CES 2015: Reach79's iPhone 6 Case Claims to Double Signal Strength and Improve Battery Life

[bloggerblog]

Even if we pretend that this thing somehow improves your phone's reception from a cell tower, how can it transmitted a stronger signals to the tower? For a phone to improve its connection, you must improve the reception and increase transmission.
One cannot produce more power without using more power.

 

[DevNull0]

I am no engineer, but gain is about signal-to-noise is it not? Perhaps this filters out noise in the relevant frequencies... In any case (pardon the pun), we'll see when somebody tests it properly.

No, no, and no.

A good amp won't add (much) noise to a signal. But beyond that, what does gain have to do with SNR?

What are you trying to say by filter out relevant frequencies? The iPhone will have RF filters to only admit the bands it needs. Any sort of pre-filter would simply prevent the iPhone from getting a signal. Noise is just any unwanted signal and a passive device couldn't possibly separate noise from signal any more than cotton ear plugs could block an airplane engine while admitting the voice of someone talking to you.

We don't need to see see someone test this properly. Either it is BS or they've reinvented physics.

 

[Daalseth]

So you're saying that you CAN increase signal strength passively, just not in this way, right? If you've got the right shape and size of antenna, you should be able to. At least I've always seen it work with my TV, radio, and wifi station.

I don't think most people want to mount their iPhone inside a parabolic dish

 

[kolax]

The LNB on my satellite dish antenna is no more "in contact" with the antenna than this device is with the iPhone.

Remember the old pringles can wifi antenna modifiers? They worked.

The LNB is fed a signal from the receiver (antenna). The dish aims the waves at the receiver.

The Pringles WiFi antenna is for directing the waves out (or in if you make it a receiver) in a 'line' so you can detect them better from further away. Same sort of way lasers can emit light in a piercing line.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Reminds me of this from back in the day:

Image

Came to say the same thing. Sold for a couple bucks and did nothing at all. They actually hurt signal strength by being another nearby metallic object your signal had to overcome.

 

[DudeDad]

It's delivered to your door on the back of a unicorn, and you get a magnet bracelet that improves your health.

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I can save battery, too, by making wifi calls (ahem, ATT).

 

[Naimfan]

You can NOT increase signal strength passively. You may be able to focus signal from a larger area to a smaller area but the shapes required are not present in this product.

Here's the tell: Nowhere on their web site do they talk about an average db increase of signal or S/N ratio.
Want further proof: look around in Amazon for any of the other snake-oil stick-on antenna boosters. Notice they almost all have 2 star reviews. Why? they don't work. They can't work.

I'll save you $50: put a $10 case on your phone. Line the inside of the case with a piece of aluminum foil that you've drawn some "T" shapes on.

Would you PLEASE stop confusing marketing with facts?

You might just make the marketers' heads explode. On second thought - kepp going! Perhaps we'd see a little less snake oil . . .

 

[2457282]

Reminds me of this from back in the day:

Image

I had that very phone and bought this exact antenna booster. I rememer that I did not think it did anything for me, but let's hope that with the technical advances, a mini modern miracle is possible. Living in big city I have less of an issue these days with signal strength, but if this works I am sure this will help many who suffer from SDD (signal deficit disorder).

 

[kaltsasa]

The LNB on my satellite dish antenna is no more "in contact" with the antenna than this device is with the iPhone.

Remember the old pringles can wifi antenna modifiers? They worked.

The issue is when you modify the antenna to passively increase gain you also increase directivity. As I said above, I don't doubt this does work in certain situations but given the volatility of position of your average cellphone in use I would not expect real world results to be consistent.

Those Pringles can wifi antennas worked because you had increased directivity with a narrow beam width, not unlike how your average sat dish works. When pointed at the signal source, great. Point it the other direction and you have the opposite affect. This is why most rural VHF/UHF TV antennas are designed to be both directional and rotatable. There was a time when many houses had a rotor attached to their TV antenna.

It is possible to build an omnidirectional antenna with gain, but it involves identical elements and phasing them together in an array. Non of which this device and it's sheet of gold appears to be doing. Cellular antennas are sort of unique beasts that are sort of magical miniature folded etched metal things that are resonant at multiple frequencies. Even if this company managed to eek out some gain at common device angles I struggle to believe they could manage it for multiple frequencies/bands.

Mind you there is no "truly" omnidirectional antenna, and most omnidirectional antennas are still designed with some gain such that the signal is decreased at a 90 degree angle (horizontal/vertical polarization).

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The LNB is fed a signal from the receiver (antenna). The dish aims the waves at the receiver.

The Pringles WiFi antenna is for directing the waves out (or in if you make it a receiver) in a 'line' so you can detect them better from further away. Same sort of way lasers can emit light in a piercing line.

Which made it extremely directional, and was great for an antenna in a static position. Yet undesirable for a cellphone in your hand. Now if you were in some sort of remote location and could utilize an external antenna (which most cellular devices don't accept these days) this would be a desirable trait.

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I just ordered one of these. It works, here are my test results:

Image

Actually in the correct direction that would probably work swimmingly.

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You could easily change the reception of rabbit ears by moving humans around a room without touching it.

Similarly, I can change the reception of my clock radio when the alarm goes off simply by holding my hand above it without contact. No hand = static. Hand = radio station. even when I do make contact with the device, it is with the plastic only.

So what you're saying isn't entirely accurate, but I still agree that his product is complete BS. Moving your hand away from the back of the phone will likely be better at improving reception.

This is because you have conductive material in your body. You can have a constructive or destructive effect on reception depending on the relative distances from the signal source and the receptive antenna (as in the case of your alarm clock or rabbit ears). However the proximity of the conductive material to the antenna can influence how efficient the transfer of power is to the receiver. Thus reception can be either improved or degraded, depending on the placement of one's extremities. In the right position at the right frequency your 2000 parts can become passive radiators. Also your body parts may be in tune with different frequencies. For example me standing at my kitchen sink causes great attenuation of signal reception on 640 AM on my kitchen radio yet my wife in the same position causes no noticeable degradation of signal reception.

 

[trevorlc]

So...anyone at CES have the wherewithal to put their phone in field test mode and pop it in the case rather than take their BS at face value? Let me guess, the show floor is a suboptimal location for their ideal user experience?

I do have strong doubts about the ability of this product to actually do anything beyond placebo improvements, trade show floors especially big ones are truly terrible RF environments.

I manage corporate events and trade shows for a living and wireless anything tends to be a bear. Its very common to be in a convention center/hotel for days setting up and have great cell coverage & data speeds but the first day of show when you fill that room with people it goes to crap until people start leaving. I haven't worked the main floor at CES in a few years but I know all the major US carriers used to deploy tons of extra equipment and crews to keep service decent. Some convention centers even have permanently installed cell sites and antenna systems in the halls because they are so difficult to cover with external sites.

 

[VulchR]

...
We don't need to see see someone test this properly. Either it is BS or they've reinvented physics.

As if nobody has ever reinvented physics before.

I wouldn't pay for this now, but I'd like to see it tested properly. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If it is BS, then I'd like to see it debunked. If not, then it is intriguing.

 

[truettray]

So many experts here on Macrumors.

 

[ctdonath]

The issue is when you modify the antenna to passively increase gain you also increase directivity.

Worth repeating.

That's fine if you're directing the antenna. The WiFi Pringles Can antenna works - and doesn't move or it fast loses any connection. Directional TV antennas work - and lose signal fast if you turn it slightly. Insofar as this overpriced regurgitated scam could conceivably work, you'll get improved signal so long as you don't turn; rotate less than 90 degrees in any direction (which most people do dozens of times per call) and there goes your signal.

 

[cwolin]

Maybe you can

You can NOT increase signal strength passively. You may be able to focus signal from a larger area to a smaller area but the shapes required are not present in this product.

Aerials are not not that simple. They are strange beasts. If you believe you cannot increase signal strength passively you need to explain how a Yagi aerial works, as used for most TV aerials. Only two of the elements are connected to anything. Before you say they are all connected, the support rod might as well be wood or plastic. Or indeed explain a satellite aerial with its disconnected parabolic dish.

 

[pierino84]

As I am an Ham (IZ0VXZ) and Engineer, I would love to see some normalized gain patterns of this device, for 900MHz GSM frequency to Band 7 LTE, instead of some marketing crap. Then we can discuss.

 

[GIZBUG]

Almost bought this, then read this thread..............

 

[pete463251]

Yes: total crap

I'm actually a former apple antenna engineer. This is total garbage. As a side experiment by the way, I made a crap "antenna extender" to make use of the iPhone external antenna, and I really had to jack up the size to get some gain of a factor of 2:

http://antenna-theory.com/iphone-range-extender.php

I'm also the author of antenna-theory.com.

This stuff, along with the pong "sar-reducing" cases, are all a load of consumer ripping-off crap. They should be held criminally liable

 

[arn]

I'm actually a former apple antenna engineer. This is total garbage. As a side experiment by the way, I made a crap "antenna extender" to make use of the iPhone external antenna, and I really had to jack up the size to get some gain of a factor of 2:

http://antenna-theory.com/iphone-range-extender.php

I'm also the author of antenna-theory.com.

This stuff, along with the pong "sar-reducing" cases, are all a load of consumer ripping-off crap. They should be held criminally liable

Thanks for your two cents. Any further opinions on their Pong Case? Do you think it doesn't work or it doesn't matter?

http://www.pongcase.com/technology.html

arn

 

[pete463251]

SAR is heavily (HEAVILY) dependent on how close the phone is to the body tissue. So when SAR is measured they have to put the phone right on this mannequin head filled with a "body-like" liquid, and then they measure the E-field, which then becomes your SAR number.

If you move the phone away by about 2mm, you get a huge SAR reduction. The pong case works because the case itself adds some gap to the actual measuring mannequin. Any case that has some front side buffer would do the same thing, pong has no technology that actually does anything. So, if you have an otter box case and measured the SAR, it would be lower than the iPhone by itself, even though that wasn't even their intent. Probalby lower than the pong case too, just because its thicker.

