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Why Your Clock Radio Is All Abuzz About iPhones
blackbearnh wrote in with a story that's not really about the iPhone, but if your office speakerphones beep like mine does, read on: "If you own an iPhone, you may have noticed that it has a distinct and very annoying effect on clock radios, computer speakers, car radios, and just about anything else with a speaker. The folks at O'Reilly Media aren't immune, so they set out to discover just what is it about iPhones that makes them such bad RF citizens. The iPhones aren't the only bad apples in the cell phone basket and there's not much you can do about the problem. We're really in an interesting time in that there has never been so many high-powered personal transmitters just wandering loose in the world."
As I understand it, all Apple products have a distortion field.
Along with the distinct air of Fisher Price
It just looks like someone has never had a GSM phone before.
It's not just the iPhone. It's any GSM phone. Google "GSM Buzz". Meet the "GSM Devil", which relies on this interference to tell you you're phone is about to ring. http://shop.mopodmania.net/product.sc?categoryId=1&productId=15
Maybe it's just because you guys aren't used to GSM cellphones but over here in the UK everyone recognises that noise. Anytime you put a mobile next to speakers you get that noise.
Welcome to the 1990s, America!
Nick
Apple is responsible for making sure that its devices do not interfere with other electronic devices. Enforcement has been rather slack. But I doubt many are complaining.
The environmentalists have gotten Apple to wake up and pay more attention to how green their practices are. Now the rest of us should wake Apple up and make sure they play well with others, especially with regards to harmful RFI.
Yeas, it is that short.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
...because the world never heard of a Blackberry before. This isn't news.
Reason not to get an iPhone
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
...everything regarding cellphones? Including, in this case, sometimes annoying side effects?
This is nothing new...especially if, on any other phone, you have also kept semi-constant GPRS connection.
PS. Rearranging speaker cables/etc. eliminates the problem anyway...
One that hath name thou can not otter
It can't be nearly as bad as the nextels I've had. Put that thing next to a speaker, have it ring and then tell me that you don't think it's giving you brain cancer.
My phone is constantly beside my computer speakers on my desk or by my clock radio when I'm sleeping. I haven't heard anything from either...
Maybe it's because the computer speakers are so old that they're actually still shielded (unlike most today?) Dunno about the clock radio though, but it's pretty old too... has to be at least 5-6 years now.
when even Nokia's internal policy is that all their employees must use headsets. Even the worms that repaired Fry's body knew better.
It's scary the way a mobile phone can be heard on my computer speakers. It seems reasonable that it can't be healthy to have them close to my body either. Even when carrying one or using one I try to keep it as far away from my two favourite organs as possible.
As others have said, this really is a GSM issue and not an iPhone issue. The sound I hear from my computer speakers with my iPhone is identical to what I heard from my Nokia 3610 which is about as un-iPhone as a phone can get without being better described as a rock.
Seriously - the interference sound is identical.
My only concern really is what is this doing to my neurons, rods, cones and assorted other presumably sensitive body parts. I don't care about a goofy sound coming from my computer speakers every once in a while.
I'm a big tall mofo.
whatever happend to the label on the bottom of everything, which states that:
"This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) the device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) the device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesirable operation."
obviously the folks that made my PC speakers obeyed those rules, so why is apple getting away with breaking condition 1?
my iphone gets much less reception than my pearl does. so i get little to no gsm buzz. my pearl would buzz any speaker within a meter or so.
Its just GSM based phones, the RF distortion is not an issue with CDMA based phones.
Heck, I think this statement from the cell phone expert (from TFA) pretty much proves that our phones are rotting our brains:
WTF? "an interesting time, radio speaking"? And the tortured grammar in the summary isn't much better: "We're really in an interesting time in that there has never been so many high-powered personal transmitters just wandering loose in the world."
'Scuse me, I've got to take this call.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Look for it to make a comeback. A room papered with the right stuff would be quite quiet RF wise. Velvet optional. :) Work well if you have a room you don't want stuff working in.
This basically went away with the 3G iPhones. I don't get any GSM interference at all except when the phone switches to EDGE.
Not much you can do? You can always not buy an iPhone. My phone doesn't cause problem for speakers or my clock radio.
