Motorola E815 antenna switch?

Okay...I'm sitting here, bored at work, so I decided to open up the battery compartment to my phone. I decided to unscrew and remove the antenna from the phone, when I notice what seems to be a small black switch located at the end of the antenna shaft. When the antenna is extended, the switch goes up....kinda looks like this: / But when I push the antenna back in, it goes down...kinda like this _ . Sorry for the crude representations, but since my only camera is on my phone, it's kinda hard to take a picture of it.


Any ideas as to what it's for?

Hmmm..... if the phone was off does it turn on if you raise the antenna?

Nope...there is no visible change when I extend or retract the antenna.

For a minute, I thought that it might be a switch for switching from an internal antenna to the antenna on the phone, but there's no change in signal strength when I extend or retract the antenna.

Ok, got a coworker to take a pic and send it to me...here it is, note the area circled in red:

OT Note: Anyone notice photobucket has video hosting now?

Look at post #36 and #37 of this thread.

http://www.howardforums.com/showthr...&pp=30&highlight=Motorola+E815+antenna+switch

Hmm...interesting. It seems like the people in that thread were guessing as to the purpose of it more than actually having a reason for it. I've never seen a phone with a expandable/retractable antenna that had something like that just to keep it in place...there's no need for it. If you look at the picture above, you can see that there is a perfectly suitable guide for the antenna to stay in place while retracted without the use of a spring loaded "switch" There's got to be an actual reason for it. I can tell just by retracting and expanding the antenna that the plastic above it is there so that the end of the antenna actually contacts that switch without flexing which would make it impossible to trigger that switch due to the flimsyness (making up my own words here!) of the antenna.

Thanks for the link though!