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BlackBerry Bold Tops Radiation Ranking
geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "Data from the Environmental Working Group places the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as the mobile device with the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation among popular smartphones. Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores the highest among popular smartphones for exposing users to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation, according to the latest 2010 Environmental Working Group ranking. Following the Bold 9700 are the Motorola Droid, the LG Chocolate and Google's HTC Nexus One. The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules."
Perhaps this means it'll get signal where I live?
The solution? Stop putting in the Bold (tm) chunk of americium inside the earpiece. :3
~ C.
The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules.
Wait... so I guess that makes this a complete non-story?
Or maybe we should have an enthralling debate about how these devices are within legal spec.
Or perhaps it's flamebait: We're supposed to bring out the apple fanboys and where the iphone ranks.
Current FCC regulations permit SAR levels of up to 1.6 W/kg for partial body (head) exposure, 0.08 W/kg for whole-body exposure and 4 W/kg for exposure to the hands, wrists, feet and ankles.
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores an overall 1.55 SAR in the new rankings. The Motorola Droid came in at 1.50 while the LG Chocolate scored a 1.46, the Nexus One ranked a 1.39 and the Apple iPhone 3G scored a 1.19.
Ok, I read some of the article. I guess we can talk about how close the Blackberry is to the upper bound. It still seems like a boring, non-story.
Get out your tinfoil hats! This is a life and death situation!
You poor fanboys, your precious toy didn't even make the list. Weak is the signal, weak as the user.
You're just a Motorola Droid.
Dear
It's flamebait for the "cell phones cause cancer" crowd: the word "radiation" is a dead giveaway.
-kgj
Pro: Best distance from tower possible due to high TX power
Con: no kids^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
Pro: no kids
Someone compiled a list, then sorted it numerically by some quantifiable characteristic.
Something came in at #1. what a surprise. this doesn't mean #1 is that that good or great or bad or harmful, as noted in the summary itself
"The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules."
stupid
Dashboard Widgets
It's old, but good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEl7QqoPH9c
Now that Rick is gone, what else can I do?
Then why is it a story?
it's within legal limits.
this wasnt posted by kdawson
electromagnetic radiation != atomic radiation
"Cell phone radiation" just means that the things are electromagnetically noisy and prone to interfere with other nearby electronics through induced currents.
http://www.ewg.org/cellphone-radiation -- This is the actual report site. Have a look through.
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores the highest among popular smartphones for exposing users to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation
That is awesome. Now you know what cell will have the strongest possible signal!
Of course the unspoken assumption being made is that this cell phone radiation, aka radio waves, are somehow a bad thing or undesirable.
I had been one of those mislead skeptics and paranoid anti-radiation-braintumor cellphone conspiracy theorists until I actually worked around some radiology detection systems and began randomly testing things, like cell phones.
I never got to test an iphone, which is what I have now, but my old Samsung A90 from sprint, never set off any of the detection systems, unless I had just walked-in from the outside during day time, which was due to residual radiation from just walking outside. So I quickly realized that just walking around outside in the sun, exposed me to far more radiation than my cellphone alone ever would.
It was most interesting, though, when my old CTO went in for a CT scan and was tripping-off the radiation detectors for 3 days straight thereafter.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
We're number ONE!....
Oh wait....
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
They'll come out with one that is just exactly at the Government limit on radiation, and call it the "Zesty".
Then they'll come out with one well above the limit and call it the "Extra Crispy"
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but since cell phones operate in radio frequencies, wouldn't it have to be running at massive power outputs to even potential cause damage to DNA? You would think that meter (or decimeter, or centimeter) wavelengths would have a hard time smacking a DNA molecule. Put it this way, radio visible spectrum ultraviolet, and last i checked, you had to go up to UV to worry about cancer. Could you get cancer from a really bright light, all in the visible spectrum?
AC because I forgot my password...
This link would have been even better. You see they have 1.58 W/kg. You have over a dozen phones above 1.5. Somebody always has to be the highest. Actually, the model number they cite is not the worst, although the worst is still a Blackberry.
