Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by 24gttghh | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

24gttghh·

Solution: Faraday cage. They can't make radio waves break the laws of physics! (that I know of...)

View on HN

Better make sure it's off before you stick it in there, or it will be dead when you take it back out.

Why would a Faraday cage kill a phone? It's not EMP.

Some (older) phones will burn a lot of power searching for a cell signal when there is none.

Still wouldn't do nothing except waste battery power.

I had all kinds of older phones, and in older times 20-25 years ago there were tons of places with zero signal (villages, islands, places out of the city, national parks, and so on) and the phones survived just fine.

That's as zero as in a faraday cage, as far as the phone is concerned -- no tower to talk to at all, 0 bars for hours or days on end.

I took "dead" to mean a dead battery.

A, probably. Sounded like the parent meant something more ominous, as that's no biggie to warn about, you recharge and are as good as new.

Yes, I meant a dead battery. The "solution" I was replying to was suggesting keeping your phone in a Faraday cage to thwart government surveillance, presumably a small portable cage that you would take with you wherever you go. If you leave your phone running in there, there's a pretty good chance that the battery will be dead when you take it out to use it, which defeats the entire purpose of carrying a phone in the first place.

I see the same thing in some apps that use GPS/location. If it can't get your location because you're underground battery use increases as it keeps trying and trying.

If it can't send the data in that moment, the phone can cache it and send it later.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com