Phony Antenna on Motorola Flip Phone?
Robert Sinclair
Lawrence Rachman wrote:
> I've been told recently that the retractable antenna on my Motorola
> MicroTac flip phone is a placebo; that it has no electrical function
> at all. A bit of emperical research indicated the signal strength
> meter never seems to change when the antenna is collapsed or
> extended.
> Maybe its just a piece of plastic, to pacify the unwashed masses.
I've been around as few times on this matter. Some Motorola reps claim
the retractable antenna is exactly that, a placebo (during market
trials it's claimed that phones without the antenna were thought to
have lower performance). Other say the antenna has a fine letal wire
in the center and offers slightly better performance when extended. I
have noted a 10% increase in signal strenth with the "antenna"
extended.
Rob Bristow
Lawrence Rachman wrote:
> I've been told recently that the retractable antenna on my Motorola
> MicroTac flip phone is a placebo; that it has no electrical function
> Does anyone reading this know for sure?
The small helix is a fully functional antenna in its own right, but
it's view of the base station is vulnerable to being obscured by the
user's head.
The retractable part of the antenna acts as a parasitic element - it
is not directly connected to the helix, but is arranged to be near
enough to couple signals to and from it. Therefore, when extended it
will tend to get signals away from the user's head which should
improve performance slightly. The change in gain between retracted and
extended is probably quite small if you don't include the effect of
the user's head.
Rob Bristow
Mike Oniffrey
Can't say for sure on the Motorola MicroTac, but the on my
garden-variety Motorola 550, my empirical tests showed the meter to
consistently read about one unit of difference whenever its plastic
(and seemingly useless) antenna was raised and lowered.
I too was suspicious ...
Regards,
Mike Oniffrey
Chapel Hill, North Carolina USA
on...@ga.unc.edu
(919) WAlnut 9-3929
Chris Griem
I manufactured motorola's phones for a short time, and the antennae
are fake.
Motorola found that the antenna needed to be effective would be too
heavy for anything smaller than their "brick" phone, and the customers
either refused to buy a phone without one, or complained of bad
reception.
Motorola's answer is to install a piece of plastic tubing, going
through a coil that actually is the working antenna. The strange part
is that benchmark tests show a slight increase in signal (strength or
quality, I can't recall which) when the antenna is in the "collapsed"
position.
Chris