 

[Analog Kid]

Thank god Ham radio is still in existence... RF engineering is, essentially, black magic and Hams are the temple acolytes.

As a side note: take a look at how much garbage got posted before people with knowledge stepped in to correct it. It's a small point on something like this, but I think it's generally true that ignorance spreads faster than knowledge. Some of it is random sampling-- there are a small number of experts so it will take time for one to find the article and care enough to post-- and I think some of it is that it takes time to compose a knowledgable response but two keystrokes to type "BS".

The product is quite possibly complete bunk, but that doesn't make the statements of why it's bunk true.

To mostly reinforce what others have said:

You can affect received signal strength without physically touching the existing antenna through parasitic elements and reflectors. Radio waves are not like electrical current-- they radiate across open space and don't need a closed circuit. Metal and non-metal objects can affect the field through conductivity or their dielectric effects.

There are many dimensions of antenna performance including efficiency, directivity and tuning. It's unlikely that this is affecting the real part of efficiency, though it may be affecting the tuning. I'd hope Apple tuned their antenna well, but we've seen before that different people hold their phones differently and how you hold it can change the tuning.

Most likely, this is trying to do exactly what Arn's post shows: change the pattern of the antenna to add strength in specific directions. While some point out that this will help only when the increased gain is aimed at the tower, the flip side is that it won't hurt if the lost gain is in the direction of your head. The tradeoff will basically be that you have more power directed towards the tower or maybe something that will reflect it towards the tower, and less power making your brain warm.

And the argument that, if it worked, Apple would have done it is not entirely solid. While Apple puts a lot of effort into antenna engineering, they're constrained by cost and industrial design. If these elements require the stand off spacing provided by the case, Apple may have been unwilling to add the size or manufacturing cost. It may also be found that Apple tests the phone in one user-held configuration and these guys test it in another.

So I don't have a whole lot of faith that a few parasitic elements added to a case will change the world, but that doesn't mean that such things are physically impossible.

 

[Tech198]

Neat...

Cases to boost cellular...

This is the kind of "out with the old, in with the new" type of thing.

First we got rid of the stubby antennas mobile back and white dumb phones because they looked ugly, and could barley do Youtube.

Now, we come along a bit later with basically the same concept, but instead of adding the antenna outside the phone like before, we add it to the case instead..

Isn't this basically the same thing ? Plus now, u are also restricted with what case u can use too if u want to double the signal

 

[DevNull0]

As if nobody has ever reinvented physics before.

That's why I worded it that way…

And Snake oil has been reinvented a lot more times that physics.

If you have to decide if something is a scam or overthrows scientific principles, the safe bet is it's a scam.

Do you need to see tests of every perpetual motion machine before you believe they're fake. That next one may be the one that rewrites physics after all.

 

[kingtj]

Huh?

The LNB on your satellite dish is designed to receive the signal that's FOCUSED on it. A big round dish underneath it is capable of reflecting the incoming signals towards it. That's a completely different scenario than trying to "boost the signal strength" by slapping some odd shaped flat metal pieces on the back of a phone, by snapping a case onto it.

I'll yield to the experts here when it comes to passive signal radiation and so on. But none of that means I can see any possible real-world scenario where you can get a better cellular signal with a metal sticker you place on the back of a phone, or with the same kind of metal elements embedded in a case.

The LNB on my satellite dish antenna is no more "in contact" with the antenna than this device is with the iPhone.

Remember the old pringles can wifi antenna modifiers? They worked.

That said, yes this product is complete BS, but please don't use mistaken handwaving to try and "prove" it. You'll just confuse the issue and make people think there is some merit to this product.

How about this argument. Apple spent how many billions of dollars on R&D for the iPhone 6 and has been through how many revisions and if this device worked apple didn't build something similar in?

 

[NeedMoreVideo]

Interesting, it seems pong has the same parent company as Reach79. Looks like same tech.

This is likely exactly what this could do if it were designed correctly. Now picture that the cell tower is to the "right" of the people, now only the person without the case will get any signal.

Now the cell tower is on the "left", and the person with the case will see "better" signal then the person without it.

Now you are in a car driving and can't just turn your head to maximize signal.

Seems like a bad idea.

That being said, if it were correctly designed it would need to be curved and this isn't...

 

[ptb42]

But, after installing the stickers, my cell phones never dropped a call again. Compared to never being able to have a conversation prior to installing the stickers.

There's a common saying among engineers: "data is not the plural of anecdote". Or if you prefer, it's a logical fallacy known as a "Post hoc ergo propter hoc".

Without measuring the actual signal strength with something having more resolution than 4 or 5 bars, and doing so with different orientations, in a chamber that eliminates outside signals and attenuates reflections, it will still be anecdotal evidence.

Transmitter emissions are not magnified by simply providing a better antenna.

Actually, a better antenna can result in a gain (either transmitted or received). But, the gain is at the expense of something else -- like the opposite direction. You can't create more power without, ummmm, adding more power.

But, as other people with more experience in antenna design have already posted, it is extremely unlikely that someone has crammed a "better" antenna into the back of a cell phone case.