Does your cell phone interrupt your radio? What does it mean?

Wow, it's been nearly 20 years since I've posted here last, but read y'all everyday.

I really want to know something....

Now I have a question for you curious and/or intellectuals;

I'm sure most have heard your cell phone make noise on a radio when they're close to each other. If so, has anyone tried to analyze the different blips and noises it makes? I've been unable to find out what the difference is between noises and what it can do to us, physically or private rights.

I see many of my clients putting their phone on their lap while they get tattooed and tell them it isn't good for them to keep their phone there, and they're like Why? My music is hard wired and the 5g still will cut in even within 2ft. with no antenna and playing with an mp3 player.

However, the noise is heard doing something even when the cell is off. What's that all about? What are they doing? Collecting?

I mostly get the radiation thing - I don't carry my phone in my pocket, but what is my phone doing to make that happen when I'm not using it or is off?

a reply to: godservant

Probably down to signal interference of some sort.

Used to do the same thing with speakers if memory serves.

More with the older 3G and previous iterations of mobile phones, not seen/heard it happen with the newer 4G/5G devices.

You should realize, as to the "radiation" aspect, these devices operate using a form of nonionizing radiation which means its not powerful enough to damage our cells.

a reply to: godservant

I have no idea why exactly phone do that, but my 4G phone still occasionally interrupts my speakers with the familiar sound. Not as much as 3G though...

I have seen less popular articles that say the radiation from phones does harm our cells.

Welcome back after 20 years
Guess you are one of the few that still remembers the pw after all this time ! lol

a reply to: godservant

I remember maybe 20 years ago now how if you had a phone near a speaker of any kind you'd get maybe 5-6 short bursts of static that sounded a little bit like a beeping noise every 15-20 minutes, which was when the phones would renew their connection to the local base station.

I haven't noticed it so much with the new generation of phones, but certainly did it with 2G handsets.

The Tesco store in Frodsham has the interference going over the tannoy. I mentioned it to one of the staff that it was a mobile near either the microphone or speaker and she says yes, but they can't find the problem.....

"member of staff to the check... dip dip dip.. outs please'

a reply to: AaarghZombies

I remember 20 years ago if you were by a playing radio, the radio would been twice and a few seconds later the phone would receive a text.

a reply to: godservant

I don't know much about it, but cell phones are always contacting the nearby cells to choose the best connection, so that's probably the main reason for the frequent interferences.

But that's one thing I haven't heard in a long time, and I usually have the company's cell phone (I don't own one) close to the computer speakers without any problem, and the same happens in another room, where there are usually four cell phones relatively close to a computer speaker.

PS: welcome back to the posting side of ATS.

a reply to: godservant

Cheap speakers aren't properly shielded from interference is my understanding.

Back when I was working at a desk I could always tell when my cell phone was going to ring because the speakers would start to crackle on my desk.

Not sure what aspect of the signal is causing it, but it appears to not exclusively happen before calls rather any time it tries to access the cellular network.

a reply to: Ksihkehe

The LG soundbar i have connected to my PC via digital audio connector freaks out every time i do a Windows update in the same to similar manner earlier iterations of mobile phones used to interfere with speakers.

originally posted by: KindraLabelle2
a reply to: godservant
Welcome back after 20 years

Guess you are one of the few that still remembers the pw after all this time ! lol

Thank you a lot. Been here reading all this time, but post only when it's important or something I'm led to do.

originally posted by: godservant
However, the noise is heard doing something even when the cell is off. What's that all about? What are they doing? Collecting?

I've seen very few people actually turn their cell phones off. They might think it's off when the screen goes blank and it's sitting there silent not making or receiving any calls, but it's still on at that point, even if it doesn't look like it.

One thing you could try to see if it has any effect is putting the phone in "airplane mode", then it's still on but it's not supposed to be sending any signals out (that might interfere with the aircraft communications or GPS etc). Does the interference stop when it's in airplane mode?

To actually turn the phone off, with a lot of phones, you push and hold some kind of power button for a long time, then it will finally power down. Then you can try that "really off" phone next to speakers to see if it makes any interference, does it?

