Using external mobile phone antenna when hiking

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Using external mobile phone antenna when hiking

Postby onward » Mon 14 Nov, 2016 5:30 pm

Due to an aging parent who I need to contact regularly, I have been wondering about the possibility of adding an external antenna to a mobile phone to extend its range. Has anyone tried such and approach?
Martin
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Re: Using external mobile phone antenna when hiking

Postby Gadgetgeek » Mon 14 Nov, 2016 8:04 pm

It really depends on the phone. Some will take an antenna and booster, but its not many, and for some reason.... Telstra really don't like people knowing its possible. Its possible to get phones that can service an external antenna, but it takes some real digging. In a lot of places though, its a line-of-sight problem, so an antenna might not be enough, and boosters are power hogs, in general we are talking truck mounted stuff. an option is to look for dual sim phones, and just throw a bit of pay-as-you-go on the second card, but its not a perfect system. I used a Moto g 3rd gen on one trip, and I was unable to get signal in places that some other phones (galaxy s6, and iphone 6) were able to grab. But it was nice when it worked as where I was there were a few places where one valley had telstra, and one had optus.
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