My attention was recently drawn to a product called the 'Power Strip Antenna Booster' (though I believe these devices first came to fame in the USA in about 2001). It was being offered for only 1 pence by a mobile retailer (I won't embarrass them by naming First Phone Shop, oops...) if bought in conjunction with other cellular products worth more than GBP12.

The claims being made for this amazing device are quite impressive, "It dramatically reduces static and increases reception by up to 50%", and "It's like having a FIVE foot antenna on your phone". But what I particularly enjoyed were the descriptions of how the device functioned...

"It is a passive device designed to capture the stray radiation inside the body of the phone and re-direct the signal to improve the phone's performance."

"The Signal Booster captures stray static electricity around your phone and focuses it back to the signal, dramatically improving reception."

"It creates a megnetic [sic] field around the handset and draws in more signal also giving better clarity."

To most people these explanations might seem perfectly plausible. As someone who has handled radio for many years, its utter bunkum. 'Focusing stray static electricity back into the signal' makes about as much sense as 'Gathering stray exhaust fumes and channelling them back into the steering wheel'. Surely the fact that the device can be stuck anywhere on the phone, particularly inside the battery compartment, must at least have raised doubts in some people's minds. How can signals get out better if they are trapped behind the battery?

There are devices which can 'focus radio signals, increasing reception quality'. These magical devices are known as aerials (or antennas to our North American cousins). However, there is already an antenna inside every cellular phone, otherwise it wouldn't receive any signal at all!

There are a number of devices around which genuinely try to improve upon the performance of these in-built antennas, however the resulting product looks remarkably like... an aerial. A 'patch' that focuses stray radiation, what will they think of next?

Incidentally, having said all this, I do have a supply of Radio Atomising Crystals. Sprinkling these crystals around your phone, particularly under the key-pad and in that hole where the SIM-card fits has the effect of absorbing nearby interference channels, dispersing weak signals and leaving stronger signals to be more easily filtered by the phone's in-built diplexing separator. These crystals are guaranteed to deliver a massive increase in my wealth and are available for only GBP19.99 for a 5 gram sachet from all bad retailers and some rather gullible good ones who got taken in…

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