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Cell Phone Reception Hack

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the zooming-out dept.

New Breeze writes "Has this ever happened to you? Just when you need to make a phone call, the bars of reception are scant to none. But Graeme, who writes a blog called 'Earth: Mostly Harmless,' gives us hope. Succeeding where most would quit, he chronicled his ingenuity in a post titled 'How I got mobile phone reception where there was no signal.'" Update: 08/01 14:31 GMT by T : Note: Credit for this story belongs to Mike Yamamoto, who wrote it for CNET's News.com.

5 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Short version: by ElectricRook · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use the old three watt bag phone, gets great reception, costs US$19 per month, never rings unless I plug it in, which I never do. Clear as a bell, even if I'm out in the woods. Reception not too good in some canyons.

    --
    - High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
  2. Big deal,it is obvious! by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not to rain on this guy's parade, but well duh! If you put up a bi-quad antenna, a circular polarized quad bay or 8 element yagi you would get a better signal. Of course he could have used a pringle can for a 12db gain.

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    Fight Spammers!
  3. A " Cell Phone Reception Hack" - whatever by tacokill · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, I get to /. and I start to scan the articles. The usual stuff...12 dupes and a few new stories. I get to one called Cell Phone Reception Hack

    Cool. I'll check that one out.

    I pull up the list of comments and I click on the link to the article. I read the article from start to finish and having consumed the literary words on the page, let me be the first to post...

    ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
    Read my lips: Antenna != hack

    This is in no way, shape, or form a hack. It is a guy building an antenna. It's only been done by thousands of other ppl over the last 50 years. But yea, let's run the story anyway and call it a 'hack'.

    Well, it's not.

  4. Re:Short version: by vonwilkenstein · · Score: 5, Informative

    Enjoy it now while it lasts. FCC is allowing carriers to pull the plug on AMPS soon. We ( as in the carrier I work for) are vastly de-growing the AMPS network to a barebones network with BARE minimum capacity. Also as this is occuring, there have been cells that were just removed altogether eliminating AMPS coverage altogether. I do agree however, three watt bag/install phones are the shit for voice calls.

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion