Questions tagged [mobile-phones]
A device that can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area.
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Do Huawei phones delete videos/photos of anti-Covid-restrictions protests?
A highly retweeted tweet claims:
Chinese social media users report Huawei phones automatically deleting^* videos of the protests that took place in China, without notifying the owners.
* Not sure if ...
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Does keeping phone in the front pocket cause male infertility?
According to this article supposedly keeping your smartphone in the front pocket can cause infertility in men.
According to Lilly Friedman, MD, this is actually the worst place to
store your cell ...
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Do sparks from a cigarette lighter fix dead zones on touch screen?
There are many forums posts and videos on the "lighter trick" which fixes touch screens dead zones (at least temporarily) such as The YouTube video Nokia Lumia Touchscreen Dead Zone Fix With ...
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Do mobile phones attract lightning strikes if they are not switched off?
I was out on a field trip with another family when there was a thunderstorm. According to the people in this family, I have to switch off my mobile phone during the thunderstorm, because the "waves" ...
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Do cell-phone levels of radiofrequency radiation cause oxidative stress to rats' brains?
I've been given a link to this 2019 study Effect of 900-, 1800-, and 2100-MHz radiofrequency radiation on DNA and oxidative stress in brain as evidence for some 5G nonsense conspiracy theory.
Even if ...
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Is the loss of (15-21) million mobile users in China in part or partly linked to cover up of COVID-19 numbers? [closed]
OP Update: Directionality of skepticism
Is the loss of (15-21) million mobile users in China in part or partly linked to cover up of COVID-19 numbers?
I am not saying all these are COVID deaths. Maybe ...
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How can a call use cellular service when cellular service is off in Airplane Mode? [closed]
According to Verizon (a large company generally positioned to be a trusted source of knowledge for how cellular phones and cellular networks work):
When using Wi-Fi Calling, 911 calls will always ...
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Does 5G pose health risks?
Among others, the website RadiationHealthRisks claims:
Second, according to experts, because of the shorter length of
millimeter waves (MMV) required by 5G to support the bandwidth, these
shorter ...
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Have people died by being shocked through the headphone cord of their cell phone?
The headline of an article in Vice magazine claims that "A 16-Year-Old Has Died After Being Electrocuted by His Headphones"
Last week, a teenager was electrocuted to death while listening ...
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Was iOS twice as memory-efficient as Android?
John Brownlee wrote, in 2014, on Cult of Mac:
iOS is twice as memory-efficient as Android
[...]
As it turns out, an iPhone 6 with 1GB of RAM runs much faster than a similarly specced Android ...
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Does the Wowfixit screen protector harden phone screens?
The WOWFIXIT web-page offers a product where you wipe a liquid over your phone screen and polish it.
They claim the result will make your protect your phone screen from scratches:
One of the many ...
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Is it safe for a child to sleep near a baby monitor?
I have always assumed baby monitors and all wireless technology to be completely safe and have been informed by a 'friend' that I have been endangering my children by using them.
We used an RF ...
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Does fully discharging a Lithium-based battery reduce its lifespan?
According to Battery University, the less you allow a Lithium-based battery to discharge before charging it again, the less wear it will undergo and therefore the longer lifespan it will have. (e.g. ...
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Could a tattoo encode a wave form to reproduce significant sound sample? [closed]
I just ran into https://skinmotion.com/ which sells "Soundwave Tattoos".
My gut says tattoos cannot have high enough resolution to actually encode 15s of audio - even at speech quality.
Reading all ...
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Do elevators increase radiation from cell phone use?
Literally every elevator I’ve been in during my stay in Israel has a sign which says that cell phone use is prohibited - not because of disturbing other passengers, or because the metal car blocks the ...
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Do wifi and cellphones increase the risk of miscarriage?
Over the past few days, a whole bunch of news articles have claimed that WiFi and cellphone signals increase a pregnant woman's miscarriage risk. Some examples:
"WiFi and mobile phones could increase ...
user43226
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Did a woman go blind after playing a mobile game?
The article Chinese woman blinded in one eye after playing game likened to electronic heroin stats:
The 21-year-old woman suddenly lost sight in her right eye after playing the game for the whole day ...
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Does charging a phone use the same power as a washing machine? [closed]
I heard that charging a phone is the same as running a washing machine in terms of electricity but from what I understand a typical phone charger uses ~5W whereas a washing machine is near ~500W.
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Do cellphones damage male fertility? [duplicate]
According to this article wearing cellphones in the front pocket can cause men lose their fertility.
Men using a cellular phone for more than one hour a day double the
risk of their sperm count ...
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Do 48% of women in the Arab world not own a mobile phone?
In this 2016 Emirate News article, Kailash Satyarthi is quoted as saying:
Today, women are rising, but this is happening only where they have access to education. Young girls in the MENA region are ...
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Are cell phones harmful to male fertility if kept in trousers pocket? [duplicate]
Several studies or press articles suggest that keeping a cell phone in a male's trousers pocket (and cell phone usage in general) may harm that men's fertility (increase sperm issues):
http://www....
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Are people more careless with their mobile phones when an upgrade is due?
Gizmodo reports from an article in the Journal of Marketing Research that
People Trash Their Phones When an Upgrade is Close
The report describes the study further, noting that thee effect is ...
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Do cell phones relay their locations to emergency services?
I just saw this YouTube video warning about the inaccuracy of cell-phones in relating their location to 9-11 dispatchers:
while it's true that modern cellphones can relay locations back to your 911 ...
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Are low SAR phones better for health than high SAR phones? [duplicate]
Each device will have a different SAR value and follow this side
https://www.rfsafe.com/samsung-cell-phones-rated-lowest-radiation-cell-phones/
they have say low SAR phone better than high SAR phone
...
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Does radiation from sleeping next to your smartphone affect your brain patterns negatively?
Vivian Giang writes in Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain:
In fact, as part of Swart’s Neuroscience For Leadership class at MIT in April, she discussed the serious health ...
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Can cell phones be remotely converted into listening devices?
This is one of the statements of Richard Stallman in his homepage as an explanation of why he doesn't own a cell phone:
Cell phones are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the
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Was text messaging originally developed for deaf people?
I just heard this claim in this TED talk by Elise Roy (at about the 5:24 mark in the transcript):
Text messaging: that was originally designed for people who are Deaf.
Is it true?
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Is the NSA installing surveillance codes in iPhones by calling Sprint customers?
I've got a iPhone 6s on the EE network. Today I got a SMS from +44 865 6696 which had the content "Message not found".
If I put the number into a t9 predictive text emulator, it spells &...
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Is it possible to bake a cake with a phone inside, leaving the phone intact?
Recently the following picture has been circulating on some websites on the internet:
Imagine this scenario. You drop your phone in the cake batter. The cake bakes. The cake comes out looking great, ...
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Can mobile phone cell towers be spoofed in ways that allow interception of calls?
There are multiple forms of evidence that people can spoof cell towers and monitor cells. This Forbes article reports a proof of concept that works for 2G technology. This article from The Register ...
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Can StoreDot batteries be charged in two minutes?
CNET writes:
StoreDot's system, which you can see in action in the video [at the link], uses a different chemical makeup to traditional batteries. We saw a modified Samsung Galaxy S5 go from 15 ...
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Can ionizing radiation be seen in videos taken on a mobile phone?
This article1, among other things, claims that mobile phones can be used to detect radiation:
... the presence of scintillating pixels – white dots that flashed on and off briefly in the mobile ...
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Are the methods and conclusions of the study "Clear connection between wireless devices and cancer, experts say" sound?
The article, no longer linked at Science Daily, by is summarized:
A metabolic imbalance caused by radiation from your wireless devices could be the link to a number of health risks, such as various ...
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Does turning off cellular data when connected to WiFi extend a phone's battery life?
