I was skeptical about these signal booster stickers but, since they were cheap, it wouldn’t hurt to try.
I recently changed my cellphone to a Motorola G32, which has poorer reception than my previous phone. I wasn’t expecting this “gimmick” to work. So I decided to put the sticker to the test.
Before I ran my tests, I found the location of my phone’s antenna by looking at a disassembly instruction video on YouTube for the model of my phone. I placed the sticker on the back of my phone near the antenna location.
The first part of my test was at home, where my 4G signal is excellent. I turned off WiFi and used the Ookla speed test app to test both the download and upload speeds of my cellular network. I ran the speed test 6 times without the sticker and 6 times with the sticker installed, keeping my phone in the same spot and orientation.
Without the sticker, the average download and upload speeds were 39.3 Mbps and 21.97 Mbps. With the sticker, the corresponding speeds were 43.3 and 22.47. This was a marginal improvement.
I also measured a 2 dBm improvement, i.e., -84 dBm without the sticker and -82 dBm with the sticker, averaged over 6 readings. (In Android, you can check the signal strength from Settings->About phone->SIM status.)
Having done that, I did confirm that certain positions of sticker placement either had no effect on the signal or even degraded the signal. Only a particular position improved the signal. Placement of the sticker in the right position is therefore important.
The second part of my test was to check if the sticker could help pick up a signal where I was getting none. My daily walk is through 60 acre park in the greater Vancouver area. There is a particular part of the park where I would get no signal. But after I installed the sticker, I now get a signal through most (thought not all) of this area. In addition there was an improvement in reception in areas where the signal strength used to be low. I drove to low lying areas in my neighborhood where the signal used to be weak or non-existent. With the sticker installed I definitely see an improvement in these areas.
Although this part of the test is anecdotal and not objective like the first part, the improvement I observed was noticeable.
Conclusion of my findings:
When the phone’s reception is already good, the sticker results in a marginal improvement. The overall improvement on the signal is small. However, in areas where the reception was poor, the improvement is more noticeable. The placement position of the sticker is important. Some positions can degrade the signal slightly. So experimentation is recommended.
Additional thoughts:
I did some research into antennas and radio frequencies to try to understand the science that could explain what I was experiencing.
Radio frequencies (RFs) pass though materials like the thin plastic housing on a cellphone without affecting the signal. However metal actually modifies RF signals, by blocking, reflecting or, in the case of an antenna, absorbing RF signals while adding directional gain.
This “phone signal sticker” is really a thin printed circuit board (PCB) on a sticker that resembles a PCB antenna. It is not a true PCB antenna, though, since there is no electrical contact between the sticker and the phone’s receiver. But there is a thin copper array in it, which means it will absorb RF and converts it to a charge. It is possible that this PCB sticker is working like a planar inverted F antenna. Another possibility is that it creates a distortion pattern that causes RF gain or loss depending on the position of the sticker.
If this is indeed how it works, then the placement of the sticker very close to the area of the cellphone’s antenna is necessary for it to be effective. If you don’t have a schema diagram of your cellphone model, then check if there is a disassembly video for your phone’s model on YouTube. You should be able to determine the position of your phone's antenna.
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