Three Solutions to Improve Cell Phone Signal: Do They Work?

If you have a terrible cellular reception, it’s natural that you’re looking for ways to improve it. Google ‘how to make a cell phone signal stronger’ and the search engine will come up with three suggestions: sticker boosters, antennas, and repeaters. Some of these cost only 10 bucks while others are tens of times more expensive. But the main question is: do any of these products work? Below, we go over the most popular signal amplifying solutions that can improve cell phone signal and conclude whether they’re worth it.

Cell Phone Sticker

We’ll start with the cheapest product, a sticker. It looks like a plastic-ish rectangular with a metal lining. According to manufacturers, this sticker helps to keep radiation inside a phone thus improving its ability to draw radiofrequency signals. You need to place it on the back of a phone’s battery.

If you use an iPhone or device with a non-removable battery, a sticker

will be useless. But how useful is it to begin with? Well, your phone receives radio waves with its antenna, so an effective attachable booster should interact with this part somehow.

But a sticker ‘interacts’ with a battery instead. So the very concept of a signal booster sticker is unviable.

Sticker pros:

• Cheap to buy

Sticker cons:

• waste of money.

Cell Phone Antenna

Remember old brick phones with telescopic antennas? Back in the day, cellular towers were few and far between so every phone had to be equipped with a huge antenna to receive anything.

Today, cell towers are not sparse anymore so antennas got much smaller. But if reception is somewhat poor, wouldn’t it be great to actually have a large antenna? It would but, unfortunately, the design of modern phones doesn’t let us get to the antenna securely tucked inside.

These removable antennas, which are supposed to improve cellular reception, are connected to the phone but they are not connected to its antenna directly. To be fair, you can boost mobile signals to some extent but you’ll have to sacrifice a phone’s functionality and convenience.

You can’t deny that an antenna plugged into an audio jack or charging port via a cable looks nasty and cumbersome.

Antenna Signal Booster Pros:

• relatively inexpensive;
• you can use it everywhere.

Antenna Signal Booster Cons:

• weak signal amplification;
• occupies a charging slot or stereo jack socket;
• inconvenient to use.

Cell Phone Signal Booster

Whereas the previous solutions try (with varying success) to boost a phone’s capability of capturing mobile signals, a repeater improves cell phone signal strength in itself. This device (also known as a booster) has three parts: an external antenna, an internal antenna, and an amplifier.

One of the antennas is attached to the roof or balcony to draw cellular signals from the outside, the other antenna broadcasts signals inside the rooms, and an amplifier makes reception several times stronger.

You don’t have to break the integrity of your phone or connect anything to get a better signal. Unlike gimmicks for individual devices, a simple repeater is able to serve several phones at the same time.

Cell Phone Signal Boosters Pros:

• easy to use;
• handle several simultaneous connections;
• up to 32x amplification;
• they really work!

Cell Phone Signal Booster cons:

• carrier-specific boosters are compatible only with selected networks;
• these devices have a limited coverage area.

Cell phone signal boosters come in various forms and shapes. There are models for small residential real estate, commercial and industrial buildings, public spaces, and even vehicles. Some of these devices cater to subscribers of specific network carriers (i.e. they are compatible with a single radiofrequency) while others support a wide range of bands and frequencies. There are even smart repeaters that, in addition to amplification, clear signals from noise and distortion.

If you’re looking for a potent and hassle-free solution to improve the cell phone signal strength, don’t waste your time (and money) on stickers and antennas. They have little to no effect. A solution that is worth your consideration is cell phone signal boosters. They are a breeze to use and, most importantly, they walk the talk.