I saw a television commercial the other day for a product that appears to be a metallic circuit trace on a sticker that you would attach to a cell phone for the purpose of boosting the signal. Do these things work? I don’t see how, since they don’t plug into anything, they’re just stuck on the side of the phone. Plus, it comes with a shield that sticks on the earpiece to block EM waves, which I know doesn’t work and that hurts it’s credibility in my eyes.
I hate to follow up my own post like this, but here’s a link to the product in question. It’s called the “Internal Antenna”.
(You can also see the “Wave Scrambler” EM shield at the bottom of the page.)
I hate to follow up my own post like this, but here’s a link to the product in question. It’s called the “Internal Antenna”.
(You can also see the “Wave Scrambler” EM shield at the bottom of the page.)
Think about it this way: if these lame products really worked, and somehow could increase the signal strength…why don’t cellular phone manufacturers included these “miracle circuits” as a matter of course into their phone designs? Obviously, these things cost about fifty cents to manufacture, since they look about as complex as those “circuit stickers” that are used in shoplifting prevention. If such a cheap solution could improve performance, don’t you think Nokia and Motorola would be all over it? Why would these things be sold by ABC Enterprises at 4:00 am on Comedy Central?
To quote Martin Prince: “Highly dubious!”.
Jet Jaguar, I must have seen the same commercial, because I had the same question.
occ, those theft-prevention “circuits” are magnetic loops. They hold a charge and thus are magnetized, and the readers are big magnetic fields. Thus when you purchase your product, they demagnatize the squares, and therefore you don’t set off the alarm. That’s why you aren’t supposed to put your credit card on the mat - they would be demagnetized, too.
These are probably just as cheap, but they seem to work by a different effect. It is true that if you put a coil of wire in the field of the signal, it will serve as an antenna. Think of the antenna on your Walkman. It is the wire in the headphones. So that part in itself is plausible. How is it attached to the phone? It is adhered inside the battery compartment “near the fixed antenna”. So it is not actually placed in the circuit as an antenna extension (such as sticking a clothes hangar in a broken prong on top of a radio). However, it could be working by induction. Basically induction means run two circuits near each other, and run a current through one, and the current will show up in the second. Therefore it is entirely possible this additional phone antenna circuit works by having a coil of “wire” in the same field and then uses induction to aid the current in your regular antenna. How effective it is is another matter.
Similarly, the battery range improver is basically an external battery pack. Nothing mysterious there, and it should work fine.
The “radiation shield”, however, is something else entirely. It appears to be a sticker you place on the ear holes (speaker). I fail to see how this can have any effect on protecting you from phone radiation. First of all, the
“microwave radiation” does not “penetrate your head through the ear canal, some reaching 1” to 1 1/2" into your brain!" Microwaves goes right through the skin and the bone pretty easily, too. Most importantly, the radiation is not from the speaker (ear holes), but from the antenna. The best protection is extend the antenna, turn up your phone volume, and hold the phone away from your head.
http://www.globalchange.com/radiation2.htm
Moving the aerial 8 inches from the head would dramatically reduce exposure - to 1/64th of the dose.