True, they are several times worst than the best; but is that meaningful? If the standard for poison X in the water is 100 ppm, and your city water has 2 ppm and mine has 20 ppm that's a factor of 10 but it doesn't mean anything if you believe that the standard is safe.
Oh, and I was wondering about the units--W/kg. It appears that they use some kind of test that measures how much a body would absorb per unit mass, which is actually pretty cool.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I guess that's why they call it a crackberry
Folks please don't get wound up about 'radiation' from a wireless device, remember that it is only 'heating' radiation, not ionizing radiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation. All it is going to do is warm your skin near where the phone is, or very slow cook for you microwave oven enthusiasts... Ionizing radiation like gamma rays are quite another story and will cause DNA damage, but are a wholly different type of 'radiation'. You will get more damage from standing out in the sun every day then you will from the weak signal that is emitted from your mobile. Now the fact that most mobile phones these days do not have a very efficient antenna is quite the reason that so many of them have such bad SAR values, if people could just stand having a little 'duckie' antenna sticking out of the top of the phone then we would have more efficient emission of the signal and a better SAR value. But that is not sexy and so we won't see any more antenna's like we did when cellphones first came out and so instead the phone body itself is the antenna and a good portion of the emitted signal is absorbed by the hand and head, its just the way it works... The best thing is to educate yourself and make your own decisions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health
Buddha of compassion
Hail to our cell phone mutated Blackberry Overlords! We can only hope that they do not develop the ability to integrate their Blackberry devices into their personal beings. Their productivity and ability to stay "plugged in" at all times will fuel another 80's style boom, we'll see the resurfacing of large furry boots, bright color shirts, men in "skinny jeans", popped collars, & a small but ferverous following singing Rick Astley's "Never gonna give you up". We are so screwed.
I would probably call it "radiation", and not bother with "electromagnetic energy". I have no problem with radiation, as such. I'm just saying (in my original post) that it's a hot-button word for some people -- not me or you, but some people.
-kgj
How about a comparison between Radiation levels and reception power of the phone so we can see if the trade off is worth having lees dropped call?
Here's the data as a Google Spreadsheet. http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlEnl9tgD98JdGNITERTYmN3TlRhTkNhQ1dBMElyeFE&hl=en
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times
So you're ok with the side of your head getting slowly cooked?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Cell phone radiation reverses Alzheimer's in mice.
See here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AlzheimersNews/cell-phone-radiation-prevent-reverse-alzheimers-mice/story?id=9497387
I would get more heating from standing out in the sun, please do some research, the amount of power and the duty cycle of most modern cell phones are minute in comparison to the amount of heating you get laying in the sun...
Buddha of compassion
Given the study a while back on cell phone radiation being possibly beneficial for Alzheimers patients, it seems like this information could be useful for anyone looking to try to it out for themselves: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/01/07/1812250
This is literally my experience with Black Berry's.
At first I had a old 7900, a big blue brick of a BB that worked great, I never had problems with it and it's never crashed or broke.
I move up to a BB curve 8330 and there isn't a day I don't curse the name of Rim. The phone is an electronic brick, it's a horrible phone that never works. My first 8330 had the screen just shatter on it, like totally blow up, Of course the screen is never covered by warranty because Rim knows just how crappy it was built. Being I still had a long contract left I had to buy a new 8330 from Virgin and this phone is even worse. The first problem is the battery life is horrible, it's unacceptable, a full charge yields 10 hours of battery.
The second major problem is the horrible signal strength. Now don't go quoting it's CDMA or a Bell network and it's not Rim's problem the signal is bad. It's 50% Rim's problem and 50% Virgin's problem. If the BB can't get a signal why would it use the battery as an open drain to boost the signal output does that make sense? NO, NO it doesn't, maybe to a first semester electrical or telecommunications engineer but that's about it. Before you go calling me a Troll or Flamebot or what ever else names exist, I'm currently a studying Telecommunications Engineer and I just finished a full Computer Engineering Degree, so I know what I'm talking about with signals.