Yes, this is a pain in the butt, but as others have noted, it's nothing new. I've been having this issue since my first AT&T (formerly Cingular), i.e., GSM, phone. There is a trick to fix this though: magnets. Simply loop your speaker wire through a magnet, as this article indicates.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
I really was beginning to wonder if it was just my imagination. I have everything turned off on my iphone except wifi and edge/voice (No 3G around here). At first I thought the little static tantrums were happening at fixed intervals, so I timed it. No luck. Then I had the iPhone connect to the internet through my computer instead of the router so that I could read the logs. Nothing.
Sooo... I tried using a few styles of ferrite RF chokes, I tried wrapping cords into air-core chokes, I tried keeping data and sound lines as far away fro the phone as possible. Nothing seems to work, so to be honest I've pretty much just started using the iPhone's internal speaker when I'm listening to pandora or something.
I'm glad I'm not alone on this, but it kind of sucks. I hate to single out the iPhone, but it's the first phone I've used that did this.
-b
p.s. and having one central app store that will occasionally refuse to let you buy anything due to 'problems with the itunes store' sucks ass. Thanks, Apple. Oh and thanks for not letting us record video, run apps in the background, or let apps access onboard music.
Yeah I woke up crabby today.
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Ok, I hate apple's hype machine as much as anyone, but seriously... this isn't an iPhone thing. I have never seen ANY GSM phone that had power and did not interfere with PC speakers, speakerphones, and car radios.
That doesn't make any sense. Poor reception means the phone will transmit with more power in order to get through whatever's between you and the antenna.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
The GSM buzzing is all GSM phones but I noticed on my iPhone that using 3G it goes away. From what I've read, the loud noise is caused by rapid turning on/off of the GSM transceiver which creates EM pulses.
Much better is when I'm around people that don't know about this, and I tell them their phone is about to ring.
As mentioned many times already, this has nothing to do with the iPhone and everything to do with GSM.
However, it seems AT&T are much worse. My personal phone is on T-Mobile and my work phone is on AT&T. The work phone produces much more interference. Switching the SIM from that into my phone, I get the same issue. I think AT&T must bump the transmit power to maximum on devices connected to their network. I wonder what this does to battery life!
Your clock radio comes with the following government message:
This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules....
(2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.
It is not our place to question why we are not to reject interference, or what dangers might ensue if were to attempt such a thing. Rather, is our duty under the law to accept interference. So do your part, listen carefully to the buzzing radio, and just be proud to be doing your part as a citizen of this great land.
I bought a Motorola i670 on Sprint because I thought that Sprint was a CDMA carrier, but apparently they use some iDEN handsets, which is very similar to GSM.
I get the "GSM sound" in my car radio, since I store the phone under the head unit.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I would like someone to address what I see as a far greater issue. clock radios can be annoying due to the interference caused be cellphones, but there are some cases where the interference can be downright deserters! I am referring to professional audio systems. We have three theaters that I work in, 2 blackboxes and one mainstage. The mainstage 32-channel board is unaffected by cellphones, however the two smaller boards are. Is there any sort of add on that can be used to shield audio cables from cellphones? We run a line level out of the mixer to two powered speakers in one blackbox, and the interference is particularly bad, seeing as the audience is literally right above the line level wire. Any ideas?
Forget radio chatter... I'm always putting my cell phone (it's not a jesus-phone) down on my desk, around my keyboard or mouse cables, or resting it on the shelf-like bit on the back side of my IBM clicky keyboards. On more than one occasion I have had incoming calls "type" on the keyboard or "click" the mouse buttons--that could be REALLY BAD depending on what I'm doing at the time.
If your dentist or pilot tells you to turn off your cell phone... listen to them!
I rather liked the say my (CRT) screen flicked three times when I was about to get an incomming call, (then again only a very few knew the number :-) don't get that now its all LCD
Every digital phone I've had from Bellsouth Mobility->Cingular->ATT has had the GSM NOISE.
It's not at ALL an iphone issue, and by naming the iPhone TFA becomes TROLL. I've had this with every Nokia, Motorola and Blackberry I've had in the last 10 years, or at least when the ATT group went GSM.
Guess what, tMobile is GSM too.
So well known, there's a dedicated website for it:
http://www.feelingcingular.com/
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
It still seems like it shouldn't be the speaker end of the problem that's blamed. If these speakers are regulated to be cheap with the trade off of allowing some interference i think that these expensive phones should work towards signal transmission that's less prone to interfere. It would be a lot easier to change the transmission style of the phones than to just blame the speakers. I'm not particularly well studied in the field of signals(yet) but to me this seems like a very practical use of resources to stop your phone from interfering like this. I may be ignoring some very obvious reasons why this wouldn't work (standardization of signal types?) but i think the capacity for improvement would lie more on the phone company end.
