Cell Phone Antenna Booster - Good or Bogus?

Orion

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Opinions needed. Perhaps you purchased one of these little gems in hopes of boosting the signal strength of your cell phone. If so, did it work /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif, or was it all a bunch of hooey /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif?

Thank you.
 

Hemingray

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Jul 2, 2002
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New Hampshire
They are total crap, as are those "plug into the wall" TV antennas, those plastic antenna tip balls, etc. Might as well take a $10 bill, fold it into a paper airplane and toss it out the window. At least there is a little fun there /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The answer? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsdown.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smoker5.gif

/ed B in NH
 

JonSidneyB

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I got a Booster, I could tell no difference. My Cell phone would cut out a mile before I get home even though I am in the sevice area map. I got a booster and my phone cut out at the same place. My cell phone turned out to be usless to me since I cannot get service near my home.
 

Orion

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Thanks guys. The other link [guess I shoulda done a search] was also helpful. Ebay had some for $1.50 with free shipping. I guess the Free Shipping part would be the best part of the deal then. I'll pass.

Many thanks!
 

asdalton

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I'm sure that they work for "boosting" the size of the manufacturer's wallet. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif
 

Darell

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LOCO is more like it.
I keep wondering how anybody can get away with selling these things. Freaking amazing.

They do NOTHING. Physically, there is really nothing they CAN do stuck back there behind the battery or something? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif Ain't gonna happen.
 

PhotonWrangler

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It pegs the needle on my bogometer! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsdown.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smoker5.gif
 

sotyakr

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Benicia, CA
Also received one of these, along with an anti brain frying shield included as a freebie with an eBay purchased CLA and battery for my cell phone. Just for yucks, I stuck the "antenna booster" on the battery of my NEC 525, and surprise! No difference.

Always assumed they work about as well as the ball you're supposed to stick on to the end of your car antenna, presumably to improve reception. As I recall, the seller of this high-tech RF improving wonder claimed it was used by the military. Yeah, apparently it was used by the military alright - to prevent someone from getting their eye poked out by a flailing whip antenna.
 

Bravo25

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[ QUOTE ]
Darell said:
I keep wondering how anybody can get away with selling these things. Freaking amazing.

They do NOTHING. Physically, there is really nothing they CAN do stuck back there behind the battery or something? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif Ain't gonna happen.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is because there is no such thing as truth in advertising, and the advertisers know this. The thing now is to make outlandash claims with a money back gaurantee. Knowing that less than half of the people will bother to return the things, there is the profit margin.

Now the big thing is "we want you to have this product free if you only pay big bucks for the shipping"! Just another scam to get your money.
 

The_LED_Museum

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Federal Way WA. USA
I got a cellular telephone "antenna booster" with some pills I got on Ebay about a year ago, and never did bother to put the asinine thing on my cellular telephone.
I pretty much figured it was just a bunch of horse puckey when I received it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif
 

idleprocess

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There is no such thing as a free lunch - especially when it comes to the hard and fast rules of physics.

The only way to improve the performance of any RF device (other than re-engineering it) is to increase antenna efficiency, or add more power to Tx/Rx signals. Nothing you do to your phone's transceiver will increase the output of the base station - those are limited-power so that the "cellular" part of "cellphone" can work. Your outgoing signal might improve if you tweaked the output power, but that's likely all kinds of illegal and might make the base station disconnect you.

You can put a better antenna on a phone so you lose fewer packets to and from the base station, but those goofy things in the battery compartment don't do that. I seem to remember "high gain" antennas being available for some cellphones years ago, but there's only so much that can be to improve compact omnidirectional antennas. If you had an add-on diretional antenna that bypassed the built-in antenna, you might be able to dramatically improve reception - assuming you knew where the base station was.
 

James S

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If you feel like experimenting in spite of the fact that they are completely and totally bogus, you can pick up 2 for a dollar now that they are dumping the stock and most people have learned that they are bogus /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I hope this link works...

2 for a dollar booster
 

mattheww50

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Actually it is pretty tough to improve the efficiency of the antenna. The improvement usually comes from trading isotropic radiator proporties for directionality, in effect concentrating the direction of transmission. Works well for space missions, and the Mars probes because they can maintain their spatial orientation. Generally doesn't work well for cell phones because people don't stand still, so their spatial orientation changes, as a result most cell phone antennae at the mobil end are close to isotopic radiators. The situation at the Base is a bit different, you have an antenna to cover each 120 degree area, and it is a safe bet that no one is going to be doing much transmitting either below the ground, or above the top floor of the highest building, so those antennae can be designed to provide substantial gain over an isotropic radiatior in part because there is more than one of them, and in part because they know where the customer has to be relative to receiver antenna. The phone is not so lucky.

bottom line is that 'passive' cell phone boosters are an excellent way of performing wallet surgery (surgircal removal of funds from the wallet of the buyer).
 

Unicorn

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Near Seattle, WA
The only ones that seem to work are the add on attennas that use that little plug on the back of some phones, and then they only seem to do any good when you are inside some vehicles and buildings that block the signal, and they are outside with the cord running though the window.
 

14C

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You have to check to make sure the one you bought was made of dark matter. Some have a copper coating, some silver, some even solid copper or silver but the ones that really work are prized by even physicists because those have a small amount of dark matter under the plating.

As a matter of fact I have heard that physicists all over the world are collecting these to try to put together enough dark matter in a laboratory so they can write a paper to prove the existence of dark matter.

So far all that they seem to have found is that a lot of dark energy is around.

I think that has to do with the "wallet sucking" someone mentioned earlier.
 

snakebite

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dayton oh
you actually take pills from someone who peddles those silly phone stickers?
russian roulette comes to mind.

[ QUOTE ]
The_LED_Museum said:
I got a cellular telephone "antenna booster" with some pills I got on Ebay about a year ago, and never did bother to put the asinine thing on my cellular telephone.
I pretty much figured it was just a bunch of horse puckey when I received it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif

[/ QUOTE ]
 
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