Cell Phone Reception Hack

New Breeze writes "Has this ever happened to you? Just when you need to make a phone call, the bars of reception are scant to none. But Graeme, who writes a blog called 'Earth: Mostly Harmless,' gives us hope. Succeeding where most would quit, he chronicled his ingenuity in a post titled 'How I got mobile phone reception where there was no signal.'" Update: 08/01 14:31 GMT by T : Note: Credit for this story belongs to Mike Yamamoto, who wrote it for CNET's News.com.

Re:I can't believe it...

[falsified]

That's because it's a good old-fashioned "How to _________" written by an actual human being rather than a Vista/Wii/Apple/Linux/BSD press release via CNN.com or com.com. Hey editors, post more interesting things like this!

It's not really a 'hack' per-se

[OverlordQ]

All he does is use an external antenna, maybe if it fiddled with some of the phones internal settings I might call it a hack.

Will not work in the US.

[LqdSlpStrm]

GSM phones here operate on 850/1900Mhz. 3G is not really deployed yet.

Bars

[booch]

Mmmm, bars.

Sorry, got distracted there. I'd like to know why it is that there are 4 bars right before I dial, and only 2 bars (or worse) right after I hit the SEND button. This has happened to me multiple times. I'm pretty sure it's even happened to me on 2 different carriers.

Re:It's not really a 'hack' per-se

[siriuskase]

i agree with GP, not really a hack, even with the different definition. A "hardware hack" that doesn't violate the warranty isn't hack.

bad sumary

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

"Has this ever happened to you? Just when you need to make a phone call, the bars of reception are scant to none. But Graeme, who writes a blog called 'Earth: Mostly Harmless,' gives us hope. Succeeding where most would quit, he chronicled his ingenuity in a post titled 'How I got mobile phone reception where there was no signal.'"

Such a bad intro. He basically made a mobile phone into a not so mobile phone connected to a highly directional antena. That will not work for me or anyone else while I'm driving, walking down the streat or in a train. Which, is basically the only time it happens to most people. While I appreciate his predictimant and commend him on "solving" it. It really won't help many people, and wasn't that novel of a solution. It reminds me of undergrad research. Do something everyone has done before, but in a trivially different way and claim its ground breaking.