I was going to chime in along those lines as well. This is hardly news. When the weather is ideal at departure and destination, I usually tell my pax they don't have to turn their phones off. When the weather is bad and I'm going to be shooting the ILS to minimums, the last thing I want to hear is seven or eight phones ticking in my headset from the initial approach fix to the DA.
Some phones seem to be worse than others and it sounds like the iPhone may validate the FAA's position on cell phones.
Seriously, the local TV news crews around here need to RTFA and get a clue and mandate all cell phones turned off during their broadcast (or get better shielded equipment). Its funny hearing the noise on TV the first time (heh, some dumbass is texting during the 1hr they actually work), but just get annoying when it continues throughout the newscast. You would think they would be able to recognize it and fix it quick, but it keeps showing up, specially during remote "live" broadcasts.
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
The US's Part 15 only applies to RF emitters; devices that don't emit RF at all, like audio amplifiers, don't need Part 15 certification. Part 15 doesn't say anything about sensitivity to interference.
The European Union, however, does regulate sensitivity to interference under the Electromagnetic Compatibility Directive. So the EU tries to address the problem.
The EU standards require a test for susceptibility to high power AM, FM, TV and airport-type radar signals. Those were viewed as the worst case when the directive was published. Electronics that's not designed for it is likely to crash when faced with a megawatt airport radar at a few hundred meters. (Remember, with most radars, the peak power is huge but the duty cycle is low.) But the EU directive doesn't address nearby TDMA sources. That's probably something the EU will have to address.
There's something to be said for spread-spectrum emitters, like WiFi and Sprint PCS phones. They have a broad enough output spectrum that they tend not to interfere with much.
...and the worst thing about it is I sleep with a white-noise generator turned on. Nothing worse than falling asleep as the phone receives an email, causing the b'beep-b'beep-b'b'b'beep interference on those soothing sounds.
The good news, of course, is that this interference is subject to the inverse squares law, so while there's audible interference at 3 feet, if I move my bag (with phone in it) 6 feet away from the noise generator, it's fine.
The CB App. What's your 20?
when a text message arrives, older nokias beep
da-da-da daaa-daaa da-da-da
You said: There's something to be said for spread-spectrum emitters, like WiFi and Sprint PCS phones. But the 3G iPhone is also spread spectrum. It spreads its energy over about 4 MHz, and is fact called Wideband CDMA (older IS-95 CDMA uses a 1.25 MHz bandwidth, IIRC). So much for spread spectrum solving the problem....
http://feelingcingular.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/cingular_gsm_rfi_ringtone.mp3
Amateur radio operators have had to deal with similar problems for decades. It isn't the cell phone's fault. The problem is that consumer electronics, your typical Part 15 devices, are designed to be cheap. It isn't difficult to design a device that is resistant to interference, but it costs money. Money that manufacturers wont spend unless you hold a gun to their head and threaten to take their hookers and coke. In general the problem is solved by using a shielded enclosure, shielded cables, and adding filters to any place where things enter or leave the box, like the AC cord. If you hear funny noises from your widget, complain to the manufacturer. If they get enough complaints, they might start using good engineering practices, but I'm not holding my breath.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Just FYI, I did a little experiment to try to model the GSM interference using my Motorola phone, a small antenna, and a scope. I then built a model in octave which generates a wav file that sounds similar to the interference from the GSM data packaets. The code and wav file can be found here: http://www.pldr.org/?page_id=161
This is one case where I'd recommend /.-ers to *not* RTFA. The 'tards only mention iPhones because they know it drives a shitload of pageviews and thus ad revenue.
As numerous other posters have mentioned: this is not a new problem and it's not limited to iPhones. eg Blackberries do the same thing to our conference room speakerphones.
Ferrites do work for filtering RF spikes. If you have a scope, you can see the effects when you put a ferrite around a lead. More electronics companies need to do this at the factory. A few little ferrite beads in the right spots can fix many interference problems at a few cents per unit.
The last time I had serious trouble with this, it was because the spikes from a high-powered motor controller were getting into the encoder signals for the motor. Running the power leads for the motor through a ferrite ring five times (five loops, making a toroidial filter) fixed the problem.
Incidentally, ferrites are not permanent magnets, just inductors.
In my shop, I had one user who was being driven buggy by this buzzing coming from here computer speakers and even her digital desk phone. I tried all sorts of things, even disconnecting speakers from her computer. Plugging in to a long extension cord from the opposite wall helped a little -as did holding your mouth right :). It was only last month that I was able to associate this with her PDA Phone. It does not happen with those folks who use simple CDMA Verizon phones, only the GSM data phones. Thanks for the final piece of the puzzle.
I think the bigger story here is that devices like the iPhone are forcing RF (cell phone) and audio (MP3) to live in closer proximity, and the problem's not going to go away. Many of the folks designing docks, speakers, and the like are audio designers, not RF engineers, and may have limited or no experience designing for RF immunity. Components and layout practices that look really straightforward at audio frequencies are often horrendous at radio frequencies, and it's really easy to design a solid audio circuit that is actually a very efficient AM receiver over a broad range of frequencies. That's a recipe for RF interference and degraded audio.
My Palm Treo that I have with Verizon does that when I'm at work. Either when I'm about to receive a text or a phone call, my speakers go nuts. It could be the speakers to my workstation, or the stereo system in our inner office, or our video editing machine. It makes for some 'interesting' work days.
My cell phone (Nokia 6301) sets off my carbon monoxide detector if it's within about 1.5 meters when a call comes in... Slightly more annoying than softly buzzing speakers.
Or, you can be smart, and buy a set of magnetically shielded speakers. That should cut out most of the interference noise that you get from your cell phone.
And yes, this has happened for years, and not just with the iPhone.
If you want to hear something scary just have a gsm phone around an electric guitar that is plugged in to an amp. Even more scary is crt monitors.
Casio made a watch that detected the signal and then vibrated on your wrist. I think I was the only person in the target market for this. I would wear the watch when I would jetski. If my watch vibrated, I could stop pull out my cell phone and take the call. This wasn't much of an feature for someone who could just deal with having their cell phone on vibrate mode. Also, it stopped being useful at all when cell phones started doing all kinds of data.
Quite informative my hairy behind, it rehashes information I personally looked up the first time I noticed this problem.
5 years ago.
The only novel part of the article is the iPhone, and that information is easily discerned with common sense.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
This is common on blackberry too. So common in fact, that it happens with your in game blackberry in Grand Theft Auto 4. If your phone rings in your car, you will hear the radio distort just before the phone starts to ring.
So, realistic in fact, it took a few instances of this happening before I noticed it as an effect in the game. Since I was so used to it with my real life blackberry.
Use a Ferrite bead.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/08/02/kill-gsm-radio-buzz.html
If you hear a sound like morse-code in the speakers it's just the cellular phone transmitting something in close proximity to your system.
The problem isn't the cellular phone, it is simply that your computer's speaker cables and electronics tend to be unshielded. Sometimes the power cable itself is to blame, sometimes its the traces in the amplifier, but mostly it's the speaker cabling.
In any case, it usually doesn't take more then a $0.10 ferrite bead around the cables in question to remove the problem. That's why you often see ferrite beads built into monitor cables.
-Matt
I've found that the various GSM phones I've had have caused different amounts of noise, I assume based on the strength of the transmitter. With my old phone I sometimes heard it faintly on my car's speakers. And if you've had one of these phones around a CRT the screen gets distorted as well.
One cool, somewhat unrelated, thing I used to sometimes hear over my computer speakers growing up was a passing truck driver talking on his CB. The guy's voice was quite distinct. The interesting thing was how susceptible PC speakers were, because I don't recall my father's stereo speakers ever picking it up. I can only assume it's because more power was required to drive those speakers.
Apple products seem to have this tendency to make people notice things that apparently they were oblivious to previously.
This is all addressed in the article. Part 15 has nothing to do with the behavior of the cellphone itself - it's governed by Part 22. The phone is doing its job properly, but the authors of Part 15 did a cop-out to allow the production of $10 clock radios. You'd have to spend $12 on a clock radio for it to be well made enough to not emit the GSM buzz.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
I got pretty annoyed quickly when my speakers kept buzzing after I got the iPhone so I looked it up. You could get rid of it by attaching a tin-foil hat to your iPhone, pretty literally. Here's a link to a mini-how-to. Personally, I didn't tape the aluminum foil to my iPhone or anything, but I do have a small patch of aluminum foil that I keep on my desk and put my iPhone onto when I'm at my computer. It cuts out the interference, but it's not a very pretty solution. Someone in this thread said wrapping your speaker wire around magnets will help too, so I'm gonna try it.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I have a pair of noise cancelling headphones I wear on the bus. I used to get this weird noise once in a while, especially when the battery was running low. Often enough to pique my curiosity, but not enough to bother me. Now I know what it is.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
It's the cheap devices near the phones fault.
Let's take computer speakers for example. RF from the phone is inducing common mode currents somewhere in the speaker system. That RF is being detected (rectified) and amplified by the speaker system. The speaker system is not supposed to be a radio receiver, but is acting like one. This is not the fault of the phone. It is the fault of the device that is receiving this interference. With proper use of ferrite beads and other filtering techniques, this would not be a problem. I don't see Chinese manufactures doing that anytime soon, due to costs of proper engineering.
--fatboy
The "annoying effect" is perfect for me and my BlackBerry. The buzzing in my clock radio is a sort of annoying mini-alarm which helps to wake me up in the morning. I put the phone in a drawer right under the radio and it automatically turns on in the morning.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
...to 1991, O'Reilly and Slashdot!
To tell me that cell phones interfere with radio reception with a gratuitous mention of the iPhone so I would read it.
With all the stuff going on in the world why does Slashdot waste my time with this?
Find an old CRT monitor, put your GSM phone on the screen when it's on and then call it. Observe the distortions on the screen. Should probably work with CRT TV's also, I haven't tried.
I've had both an original iPhone and an iPhone 3G, and I will say that for a while, the original iPhone buzzed more through my computer speakers than any other phone I'd seen, then one day it I noticed it didn't buzz anymore. My iPhone 3G has never caused speaker interference that I've been aware of, not even in my car stereo. Makes me wonder if all the speakers I'm using now are shielded...
--Z
blackbearnh wrote in with a story that's not really about the iPhone, but if your office speakerphones beep like mine does, read on:
Make 'speakerphones' singular or use 'do' not 'does'. There are also too many commas and the sentence does not 'flow' well.
"If you own an iPhone, you may have noticed that it has a distinct and very annoying effect on clock radios, computer speakers, car radios, and just about anything else with a speaker.
Lose that first comma.
...in that there has never been so many high-powered personal transmitters...
'have' not 'has'
Writing like a 12 year old makes you appear stupid and people will be less likely to take what you say seriously.
I love how everyone is focusing on speaker cables and such...or how some phones do it but others don't.
it's not a simple fact of the speaker itself...but rather it's any kind of analog audio amplifier. Most things these days are tightly cammed onto circuit boards with SMD devices and, well, these things aren't always shielded properly. As a result, when the phone is close enough it causes interference through the analog componets themselves...it's NOT stictly the cable as one might say.
I took my 1982 Sansui EQ and 1980 Danon amplifier (both old-school 100% analog devices), put my cell phone on top, and naturally, buzzing, static, and everything else associated with cell phone interference...come to think of it, this is not a NEW phenomon, but every cell phone i've owned since 2001 has done it, and i never really questioned what it is, i do know how radios and electronic circuits work afterall, i'm not a mouse jockey who thinks he knows everything
the point is, it's not cell phones specifically that's the culprit. I have a 2.4ghz digital cordless phone that if i'm in the same room as the cheap computer speakers, IT too picks up a similar noise. My 5.8 ghz digital does it to.
really, the main factors here is how well the "recieving" hardware is getting this. When i put the ferrite cores on my cables, i didn't notice ANY difference. Yes, it was less because they're not acting as antenna, but it wasn't till I put my audio equipment in a makeshift farraday cage that it obliterated audio.
this is nothing new, i don't know why people think they have the answers. analog audio devices are going to pick up interference like that, the only thing people can do is maybe engineer these things to have more shielding...becuase even th most advanced phone design in the world is STILL going to ouput microwave, it has to, there's no escaping that. (and for the record, yes, i put an old microwave next to the denon and turned it on, as i moved it closer, nice loud screeching became more apparent...wrap the stereo in alumimum foil and screeching gone.
so tell me again how a little metal donut on some cable is going to protect all my other "unshielded" stuff? srsly. fail.
I was in the pet store, they had a machine that engraved ID tags for your dog or cat. I was apparently too close to the machine, and it's RF caused my iPhone to freak out, making it ring randomly, vibrate, and the display went crazy.
I had to go far out into the parking lot before I was able to do a restart of the phone. If it'd been just about any other phone, I would have just pulled the battery.