I'm going to focus on why this is Rim's problem first. It's there duty to make sure if the phone can't find signal it shuts off searching or goes into an INT mode until the phone enters a signal area. I know GSM works this way and I know CDMA can work this way, I do have a full CCNA Cert and a Wireless Networking Cert. The battery should be used on min power when the phone is not in operation. The problem is when the phone is searching for a signal is keeps switching between quiescent current and transient current which will lead to power being wasted. Rim should take care to make sure this doesn't happen!
How this is Virgin's problem, they should make sure the phones they use work in all expected area's. If I sit by my window I should be getting more then 1 or 2 bars. I would also like to mention the fact that there telecommunication engineers should be one the ball and know this problem exists and either recommend Rim fixes it or fix it themselves by changing the access method to the network. If you can use CDMA you can easily change the network protocol to access on a different basis. It's basic cellular networking studies and practice, If you can use CDMA to access a network you can also use many other network access techniques. If Virgin doesn't take the time to look into this then there just as much responsible as Rim and hence we find the 50% duty shared by both sides.
Some referance links if anyone if interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inrush_current http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-dropout_regulator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA
Those links do a fair job of explaining and backing up the points I made above. Virgin refuses to look into this problem claiming there not responsible, well I don't know how they can justify that but I haven't given up fighting that problem.
It doesn't stop there, it keeps going and starting Yesterday on the 24th of Feb my BB started just randomly restarting every variable amount of time. I tied to update the firmware, I've tried to remove the battery, I've even tried to reset the BB to default firmware and just screw my settings. Nothing works, I can't figure out anything I haven't done to try and get over this problem. Today the 25th I contacted Virgin telling them this is what happening, of course they blame the battery, then they blame the phone programming and on and on and on.
Lets cut the bull, the phone wasn't made well, t
CNET has a nice list of just about every cell phone model out there and how much radiation they put out.
http://reviews.cnet.com/2719-6602_7-291-1.html
Click through the pages for lists by manufacture.
They typically take the radiation pattern, determine the part that radiates into your head and how much power that is out of the total with respect to how much flesh it's hitting and penetrating (different penetration depth for bone, skin, etc).
They also have a pretty sophisticated series of models for different sized people, different manners of holding the phone, etc and typically use some type of average.
Is that anything like delta radiation? A tachyon field? The omega particle?
I also like this, from the summary: "the highest legal levels." Hm.
Burn those hairs right off your head!
Oh boy.
I can't count the number of times I've run across this particular piece of rationalization. Probably because, on the surface, it makes an emotional kind of sense.
Yes, non-ionizing radiation doesn't burn anything. But that's not the problem. Nobody is claiming it IS the problem. The only people who are convinced that anybody is claiming this as the problem simply aren't paying attention. Sorry. I don't mean to come down hard on you, but the EM spectrum is useful in electronics because it vibrates, not because it burns things. Cells, when vibrated on the EM spectrum, react. It's that simple. There is a ton of information available to anybody who wants to know what is really going on here.
Basically, it comes down to this:
Cells respond, evidently by their very nature, to coherent electromagnetic signals in the 1 to 500Hz range. They do all kinds of weird things depending on the pulse rate and power and how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the signal. Cells have been observed to reproduce many times faster or slower than normal when exposed to different radio frequencies. -Or to open up their membrane walls allowing foreign particles to enter which would not normally be able to pass. Very low power signals can do this and a great deal more.
There are a number of observed mechanics, one of which is called, "Cyclotronic Resonance". Here's an example. . .
