.
Best is to contact your provider. It takes 6 months or more, but they do take into account customer comments when they build new towers, so you might get one in your neighborhood. Make sure your local town concil isn't doing everything they can to block building a tower though, or you won't get it.
Do you friends have the same service provider (Sprint PCS/Version/etc.)? It could just be that the nearest antenna for your provider is farther away from your place and their providers antenna is on your roof.
I use my mobile phone for long distance. My carrier charges the same rate for nationwide calls. Whereas BellSouth wants a deposit in the +100 range to allow a long distance carrier to be set up.
And since I'm paying for my mobile minutes whether I use them or not, it just makes sense to use it for long distance, even if I am at home. And I know a lot of people that don't have wired phone service at all.
Hey now, OxyClean works pretty well (too good to be As Seen On TV). I've been using it to clean up carpet stains after parties, it works great, but if you mix it too thick, you'll end up with undisolved particles sticking to everything. So, I wouldn't recommended "making a paste, make it 10 times more parrrful" unless you *really* need to.
I too bought an Internal Antenna. I think it's helping by about 1 bar on average (may be a placebo effect). Not quite the miracles that the chiropractor woman on the TV commercial claimed, but good enough.
I have the same problem with my cell phone; inside the house I get 0-2 bars of signal strength and outside I get 1-3....not a significant difference unless you use my phone (which I do, of course), and then its a BIG difference. Ive been toying with the idea of placing a passive repeater on every window in the house and seeing what happens... I did a search on Ebay for repeaters ("cellular repeater" returned 0 results...) and found a bunch of passive repeaters as well as lots of repeaters that look more complex and list a bunch of specs that I dont understand... anyways heres the URL http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcISAPIC ommand=GetResult&pb=&ht=1&st=2&query=repeater&Sort Property=MetaEndSort
i ewItem&item=1289651845
and heres the url for somrthing that looks useful, but I dont know how....http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?V
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
In a word, no, they don't help. My son tried one with his 8500 and it didn't help him. When we got phones for the whole family, I did some research and chose the StarTac phones based on technical merit. My daughter also chose a StarTac for the same reason. No matter how feature packed the phone is, those features are useless if you can't connect. My wife and son chose the Samsung 8500 because it looked cooler and had the voice dialing option built into the phone. My daughter and I consistently had better success connecting with our phones than my wife and son with theirs. I've had problems with using the phones at home until they put another cell tower in town. Now I have much better service in the house except for one dead zone in the house. Dead zones are unavoidable in the world of RF. Ce la vie. ;) See about having them mount a cell site on one of the light poles there. If you're in a more urban area, like Chicago or New York, complain to the provider. They do gather the reports and use them when adjusting coverage. Get everyone you know on that service to send in complaints on drop outs and poor coverage. But - it will take time.
The town has ordnances that preclude towers within so many feet of housing. People don't want to see a cell tower from their home, but want to walk anywhere they please and have crystal, clear service. In my town, Sprint worked with the city to put a new cell site on top of a light pole at the nearby baseball complex. If your town is anything like mine, there is a nearby sports complex (soccer/baseball) that doubles as a SUV display area where all parents and their sportly progeny come equipped with a cell phone as standard equipment
Why would one use your cell at home? Sometimes the people who have your cell number discover that for some reason they can't reach you at your wireline and try the cell. Even when you're sitting within arms reach of your wireline. The modem may have hung on the line rendering it off hook, one of the phones may be off hook where you can't hear it, the line may indeed be out, ad nauseum. I hope this helps answer your question.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi