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remember when cell phones were the hot new thing and a big clunky phone with an

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antenna that you had to pull out was the epitome of cool

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you don't ah crap i'm getting really old aren't i

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well anywho cell phones quickly started to

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shrink in the late 1990s but many models

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still had visible antennas of some sort

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until the smartphone era came along getting us all used to sleek rectangular

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devices without anything poking out at an odd angle that is until you have to

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bust out a dongle but how exactly does a phone pick up a

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signal without a visible antenna i mean as a 90s kid my knee-jerk response for a

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long time to a reception issue whether it was on the phone the tv or the radio

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was to pull the antenna out and start you know wiggling it around until the

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problem went away so why don't we even have the option to

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do that anymore one explanation you'll often hear has to

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do with the frequencies used by modern cell phones you see an antenna typically

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needs to be about one half to one quarter of the wavelength of the signal

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that it's receiving in order to function properly and you can see this for

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yourself if you've ever noticed a cb radio antenna attached to a car

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because cb radios operate on a frequency where the wavelength is around 11 meters

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the antennas can be comically long fortunately the wavelengths of typical

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cellular frequencies are much shorter so depending on what kind of network you're

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connected to your phone needs an antenna that's somewhere in the neighborhood of

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around five to seven inches but then hold on a minute those older

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phones also used frequencies in the 800

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to 900 megahertz range so

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it turns out that the main issue was figuring out how to stick a inch antenna

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inside a device that's supposed to be handheld and this was harder than you

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might think even though older phones were relatively

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speaking so large just as the interiors of today's

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smartphones are quite crowded with all the features that are packed inside

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older phones also had tons of components taking up space within the chassis

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as time went on though and consumer demand forever smaller phones increased

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it became clear that this was a problem worth solving as otherwise reasonably

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sized phones with large antennas sticking out of them were less portable

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more fragile and if we're being honest just less sexy sorry i am that shallow

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so the solution came in 1998 courtesy of a little company you might have heard of

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called nokia instead of using a long metal rod they

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stamped the antenna onto a component inside the phone in a thin flat layer

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and not only that but this new antenna

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was also printed with a number of folds and turns kind of like the traces on a

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printed circuit board instead of in a straight line that meant it took up very

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little space but was still long enough to receive a signal so this paradigm has

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lasted into the modern age where thin metal antennas folded up inside phone

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bodies are the norm and many phones even use part of the exterior metal of the

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phone body itself as part of the antenna in fact having one end of the antenna be

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a large flat sheet like the metal backing of a smartphone can give a

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significant boost in bandwidth these physical innovations combined with

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processing advances that make it easier for phones to work with a weaker signal

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mean that there just isn't much reason to stick antennas way

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on the outside of the main body anymore and in the somewhat near future faster

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5g connections that use even higher frequency signals could mean that

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antennas inside our phones would need to take up even less room

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though if you're one of those folks that really misses the old school antennas i

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do hear that boom boxes have been making a big comeback so

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you should probably look into that

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