Why Your Smartphone Causes Speakers to Buzz

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://advice.cio.com/al_sacco/why_your_blackberry_causes_speakers_to_buzz' target='_blank'>http://advice.cio.com/al_sacco/why_your_blackberry_causes_speakers_to_buzz</a><br /><br /></div><i>"A few weeks back, I reviewed four smartphones in conjunction with a handful of IT executives. In that review, I briefly touched upon the annoying buzz the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) phones caused when sending or receiving a communication in close proximity to speakers—radio, computer, car, auditorium, whatever.(Specifically, that the BlackBerry Pearl seemed to yield more buzzing than any of the other phones we reviewed.) Recently, I was reminded of this frustrating phenomenon at MIT’s Sloan CIO Symposium when the overhead Bose speakers in the main auditorium began buzzing like disgruntled honey bees. I looked directly to my right to find the guy next to me tapping away maniacally on his BlackBerry. He didn’t even notice the buzzing"</i> <br /><br />Here's a really good article from CIO.com about why your phone makes the speakers around it buzz with excitement. ;) I like that the author, Al Sacco, actually took the time to talk with RIM's "Global Intelligence Director", Mr. Duncan Bradley, about what they are doing about it and how he feels about the buzz. Mr. Bradley takes the opportunity to attempt to slam Windows Mobile by saying it's a overly "chatty" OS and thus results in more buzzing. Thankfully, Al highlights that the Windows Mobile devices that he's reviewed are nowhere near as bad as the Pearl. I have noticed that some devices are worse than others, but it's not the OS that's to blame. HTC devices tend to be worse at this than Samsung. At least that's what I've noticed when working with the Excalibur, BlackJack, and SP5m.

[Foxbat121]

I love this one:

So are there ways to reduce the amount of buzzing your phone causes when in close proximity to speakers? Sure, but Bradley doesn't recommend them since they'll void your warranty. One way to do so would be to open up the effected hardware and drop globs of glue on the speakers in just the right place. There are also a number of ways to tweak speakers' internal wiring to decrease interference, Bradley said.


So I spend $$$ to buy an expensive speaker system just to get dumpped with globs of glue so that it won't make any sound?

The Bradley guy proves to have no technical background and everything he said in that interview is BS.

Anyway, I find the reason BlackJack has less issue is because of 3G WCDMA, nothing else. Whenever my BlackJack switch over to EDGE, it buzzes as bad as my other GSM phones.

[qyv42]

I've used about a dozen GSM data-capable phones and I can safely say that the SMT 5600 (HTC Typhoon) was by far the worst offender in this department. If I attached it to my PC to sync without turning off the PC's speakers, the feedback whenever it had to do anything over the cell network was deafening - painfully so! Most of HTC's other devices have been okay, so they must have learned something there...

[ctmagnus]

We've got a Plantronics Vista headset here, and yesterday the buzzing caused by my Treo during one call was nuts. But that was the only time it happened, even though I had sms's coming in all day. The annoying thing is that the other party hears the buzzing on their end as well.

[MTM]

qyv42, I have the HTC Typhoon and haven't experienced any notable problems with buzz from the speakers and my phone often lies about 1-2 ft away from them. Maybe mine doesn't interact that much with the network or maybe it also depends a lot on the speakers.

[Sven Johannsen]

As was mentioned in the comments to the artical, it is not coupled into the speakers but rather to the amplifier sections. There is not enough RF energy to do anything to the coils on a speaker and inducing voltage in them at RF frequencies would be pretty hard for us to hear. The RF energy is coupled into the amplifier circuits and due to the bandwidth and type of modulation, it is demodulated and amplified as something we can hear, though it is unintelligible.

Since most PC speakers are amplified, you have a high chance of the phone being close enough induce some energy into the amp. Lot of it is where the phone is and how it is oriented. It is only going to happen when you are doing data transfers, and that could be mail downloads, SMSs, that sort of thing. It does appear that the GSM modulation is something that can be demodulated and therefore causes the problem.

[Kris Kumar]

This is an interesting topic that I missed because I was on vacation.

I have the Dash and rarely use my Dash as a music phone, except only when I am mowing the lawn. I put on my noise cancelling headset, hookup the headset and it starts buzzing. I have to always turn off the radio while I am listening to the songs. At work, the phone affects the speakerphone in the conference rooms. It affects my desk phone.

One thing I wonder, how will the iPhone work as a music phone? Baking an iPod into a GSM unit does not sound like a good idea. For once I am with Jerry on why bother putting music buttons on a phone that cannot deliver reliable sound. :evil: :roll: I am eagerly waiting to see how iPhone users, especially the ones switching from the CDMA world will enjoy the "buzz" being generated by their phones. They will place the iPhone in the iDock of their iCar and the iSpeakerSystem will start iBuzzing!