Kjellquist Blog

Today, I was playing with a Droid 2 application called Wifi Analyzer. This application turns the phone into a wifi channel spectrum analyzer showing all the received wifi signals across the entire 2.4 Ghz spectrum. Cool! Now you can easily check your home wifi setup and make sure everyone in the neighborhood isn’t using the default channel 6. Or, you can optimize the location of your router.
While watching the application I confirmed what is shown in this picture from a Droid 2 disassembly on phonearena.com. Motorola very intelligently placed the antennas at the top of the phone. Obviously, a good place since you normally hold a phone by the sides and bottom (Apple take note!). I observed that if I placed my fingers on top the the antenna, signal strengths dropped >15db!! So; for best wifi (and cell phone) performance keep your fingers and particularly anything metallic (don’t lay it on that metal cafe table) away from the top back surface of the phone.

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