As I am sure you know, everything has a natural sympathetic frequency. This is understood. Cyclotronic Resonance is a type of resonance which occurs when both a radio frequency and a steady magnetic field are present. For instance, when you produce a 60Hz frequency, (as in wall-socket current), and combine it with a steady magnetic field of 0.2 Gauss, (as supplied by the Earth's magnetic field), the Lithium Ion resonates and becomes excited. It also moves on a spiral vector. The result is that any trace quantities of Lithium which happen to be in the blood stream of an organism will cease to sit still and will instead energize and move, enabling them to penetrate the blood brain barrier with greater frequency than normal. It was noted that rats exposed to these conditions exhibited behavior consistent with a medicinal dose of lithium drug as compared to the control rats. It should be noted that Lithium is the active ingredient in many anti-depressants.
That's just one small example. There are many others. But you're NOT going to read about them in the main stream press. You just won't. I'd explain why but that's a whole other post. (Typically, people who believe in the whole idea that "non-ionizing" means "Safe" also tend to have trouble believing that the media can be anything less than honest. Or that corruption exists. Or that any group might have a vested interest in mass-medicating a population. Just as one example.)
But there is some excellent information out there. -A good book on this is, "Cross Currents" by Robert O. Becker.
Scary?
Of course it is.
Good luck.
-FL
Oops yes. I have added both those links to the story.
Another thing about this research is it is compiled from the manufacturers' own data - though obviously any attempt to falsify could be picked up, I don't know how many third parties have measured the radiation.
I see from the list of phones at EWG that there are phones called a Motorola Brute, and a Samsung Slash. Why do American phones always have better names? Our Droids are Milestones, for goodness sake....
Peter Judge
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What, if any, relationship is there between the SAR and the reception on the phone? Higher is better? Lower is better? I always guessed a high SAR also means a better transciever, but my Palm Pre is LOWER then my old HTC Touch Pro, but it definatly is a better transmitter and reciver. It just might be a better RF design though. How DID the government come up with a 1.6sar max though? and not the European 2.0? I have had various cell phones (3w analog to my palm pre) in my shirt pocket for close to 20 years, and in trying to find an answer, I found out the SAR is 1 inch from the body, like on a holster, not in a shirt pocket. I don't care as it is RF non-ionizing though like others have said.
good god your right!!! fuck quickly turn off your pc, the radiation comming off it is slowly COOKING YOU!!!!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Having a lower radiation would have helped me to gulp the linuxopensource cost :-/
Nobody knows where to find its figure?
Herve S.
...then I can only assume you spend all your time in a sealed, pitch-black room. Light is radiation, y'know.
It took about time, I was already growing roots waiting for this to come up. .. go on! Start that prelife crisis right now .. come on!
Makes me feel old
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
You will [be] standing out in the sun every day...
Hi, Welcome to /.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
Apple's up and coming iPhone will be able to easily compete with the Bold. Hell, with the 25 watt microwave transmitter they are installing it should be able to heat a bowl of noodles in 6 hours. Sadly the battery will only last 5-10 minutes on "iNuk" setting, but Jobs is confident that this will lead to further gains in the smart phone market.
I never knew brain matter was a magnet for radio signals.
Attention: Much talk here about how these cellphones may be inherently dangerous to living tissue, but not much has been said of the damage caused to other things. My health may be directly impacted by this device causing unintended acceleration or braking in a fly-by-wire automotive application.
Airline industry has long denied cellphone use during flight, citing compromised electronics and failure of same.
And here's the whole list.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
With radiation like this, our kids will have 4 thumbs, thus doubling productivity!
Your initial post was sophomoric; your defense is infantile. With the time and space it took you to accuse your detractors of laziness, you could have made a cogent argument supporting your view. You didn't, and you didn't because you couldn't. You know that you have no rigorous support, so you resort to ad hominem attacks on our intellectual work ethic.
It would sure make things easier for you if any of that were true. "I didn't because I couldn't"? You can make a declaration like that and still call ME infantile? Wow. And I love the term, "intellectual work ethic". -Your work ethic dictates that you be rude, condescending and demanding rather than civil and questioning? Real scientists generally figure that one out early on in their careers.
There's a difference between an ad hom attack and calling a duck a duck. If you don't like what I've pointed out about what I see, then perhaps you should change your behavior.
