Information is sent to and from your phone as electromagnetic waves. The information sent to your radio (radio waves) is also a form of electromagnetic wave.
When your phone is about to ring or receive a text and it is near a radio that is playing, you hear a stranging clicking noise. That’s because the electromagnetic waves coming into your phone carrying the call or text are interfering with the radio waves coming into to radio. It shouldn’t happen unless you’re actually sending or receiving a text or call.
Right. It’s odd that it only happens (for me) when I’m about to receive a call/text. Or if I move the phone. It doesn’t happen all the time. I wonder if it’s something to do with the phone communicating about where it is with the surrounding masts and therefore sending out a particularly intense signal. It’d be interesting to monitor the intensity of the emissions from the phone and see if that matches when you hear the noise.
Same thing happens with our baby monitor – the thing we use in our bedroom to hear how Harvey is sleeping in the next room. If we have a phone in the same room the monitor keeps making these really annoying noises. As far as I can tell it doesn’t work the other way around. The monitor, or my radio, don’t interfere with my phone when I’m making a call. Maybe that’s because my phone costs about 50 times as much as the monitor and my radio was made in like 1975.
Like Bridget has said, mobile phones use electromagnetic waves to transmit information to mobile phone towers. The clicking happens when the electromagnetic waves interfere with the radiowaves being received by the radio.
The phone will regularly seek out the nearest mobile tower in the area so that its presence is registered on the mobile phone network. When it does this, a clicking noise may be heard. Another cause for the clicking could be that a call or text message is just about to be received by the phone but before this can happen the tower and phone need to make certain that it is the message is heading to the right phone so a few short signals are sent back and forth.
Now if you have an older mobile phone and an older radio from around the 1990s or even older, if you take a phone call near one, you might even get a buzzing noise in the speakers of the radio! This clicking noise seems to happen less now that I have a smartphone but my mum’s regular mobile phone will always set off the radio speaker.
Information is sent to and from your phone as electromagnetic waves. The information sent to your radio (radio waves) is also a form of electromagnetic wave.
When your phone is about to ring or receive a text and it is near a radio that is playing, you hear a stranging clicking noise. That’s because the electromagnetic waves coming into your phone carrying the call or text are interfering with the radio waves coming into to radio. It shouldn’t happen unless you’re actually sending or receiving a text or call.
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Right. It’s odd that it only happens (for me) when I’m about to receive a call/text. Or if I move the phone. It doesn’t happen all the time. I wonder if it’s something to do with the phone communicating about where it is with the surrounding masts and therefore sending out a particularly intense signal. It’d be interesting to monitor the intensity of the emissions from the phone and see if that matches when you hear the noise.
Same thing happens with our baby monitor – the thing we use in our bedroom to hear how Harvey is sleeping in the next room. If we have a phone in the same room the monitor keeps making these really annoying noises. As far as I can tell it doesn’t work the other way around. The monitor, or my radio, don’t interfere with my phone when I’m making a call. Maybe that’s because my phone costs about 50 times as much as the monitor and my radio was made in like 1975.
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Nothing significant to add to Bridget’s answer.
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Like Bridget has said, mobile phones use electromagnetic waves to transmit information to mobile phone towers. The clicking happens when the electromagnetic waves interfere with the radiowaves being received by the radio.
The phone will regularly seek out the nearest mobile tower in the area so that its presence is registered on the mobile phone network. When it does this, a clicking noise may be heard. Another cause for the clicking could be that a call or text message is just about to be received by the phone but before this can happen the tower and phone need to make certain that it is the message is heading to the right phone so a few short signals are sent back and forth.
Now if you have an older mobile phone and an older radio from around the 1990s or even older, if you take a phone call near one, you might even get a buzzing noise in the speakers of the radio! This clicking noise seems to happen less now that I have a smartphone but my mum’s regular mobile phone will always set off the radio speaker.
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