Homemade Cell Phone Signal Booster

Can you hear me now? Sometimes the best way to complete your call is to create your own homemade cell phone signal booster. There are other cell phone signal boosters on the market, but some of these are less effective than others. And let's not forget about the raw satisfaction that can be derived from making something with your own two hands... and then it's actually useful to boot!

Before we proceed any further, we cannot stress enough that any homemade solution is purely experimental and there are no guarantees that your cell phone reception will be improved in any way. Before resorting to a homemade cell phone signal booster, we suggest that you look into other avenues like commercially available signal boosters, different mobile phones, or other official solutions.

What you will read below are two methods for creating a homemade booster. Neither has been tested by LoveToKnow staff, so do take care if you choose to attempt what is described below.

Typically, there are several reasons why your cell phone reception may be poor, but most commonly it is because of the inhibiting features of walls and other structures that may block the incoming signal. It is also noteworthy than certain phones from certain manufacturers are known to have better reception than others. Do your research before you make any major purchase.

Jason O (Username Jdo300) of physicsforums.com discovered a rather interesting quirk with his cell phone. As with so many others, Jason was suffering from rather poor reception in his house. In an effort to actually be able to take and make calls, Jason decided to fashion a homemade cell phone signal booster.

His mobile phone came equipped with a small stubby antenna. What Jason decided to do was to remove this stub and replace it "with a large, homemade one." This homemade signal booster consisted of nothing more than a screw and a metal coat hanger. Although this is far from being any sort of official solution, Jason reports that "it works great despite its obvious cheapness."

To his knowledge, this will only work with cell phones that have external stubby antennas, so if you have something like a Motorola RAZR (which has an internal antenna), it might not work. That said, most cell phone usually have a rubber-covered opening near the back where you can attach an external antenna.

Obviously, you should proceed with caution with any experiments such as this. There is a possibility that you may void your warranty, harm your handset or otherwise cause irreversible damage.

In looking for the best cell phone signal booster that you can make right at home, we came across a fantastic video from the people at PopSci. The video tutorial -- which you can view on YouTube -- shows you how to construct a rather powerful signal booster using little more than an empty coffee can!

There are obviously other components involved, but the video does an excellent job of walking through the entire construction process. Near the end, Mike Haney mentions that this signal grabber is designed to nab the 1900MHz band, so it's probably most effective with providers like T-Mobile and Rogers Wireless which use this frequency. Check with your mobile operator to see which band/frequency they use.

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