The claim has been repeatedly made on the internet (example: 1, 2, 3* )that when a mobile phone is connected to WiFi, disabling cellular data can extend battery life, as it stops the phone from ...
user20902
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Do Samsung phone batteries contain secret chips and antennae for stealing data?
This YouTube video is one of several showing that, if you open a Samsung mobile phone battery, it contains a "secret chip" and antenna, and suggests it can be used for transmitting your secret data to ...
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Could the Nokia 1100 be hacked to sniff SMS messages intended for third parties?
TL; DR; version: Is it possible that hackers were somehow able to "reprogram" a specific Nokia 1100 phone to make it receive SMS messages sent to another person's phone number?
A couple of years ago, ...
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Do reverse phone lookup services work?
This morning I received a phone call from an unknown caller. I punched the number in Google to see if any hits came up. Unfortunately all I got was the long list of services that show up promising to ...
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Does white background increase battery consumption of a smartphone? [duplicate]
Here is a page with tips on how to decrease power consumption of a smartphone (in Russian). One of the tips is to use black background for Google search.
I wonder whether it actually decreases ...
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Is Tetris by Electronic Arts the best selling video game on mobile?
According to Wikipedia, Tetris by Electronic Arts is the best selling video game ever made.
With 100 million downloads, it sold 17.46 million copies more than the next best selling game, Wii Sports ...
user25258
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Does mandatory registration of SIM cards reduce terrorism?
Like a number of other countries, Pakistan is no longer allowing the usage of unregistered SIM cards for mobile telephony:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9718441/Pakistan-...
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Do smartphones and computers cause skin to age via "tech neck"?
I was watching a health program on TV last night that was looking at skin aging, and they flashed up a panel showing various causes of skin aging. Along with the usual culprits of sunlight, smoking ...
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Is there any legitimate reason as to why airplane mode should be used? [duplicate]
On many devices such as smartphones there is an option for "airplane mode". When enabled all wireless forms of communication are turned off. The idea is this is somehow safer to the airplane, but is ...
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Does extremely low frequency radiation from mobile phones and tablets have adverse health effects?
Is ELF (extremely low frequency) radiation emitted by the electrical appliances' battery's current considered to have adverse health effects, or
is this radiation too low to be considered?
I'd like ...
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Are the top ten flashlight apps maliciously stealing data and sending it to China, India, and Russia? [closed]
There's an interesting report from a company called SnoopWall that is detailed in this YouTube video from a Special Report with Bret Baier with Fox News. In the report "Cybersecurity Expert" ...
user11643
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iOS app listening to my calls, or giant coincidence? [closed]
I was speaking to my insurance agent yesterday afternoon taking care of some life insurance changes, and my agent congratulated me on my recent wedding (July) and inquired about my upcoming honeymoon ...
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Are smartphones, keyboards, and tablets more contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus than a public toilet seat?
Source: How clean is your iPad? – a “Which?” hygiene investigation
We use them every day while eating lunch or a snack, but new Which? research has revealed tablets, smartphones and keyboards may ...
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Is the Craigslist rant saying people stay in restaurants on average a hour longer a hoax?
According to a craigslist post supposedly created by an anonymous NYC restaurant, customers take almost twice the time today to eat than 2004 because of mobile phones, food photos and fussiness.
I got ...
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Is using a phone while driving more dangerous than driving while drunk?
There have been numerous studies that show how using a phone while driving is more distracting than other non-driving tasks and even worse than driving while intoxicated.
Here was a study done in the ...
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Are there signification health risks with long term use of headphones on a cellphone?
Does using headphones / earphones plugged into a cellphone for taking calls / listening to music pose a significant health risk in the long run in terms of radiation exposure?
Also it depends what ...
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Are the location of brain-tumours linked to which ear you use a cell-phone with?
In the meta-analysis Cell phones and brain tumors: a review including the long-term epidemiologic data, they find that:
The results indicate that using a cell phone for > or = 10 years ...
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