Cell Phone Reception Hack

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.

Comments

Short version:

[mobby_6kl]

Use an external antenna. A lot of phones still have connectors for those, so no hacks required there.

Re:Short version:

[vonwilkenstein]

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.

Next in series:

[Anonymous Coward]

How I read a webpage from a server that had been slashdotted into oblivion.

Next story idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for: "How I got pages served when my server was Slashdotted."

ghetto

[grapeape]

Nice solution I guess if you want a ghetto antenna next to your window, but it reminds me of my friends little brother. He was unhappy with his remote control cars range so he took a backpack and mounted a huge CB whip antenna to it and wired the antenna of the remote to the backpack. Dipole be damned, he claimed it made the car's range better. Of course he looked like a complete tard running around the street, but that wasnt unusual for him.

Big deal,it is obvious!

[www.sorehands.com]

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.

A " Cell Phone Reception Hack" - whatever

[tacokill]

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.

Re:A " Cell Phone Reception Hack" - whatever

[weasello]

Dude, you totally hacked the comments with that tirade!! awesome!

I hacked my electricity

[Sathias]

I managed to hack my electricity so it reached areas it never did before. I used this hacking device called an "extension cord".