Chip H.
To the writer of this article: I think your article is sensationalism. As a commenter above pointed out, this has been going on for years with BB and other AT&T/GSM cell phones. To put iPhone in the title and to suggest that people on con calls are asked "to move their iPhone" is just misleading. Anyone that knows the sound from a con call, would say Blackberry before even imagining iPhone, but most likely would just say "can someone move their cell phone away from the phone". You even quote Polycom as saying they have been working on this for years... so why is iPhone in the title? I will guess you are a new or unknown writer that is trying for his 5 minutes of fame. You got on Slashdot, but now I have little respect for you due to your bogus "journalism".
All devices on the AT&T network do this. My old cell did it, but my Verizon now doesn't. The TV station i work at has banned AT&T devices because it goes through the audio mixer and out to the world. AT&T users must check cells at the door.
When speakers are magnetically shielded that traditionally refers to preventing strong static magnetic fields from leaving the speaker enclosure and thus affecting nearby susceptible devices (like the CRT)
It does not mean that the electronics and cables are shielded electromagnetic radiation (as well as strong electric or magnetic fields).
If that Iphone or Blackberry is causing interference.. guess what it's doing to your brains?
damn company assigned phone makes digital noise while I'm listening to my Ipod play through my 350W Monsoon in my car.. so I tend to shut the phone off.
I'd rather not be reachable while I'm driving.
What's that?
Hey, I think your pager is trying to tell you something...
Maybe he should be using the clock on an iPhone. ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Among the co-workers in my office, all or most of the major cell phone carriers are represented. The only ones that seem to cause interference in speakers are the AT&T phones. I had a RAZR that caused interference, and my iPhone does as well (although it took a few weeks for it to start). This is (obviously) nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but the only phones I've observed this phenomenon with have all been on AT&T.
I've found that powered noise cancelling headphones are particularly bad about picking up the GSM noise. I read somewhere that putting the phone into an anti-static bag, like what RAM comes in, will prevent the interference while still allowing calls through. While I found that it does work, on the iPhone it's an annoying solution because it causes problems seeing and operating the touch screen. Playing around with it, I was surprised to learn that simply placing the iPhone flat on top of the anti-static bag attenuated the interference noise tremendously. It can still be heard, but only very very faintly. Signal strength drops by a bar or two, but calls still go through with ease. This isn't a solution if you use the iPhone dock, but when you're listening to music at your desk at work its an excellent work-around. (This is on my first-gen iPhone, I have no idea if this would work for the curved back 3G iPhone.)
I release into the public domain the concept of an iPhone case (or car holster) that has anti-static material built into the backing, so that you can connect it to your car stereo or headphones without being bothered by the GSM noise. I'd patent the idea (I don't think there's any prior art on this, is there?) but patents are evil, right?
you missed the joke dude
My old SLVR had this problem, and the Sony-Ericsson, before that. I can still experience the cell phone noise if my iPhone is using the EDGE network, but not with 3G. I repeat, no noise with 3G.
I'm sorry, these people are on crack. All cell phones do this to some extent. In my experience, Smartphones are worse, probably because they do more stuff. My daughter's Blackberry Curve is a particularly bad citizen. She can't wear it when she's on her computer without turning down the volume on the computer's speakers or putting the phone on the table across the room. My Treo is the same way to a slightly lesser extent.
If someone just discovered this phenomenon, and thinks it's limited to iphones, they're a moron. Yes, the iphone tends to stay connected. But so does any phone that's running push activesync or blackberry's push delivery, or running a jabber or messenger service in the background. This really looked like someone tried to manufacture a news item, but couldn't make anything out of what he dug up.
Caveat: I think the iphone is a brilliant gui running on a crappy phone, and when offered one for free (at work) I turned it down. But this is just silly.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My iPhone occasionally turns on my kitchen ceiling fan, which has an RF-type remote control. Since my laptop has also done it a time or two, I suspect it has something to do with the WiFi transmitter.
This ain't rocket surgery.
I noticed this with my old V190 Motorola cell phone and recently with the iPhone. They "alert" me to an incoming call before the phone rings. I became known as a psychic at work since I'd reach for my phone to answer it before it rang!!! ;--)
It seems to have something to do with shielding during the call set up.
My Blackberry 7105 will turn on my Norelco shaver if it is left too close (0-3") to the shaver. It just comes on. I don't notice that it turns it off either.
