Cell phones, as we all know, are relatively thin handheld devices. But as thin as they may be, there is a lot of technology sandwiched between the front and back. Cameras, processors, batteries and antennas, just to name a few. Those last two are what we’re going to focus on here. Antennas pick up radio signals. Not rocket science, I know. Where it gets interesting is when you start to block the antennas. You know, that really cool, super indestructible metal case that you placed over your brand new $1000 smart phone so you could protect your investment. Yeah, that blocks the cell signals. Ok, so you don’t have a metal one. Maybe you’re rocking the old school Otterbox or some other type of plastic case like a Lifeproof. Well, guess what? They affect the cell signal too. Sometimes it’s not even what is physically on the phone, it could be what’s around the phone too. Trees, mountains, valleys, buildings. Do you think radio signals pass through solid objects very easily? Think about when you’re in your car. It’s a big metal object isn’t it? Do you think that will affect the cell signal? As a matter of fact, anything that is placed on or over the phone will affect the cell signal in some way.
Great, so we’ve established that objects and even your environment can affect cellular signals. Ground breaking stuff, I know. But did you know that it will directly affect how long you can use your phone too? What a lot of people fail to make a correlation between is that other thing I previously mentioned above. The battery. Think about it. Have you ever noticed when you have poor cell reception, your battery dies a lot faster? Your phone is constantly looking for the best signal it can get. Switching from frequency to frequency searching out that high speed LTE signal. All the while, you battery is slowly creeping down. I bet you didn’t know that if you have poor cell coverage, you can actually prolong your battery life by switching off 4G LTE and leaving it on 2G/3G. That’s a little pro tip for you.
Cell boosters, let’s start off by stating what a cellular booster does. I’m not an expert by any means, so we’re going to keep this as simple as possible. An exterior mounted antenna picks up a cellular signal and sends it, via wired connection, to the booster module. The booster module then amplifies or “boosts” the signal and sends it, via wired connection, to an antenna mounted in the interior. This antenna then transmits the cellular signal wirelessly to your devices. That’s about as simple as I can make it.
Here’s a scenario. Let’s imagine that we’re rolling along in our car and we notice our cell reception is just teetering on one bar of LTE. We pull over and step out of the vehicle. Alas, we have three to four bars of LTE. So what gives? Like I said before, anything around the cell phone that stands between the antenna and the radio signal will affect the strength of the signal. The big metal box on four wheels that you just stepped out of is no exception. Now let’s look at the same scenario, but with a booster installed. One bar of LTE, we simply switch on the booster and boom, three bars of LTE. Pretty cool huh? The booster basically takes the affects the car has on the signal out of the equation. It’s almost like you’re standing outside.
