The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
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Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#2If you stick it in a pint glass it makes the speakerphone a lot louder as well.
I can foresee some funny looks from strangers however, if you were to sit there in a bar on your own shouting at your phone in the bottom of a glass. Maybe that kind of thing is normal in california, I have no idea.
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#3[deleted]
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#4I wonder, is the glass just holding the phone at the right angle for the polarity of the phone's antenna and the available signal to match up? If so, this trick wouldn't likely work places other than that restaurant.
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#5I'm going to risk sounding like a dunce here, but IIRC some frequencies are more prone to bouncing off glass - for example in metropolitan cities with lots of high-rise buildings. While this is a detriment in the city, it could also be acting as a "satellite dish" making it easier to collect stay signals while also directing most of the transmission upward. Considering the antenna is supposed to be at the bottom of the phone the effect should be more pronounced as more of the glass can be used to direct the signal.
Am I crazy?
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#6Not really weird. There's a boundary there between the air in the glass and the glass itself. So you've got a dielectric boundary and you'll get some reflection going on inside the glass. Lots and lots of things reflect radio waves to a certain extent. I'd guess that's what's happening here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-line-of-sight_propagation#R...
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#7Could there be a metal component to the glass?
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#8If you don't have a glass nearby, this also works when putting your 3GS (and probably other phones as well) at the same angle inside an upside-down clear plastic CD spindle cover. Went from 2 to 4 bars. Took the phone out, dropped down to 2.
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#9just tested it in our office in germany with o2 as carrier, went vom 1 bar to three bars in about 20 seconds inside the glass... amazing.
Re: The weirdest (but working) iPhone 4 reception trick I have ever heard
#10I'm going to risk sounding like a dunce here, but IIRC some frequencies are more prone to bouncing off glass - for example in metropolitan cities with lots of high-rise buildings. While this is a detriment in the city, it could also be acting as a "satellite dish" making it easier to collect stay signals while also directing most of the transmission upward. Considering the antenna is supposed to be at the bottom of t…
Mobile devices tend to operate in the 700 to 900 MHz range which translates to a wavelengths of several inches, so it's quite possible the geometry of the drinking glass is providing a bit of focus to the signal.