You are the one making the extraordinary claim. It's your job to convince others that you are right, not to scream "you're lazy!" when others say "that's implausible".
Well now, I hardly think I can be characterized as, "screaming". -And others aren't merely saying in reasoned tones, "that's implausible." Is that honestly what you perceived while reading through these posts? Indeed, I'd actually go so far as to reverse those emotional valances, though to be fair, I don't really see anybody screaming. More just getting indignant and puffed up with self-importance. Keeping in mind that there are some genuinely mature and intelligent people commenting in this thread who disagree with me but who are worthy of respect.
But oh my goodness! My favorite part is that you believe it's my JOB to convince you. Oh dear! That implies I desire and value your approval. I really, really don't. Honest!
Look at it this way. . .
Let's say I was out in the backyard and I saw something amazing. Let's say I learned and benefited from my discovery. The chances are I might cry out and say, "Hey everybody, check this out!" -That would be me wanting to share with the tribe. After that, however, it is up to others whether or not they choose to follow where I am pointing and go look for themselves. My responsibility to the tribe at this point has ended. I have sounded an alert and pointed the way. I am under no obligation to drag people kicking and complaining to any kind of discovery. Why would I want to? It sounds like a miserable, thankless job.
But that's not how we've been trained as a culture. (The endless court room dramas we have been exposed to are one example). The way we are kept in the dark is that we have been taught to keep ourselves in the dark. -That it is right and proper to scowl and refuse to get out of the TV couch jury box, to insist that the discoverer bring forth studies and peer-reviewed papers proving that something amazing really has been witnessed and learned from. People have been brought up to believe that the proper reaction is to grow indignant and even angry when one tells them, "Nah. I don't feel like it. You're on your own."
"Then you didn't see anything! You owe us proof!"
"No I don't. I benefited and you didn't because you're lazy. Too bad for you. Of course, you could always get up and go look for yourself just over-"
"I will not! You must bring knowledge to me on a silver platter."
"Yeah, but I'm not going to do that. If you don't expend effort to look, then you don't deserve to know. In fact, I might actually tell people to not give you information. You get what you pay for and you actually deserve to be in the dark."
"Argh! Then you didn't see anything of value. You didn't benefit. You didn't! You have to prove it."
"Whatever. I'm going back outside to explore, learn and grow some more. Bye!"
(Isn't this interesting? Easily as fascinating as cell phones. The epistemology of the very process of learning itself!)
-FL
Many of their phone-specific pages cite the manufacturer as the only data source. This includes a phone I'm playing with at the moment, which happens to have one of the worst SAR ratings on the ewg.org list. (Worse than the Blackberry.) I followed their link, and it brought me to a user manual, which did in fact show the same values shown on the list.
Call me paranoid, but that didn't really satisfy me. For one thing, I don't trust user manuals all that much when it comes to fine details that might have changed since they were written. For another, this phone supports several different radio frequencies, including Wi-Fi and several different GSM bands, yet the manual and ewg.org fail to reflect this with multiple SAR values. So, I looked up the FCC ID for my phone and followed it to the FCC's radiation report on that model. What I found was much more informative.
As you might expect, the FCC's SAR measurements showed quite a range of values, depending on which radio is in use, which channel is in use, and how the phone is held. According to this data, my particular phone habits and service provider should yield around half the SAR that was reported by ewg.org, comparable to their best-rated models.
This exercise was interesting, and set my mind at ease a little, but I'm still going to use a wired headset whenever possible. Again, call me paranoid if you like. There simply hasn't been enough time for us to observe the long-term effects of having a microwave broadcast antenna plastered to our heads, and I don't trust studies that claim all is well when they're funded by the cell phone industry.
Some of you might find this US Senate hearing interesting:
http://appropriations.senate.gov/webcasts.cfm?method=webcasts.view&id=2a7f2e87-68a0-48a3-b16b-08ac1b98cc42
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/288879-1
http://www.mapcruzin.com/news/cell-phone-health-effects-hearing.htm