I had a procedure done in a hospital this morning and I had been in the bui lding for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advise d me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "other wise the building will kill it".
Perhaps it was coincidence but I then looked at my phone and the battery st ate of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarrasse d to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
Utter baloney. How can a building absorb energy from a battery?
You just hadn't recharged your cell phone recently.
A couple of thoughts come to mind:
(1) Cellphones will tend to raise or lower their transmit power when "talking" to the cell tower, based on signal-strength feedback from the cell-tower controller. If the hospital building is well shielded but not entirely radio-opaque, some cellphones might increase their TX power to stay connected to their network, and this could run the battery down faster than if they were out in "clear air".
(2) The nurse might have been making up a story ("save your battery") instead of saying something like "Please shut down your cellphone, since we have sensitive electronic equipment in some of the rooms around here and your phone might interfere with them." She may have learned that people are more likely to comply with a "turn the cellphone all the way off" request, if it's excused by a statement that seems to be in the person's own best interest ("save your battery from being killed").
I had a procedure done in a hospital this morning and I had been in the building for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advised me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "otherwise the building will kill it".
Perhaps it was coincidence but I then looked at my phone and the battery state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarrassed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
I regularly work a 19 hour gig under some railway arches in London. Even though I have to make sure my phone is fully charged before I enter the building at 2pm, it is usually pretty much on zero by the time I leave around 9am.
I believe this is because most of the club has no cellphone signal, but parts of it does. So as i wander around, the phone spends most of the time using up its battery trying to find a signal, polling the transmitter, logging on to the system when it finds a signal, or whatever it actually does in reality when it finds itself in such a dire constantly on/off reception situation.
Perhaps your Hospital is similar.
Gareth.
Some hospitals these days use wireless monitoring and can be sensitive to i nterference. As such, many also have shielding on the exterior walls to he lp reduce that interference. While the phone itself may not be in the freq uency range to cause direct problems, its signals will be shielded from the outside which makes the phone search for a signal. This search uses batte ry power and thus will drain the battery after what appears to be a short t ime.
Dan
Cell phones may raise the output power if the cell sites they are receiving all appear to be low in signal. I really think it has much to do with the model phone you have.
As for the rest of it, be cautions, you may have dementia setting in! Which makes it easy for people to believe anything! Hell, they may even believe aliens are flying around above us, right now!
Jamie
uilding for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advi sed me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "oth erwise the building will kill it".
state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarras sed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
You think they're not? Lenny
True. My guess(tm) is that there's no cell phone signal inside the building. Your cell phone will continuously transmit at full power trying to connect to a cell tower that's not there. The algorithm is stupid and just repeatedly tries to connect until the battery is depleted. For GSM, the phone does not know which time slot to use, so it turns the receiver on full time, depeleting the battery even faster. When we had an area wide fiber outage which killed the local cell sites, my cell phone battery went from nearly full charge to totally dead in about 3 hours.
However, you don't have to remove the battery. Just turn off the cell phone.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I had a procedure done in a hospital this morning and I had been in the building for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advised me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "otherwise the building will kill it".
** Just turning the phone off is enough.Bet there is no signal in the building and / or they have jammed it.
.... Phil
My boss has a cell phone that kills the battery in as little as 30 minutes when he is in our lab. It has a LOT of electronic gear, and is mostly underground. The phone tries to keep in contact with the cell tower and needs to crank up the transmitter to full to be heard.
They put microcells around the campus and I think his phone no longer has this problem.
Jon
uilding for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advi sed me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "oth erwise the building will kill it".
state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarras sed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
How many watts does a cellphone transmitter output on full power? Lenny
How many watts does a cellphone transmitter output on full power? Lenny
2W for 3G phones.Gareth.
uilding for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advi sed me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "oth erwise the building will kill it".
state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarras sed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
That's interesting because I usually keep my phone in my breast pocket. I d on't know how I feel about the damn thing irradiating that part of my body at frequencies considered to be just below microwave while continuously stu mbling around aimlessly seeking a cell tower just because I'm unfortunate enough to be in a dead spot. Maybe the answer is to just leave the miserabl e thing off until you really need to use it. Hey people always seemed to be able to find Perry Mason when he was on the road. He was always taking cal ls on other peoples phones...Lenny
Here's the power budget I worked out for proposed Verizon cell site: With everything turned on full blast, on all frequencies, on all 3 sectors, that's 43,000 watts EIRP.
Of course, it never gets that high because the cell site would probably blow a fuse or something. Adaptive power control also limits the handset transmit power to something between 20 to 100 mw into an antenna with maybe -3dB gain. Cell site transmit is typically in the same range, but with an antenna with considerably more gain. FCC rules limit the TX EIRP power to something around 1-3 watts depending on band. If you drive into the "field test mode" on your handset, you can see the transmit power level.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
uilding for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advi sed me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "oth erwise the building will kill it".
state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarras sed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
"Field test mode" sounds very interesting but I doubt that my Motorola Razo r has that function. Lenny
Ask, and ye shall receive... (Push and ye shall transmit).
All the Romotola radios have a field test mode: There are about 10 different phones with the name RAZR, so you'll need to be more specific. Be careful as you can easily brick the phone if you punch the wrong buttons.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
uilding for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advi sed me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "oth erwise the building will kill it".
state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarras sed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
The phone is an old Razor with Cingular markings on it. A friend had this i n his drawer for years and wasn't using it anymore. He gave it to me to rep lace my Razor that had hit the pavement one too many times. I used the old ATT Sim card in the Cingular phone. On boot it comes up with Cingular logos but works fine on the ATT network. The model number, (I think this is what you need to identify the phone) is: V3(G8/9/18/19). I don't know what all those number mean, perhaps you do. There are several more numbers. I can po st them also if need be. Thanks, Lenny
building for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advised me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "otherwise the building will kill it".
state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarrassed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
Insufficeint data.
?-)
+2
?-)
the building for about 30 minutes before we started, when one of the nurses advised me to remove the battery from my cell phone because as she put it, "otherwise the building will kill it".
battery state of charge was in the toilet. I know it sounds crazy, and I'm embarrassed to even ask, was this just bullshit or is there anything to this? Lenny
I don't know how I feel about the damn thing irradiating that part of my body at frequencies considered to be just below microwave while continuously stumbling around aimlessly seeking a cell tower just because I'm unfortunate enough to be in a dead spot. Maybe the answer is to just leave the miserable thing off until you really need to use it. Hey people always seemed to be able to find Perry Mason when he was on the road. He was always taking calls on other peoples phones...Lenny
Hmmph, he kept his secretary (Della Street) informed of his whereabouts and the phone number there.
?-)
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