GSM in particular seems to have a pretty harsh signal. I've never listened to CDMA signals, but GSM has great stuff going on.
Interesting, but not entirely unique. Heck, my Explorer's fuel pump is harsh enough to make my AM radio barf up whining instead of program. Even after the fixes and suppressoin kits. Feh.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I have an iPhone and whenever I sit at my bedroom desk my alarm clock radio goes nuts when calls are coming in or when it interacts with my router wirelessly. It distracts me from listening to Rush Limbaugh.
are you telling me you that you had no idea why in GTA:IV, the radio made that du-dut-du-dut-dut buzzing before niko got a call? are you so deluded you believe that apple paid them to do that as product placement? jebus fucking crist! it's GSM, not the iphone.
if you tards in the US didn't always have to do everything the WRONG way first, you'd know that. why cant you just use the accepted worldwide standards for once in our lives, instead of coming up with your own incompatible shit. you are the microsoft of countries
When you frequency hop, you cannot simply move to a new frequency. You need to turn off your transmitter, move to new frequency and ramp up the power in a controlled way. If you don't, you tend to get broadband noise.
Last time I looked, FCC (and just about any other regulatory body) only tests at fixed frequencies.
This "story" is over 18 years old and Apple hasn't invented it. There even was a techno song in the middle of the ninetees arranged upon a GSM interference sample.
You have to have a stable warp field in order to reach warp 1. God, where's my pocket protector?
This thing in EU is everyday reality. Welcome to GSM, America!
Welcome to the world of RFI, most people who buy consumer electronics aren't even aware of RFI. Generally you have to be a radio amateur to know the extreme annoyances of RFI. From powerline, electric fence, TV (plasma) and switching mode battery chargers, the RF spectrum is just awash with this pollution.
Maybe with the advent of personal RF transmitters, company's will be forced to spend the extra few cents to design consumer electronics with RFI resistance in mind.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I have this annoying problem with my speakers, and placing my cellphone far away or buying new speakers isn't acceptable.
So whats the solution?
I tried reducing the cable length to the minimum I need (by cutting and soldering it again), but it still happens.
I haven't seen the ferrite beads anywhere.
I have read in some posts that people use tinfoil, but how do I do it? Do I have to wrap it around the cable, or glue it to the inner walls of the speakers boxes? Do I have to ground it someway? How do I connect it to ground?
Has anybody done this successfully?
Most of the above replies are just plain wrong.
The Buzz is heard simply because the affected equipment is poorly designed.
It is good engineering practice to design equipment which is immune to RF breakthrough.
Those who understand EMC/EMI have begged Governments to mandate Immunity Standards to prevent this problem, but manufacturers have always lobbied to prevent this happening.
You can blame a corrupt FCC for this.
I had a three speaker system on my dekstop for years. It was a basic 79 dollar system from Fry's. The speakers always made a terrible sound before the phone rang.
I upgraded to a more expnsive Bose computer speaker system (three speakers as well). Same noise. I upgraded to a balckberry 8800 and it makes noises all the time. Sometimes it just starts buzzing for a few minutes and then it stops.
Two months ago I upgraded to a very high end system for my desktop (Onkyo 7.1 surround rceiver, left and right Event 20/20 speakers, center channel Dynaudio with BBC circuitry, two rear bose speakers from an older surround system I once had, and a bose rear center like the rear left and right (no side speakers connected yet)).
Guess what, not one sound from my phone. Not once. Then, I added a very high end JVC sub-woofer and the noise is back. Louder and more annoying than ever.
So, I can assume the noise is within the frequency range of lower end. I can adjust the frequency of the sub-woofer, and that may help, but I have not tried it yet.
Jamey
Jamey Kirby
Rename your article to include the word iPhone
???
Profit!!
I had forgotten all about this while I was a Verizon customer. See, their CDMA phones don't have this problem. Once I got an iPhone, it took me a day to recall where I'd heard that sound before. Honestly, I had totally forgotten.
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
Every single cellphone I owned had the same effect on ANY speaker.
This is nothing more than an idiot bitching about a successful product they now don't like.
You mean there are some cellphones that don't do this? I thought it was pretty standard. But I have always been on a GSM network.
I find my iphone only causes the noises when it's on edge. When it's using 3G i don't get any noises
This must be one of the things that make military gear so expensive. I've flown military aircraft with multiple cell phone calls going on onboard and there isn't any interference at all.
there are 2 kinds of people. those who divide people into 2 kinds, and those who don't.