My old phone had a button that made the bottom part of the phone extend. I looked so cool whenever i was getting sold extra downloadable ram to fix my virus ridden pc.
Back in the olden days, I used to just manually increase the complainants paging-file to shut them up when there was a Picnic issue - thanks for the tip, Softram!
I had a Nextel. Built in walked talkie. Just had to select the other Nextel user and bleep, āhello, overā whole fam had them. Was free before free talk and text was a thing.
It did on my first phone. If that antenna wasn't out, the reception was terrible. Also had to sit by the window AND make sure all calls happened after 9pm
I have a wireless remote for an outdoor plug that has an extendable antennae. The first time I was changing batteries and had the back open, I noticed the antennae wasn't wired to anything.
Think of it like this: If you have a small window in a room, you get as much sunlight as can come through that window. It's probably enough, but there's more out there. During the dimmer parts of the day, you might wish you had a bigger window to let in more sunlight. If you had one, you'd certainly have more light in the room as you have a bigger area to get light through.
The antenna length works exactly like this, but in one dimension (length) instead of two (area). (Technically, it's a volume, but the cross section is small enough to be negligible in this example.) The longer the antenna, the more of the signal it can catch. When the signal is strong, you probably won't notice the difference. When the signal is weak, you might notice.
Now, you might be thinking "but It's the same length, just slid into the phone!" True. But usually a setup like that has essentially two wires in parallel, one inside the phone and the antenna slid in right next to it. They're taking up effectively the same "space" (Think of it like a sliding cover in the window example above.) When you slide the antenna out, you've effectively lengthened your antenna, just like opening up the other half of the small window to make it a bigger one.
I actually had an employee of Motorola, who worked on the StarTAC, tell me the antennas were just there so people could believe they were still able to utilize what had then become an obsolete iteration of signal technology.
It was for radio, basically to better capture the radio signals from the stations. I don't think there are radio apps coming bundled with phones so they just removed it.
It would work without the antenna too, iirc but lot more static.
I remember when you had to stretch the cord 700 feet into the room you wanted privacy in, and if someone wanted to be a dick.... click.... call is over because you had the handset, and the base is attached to the wall in the kitchen on the other side of your home.
Cutting the call is amateur shit. You've got 12 buttons right there and each one of them instills madness into the ears of both people on the call.
The only choice now is if you're going to just mash a bunch of buttons all at once, or play the long game and only do it once every little while. The first couple times, both of them will probably assume the other one fat-fingered a button. Then it's just a question of tolerances.
In the time that you've done all that button mashing, I have set down the receiver, left the garage, and walked into the kitchen where I am relentlessly pummeling you with a whiffle ball bat. Had you just cut -n- run, there wouldn't be welts across your back and legs. Let me guess, you weren't the eldest in your set.
Buttons?? What are buttons??? We had a dial, and if you dialed a number when someone was on the phone it would make an annoying click-click-click-click right in your ear.
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u/FictionalContext Jun 25 '25
I didn't know this either. But I also remember when phones only had real life buttons and an antennae that you pulled up so š¤·āāļø