Then some phones even turned completely off like that might still be running something in the background, and you'd have to remove the battery to completely disable it, but some phones don't have removable batteries so that may be difficult to impossible in some cases. If your phone has a removable battery, can you try removing the battery to see if that stops the interference?

Once the phone is "really off", when you turn it back on again you will see it go through some kind of boot process to restart it. I rarely see this anymore since the only time it goes through the boot is after upgrading the software, and that often happens automatically when I'm not using the phone.

originally posted by: ZeussusZ
a reply to: AaarghZombies

I remember 20 years ago if you were by a playing radio, the radio would been twice and a few seconds later the phone would receive a text.

Calls, too, if I recall correctly. I guess it's a 1990s thing that these kids think is weird but was normal back then.

I used to get this with an old Nokia, but not at all with my current handset. I don't remember blackberry doing it.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

One thing the cell phone makers changed was the transmission power of the phones, to reduce the possibilities of bad side effects from the radiation.

a reply to: godservant

To understand what is happening you have to first understand how the cell phone (and the radio) works.

A cell phone is never really "off." It has three modes of operation: full power, as in, you're actively using it for a call or for data retrieval; standby mode, as in, the screen is off and it's not making any noises, but it is still waiting for something to happen; sleep mode, as in, it is for all practical purposes off, but the microprocessor is still running internally in a very low-power state.

The only difference between active and standby mode is the screen is off.

The phone is constantly monitoring incoming signals from cell towers. That's how you receive notifications. They may not appear until you enter active mode, but they are still received in standby mode. The phone is also constantly sending pings to nearby cell towers to keep up with its physical location. So the phone being "off" (as in, not being used and the screen blank) is not really off.

All of those signals consist of a carrier wave that is modulated by a signal waveform. The carrier wave is analog, but the signal is digital... either on or off. The frequency of the carrier wave is adjusted ever so slightly between a signal of on or off, at a very fast rate. The higher the frequency of the carrier wave, the faster that signal wave can change. 3G used a higher frequency than 2G, and 4G uses a higher frequency than 3G. 5G is a bit different... it uses the exact same frequency as 4G unless the phone is close to a cell tower; then it can increase the frequency to one of two higher levels depending on how close it is. Unless one is close to a cell tower, they are actually receiving 4G, even though the phone may report it as 5G.

Any time you modulate an analog carrier wave with a digital signal, you get harmonics. That's just physics; no possible way to get rid of harmonics without making the signal different. The exact harmonics created depends on the data being transmitted... a sequence of '11001011' will generate different harmonics than '00111001.' The harmonics are not very strong. They are generally just slight noise in the EM spectrum. But they do exist.

Now consider an FM radio. It is designed to receive carrier waves of a range of frequencies. These carrier waves also adjust their frequency slightly to correlate with the analog wave that the radio station is sending. Their signal is analog, though, so they do not create the same type of harmonics as a cell phone. Since they are designed to receive analog carrier waves modulated by analog signal waves, they handle interference in a way that works with the waves they expect to receive.

The noises you hear are the result of harmonics created by the cell phone and falsely interpreted by the radio as being on the frequency the radio is tuned to.

Newer cell phones using higher generation signals (higher frequency signals) will typically not interfere as much with the FM radio band as lower generation phones. That's because the frequencies are higher in the newer phones and farther away from the FM radio band. Close proximity, however, can make it easier for a radio to pick up those harmonics, as power decreases according to the inverse square law as one moves farther from the signal source. So a late-model 5G phone will not interfere as much as a 3G phone, but it can still do so if it is close enough to the radio antenna. The actual signal being transmitted matters as well.

There is nothing inherently dangerous about these radio waves. It is true that gamma waves of sufficient power are dangerous, but present technology cannot produce modulated gamma waves at that power level. Cell phones actually produce very tiny amounts of energy, as they adjust their power levels based on the strength of the cell signal. They only produce the minimum power needed to ensure contact with the cell tower.

Your worries are unfounded. The things you mention are just byproducts of how physics forces things to work, and are not indicators of anything nefarious or inherently dangerous.

TheRedneck