- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
Cool, I never did anyways. I knew it was horseshit to begin with and was just info being fed from uneducated tech people to more uneducated tech people.
Same, there’s not even a battery saving aspect to it anymore now that planes have at least USB ports to charge from if not full blown outlets lol
I think it was just more protecting against the one in a billion chance of interference that could potentially take down a plane full of people. Why risk it if the alternative is something as basic as tapping a setting on your phone during takeoff and landing?
You are one of those people who should be forced to do something very sensitive with high responsibility and have someone sit next to you and slap you randomly in the face while expecting you to do your job. That’s essentially the same thing you are doing to pilots while they try to keep your ass safe and alive.
Uneducated writers thinking using phone during flight is the same thing as using phone on the ground. It’s not.
Phones won’t interfere with sensors and stuff on airplane. That much is true. However pilots need to communicate with all kinds of airport staff over FM radio and there, since it’s an analogue signal, phones can cause that familiar disruption. It won’t destroy equipment, but you will annoy pilots and might prolong departure time. Same thing when landing, you are coming from no signal zone and all of the sudden 100 phones starts talking at the same time when pilot is receiving instructions from the airport.
This is why you can talk during flight, but not takeoff.
That disruption is from a 2G/GSM handset. Those networks were turned off a decade ago.
Pilot here. Still on the A320 series it’s obligatory to turn off the electrical devices for low visibility approaches (ILS Cat2/3) as aircraft’s navigational systems are not protected (at least certified) against RF interference.
Stupid article.
General observation.
As people lose more and more real freedoms [lower real wages, more crowded roads, small retail stores swallowed up by mega-corps] they cling to false freedoms. They will keep those phones on, because it’s their right to, dammit!
HowardBealeRant.avi
As of Jan 31, 2024 any planes still not hardened their altimeters to meet group 4 performance are restricted from flying auto land, I/II ILS ; and for the most part the airlines still flying them aren’t using those planes in US airspace. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t any flying just that when they are they’re restricted by the FAA as to how they can operate.
Many more planes outside of US airspace, and plenty of those are rather older than 2024.
GSM is still very much alive in many countries.
Can confirm. I own a pair of noise canceling earmuffs (meant for sport shooting; my dad was into guns). They’re completely unshielded so I can pick up interference from all sorts of signals. It’s fun to switch my phone between different networks to hear what 2G/3G/LTE/5G sounds like. I can even hear WiFi and find the dead spots in my house.
Point I’m making is that GSM is still sticking around here as a backup so when I drop my phone to 2G it sounds exactly the same as it does in this video.
3G has been turned off in a lot of places, but 2G is still very much used globally. It’s still the last fallback for phones to maintain basic texting and calling functionality. In many places emergency services also use it for e.g. emergency information via text message.
I put my phone in airplane mode if for no other reason than if it’s constantly trying to connect to a signal or Wi-Fi, it drains the battery way faster.
Or that. Whatever the reason is, if one is being asked to disable phone, then disable it. There’s no reason to be an smartass and cause issues.
Last time I flew, there was no signal at all while flying. not even GPS!
Last time I flew, there was no signal at all while flying.
There’s a number of factors that lead to that.
-
The cell base station antennas have a relatively narrow vertical beamwidth and are typically aimed a few degrees below horizontal. (Aircraft tend not to operate at that altitude)
-
usable range of each cell base stations is typically <50 km.
-
Cell base stations are optimized for communicating with mobiles moving less than 90km/h.
Given all that, if you happen to get a signal, you’ll be handing off between towers far too fast and too frequently for the network to reliably deal with.
-
There was GPS signal, it’s just by design that chips are not allowed to lock at above certain speed to prevent military use. But even if there’s no signal, mobile phone will try to find tower. If it doesn’t find one it will try increasing transmission power.
But even if there’s no signal, mobile phone will try to find tower. If it doesn’t find one it will try increasing transmission power.
Thus draining the phone’s battery much faster.
Same thing happens if you are camping in a remote location with weak or non-existent coverage.
Yup. Although it’s been a while since I found a place without mobile signal for camping. This planet is getting crowded.
What? Every smartphone I can remember owning has gotten a GPS signal if I hold it up to the window. Plenty of planes have GPS on board too. If there is a speed lockout, a 737 isn’t enough to break that threshold.
Speed limit is indeed above speed that 737 can fly (see addendum), but it’s not only reason why GPS sometimes doesn’t lock. On the plane your phone doesn’t get assisted GPS, where rough location calculation is based on ground data like WIFI networks and GSM towers, so time to first fix takes significantly longer because your phone only has access to L1 frequencies. Since it takes a while, 30s for entire satellite message to be transmitted, it’s coordinates and the like, and there’s no help from ground stations for crude calculation combined with speed of the plane it all ends up contributing to a significantly longer time to first fix or perhaps even problematic fix in the first place.
So all in all, speed contributes to the problem. Yes signal was present at all times. And no, speed is not the sole factor but contributes a lot. GPS chips have improved quite a bit over the time so some old devices will definitely have a problem finding location on plane. Newer ones won’t, especially considering they have access to other networks like Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou.
All GPS receivers capable of functioning above 60,000 ft (18 km) above sea level and 1,000 kn (500 m/s; 2,000 km/h; 1,000 mph), or designed or modified for use with unmanned missiles and aircraft, are classified as munitions (weapons)—which means they require State Department export licenses.[126] This rule applies even to otherwise purely civilian units that only receive the L1 frequency and the C/A (Coarse/Acquisition) code.
Edit: What airplanes have on board, is access to different frequency which your device doesn’t. It’s not comparable.
That makes sense! Thanks
You are welcome. Although, like I said in other reply, speed is not the only limiting factor. It just makes it harder to find location. There are number of other things.
Next time you’re on a flight, download a GPS speedometer app and launch it right before takeoff. You’ll notice that it’ll accurately measure the plane’s speed up to around 500 MPH, before it suddenly stops giving you a speed readout.
Like the other person said, this is to prevent your average dude building a guided missile using an old phone they have lying around.
It’s a built-in security of the protocol. For accurate speed measurement device would need access to L2 frequencies, which carry encrypted data used for additional corrections, faster calculations, atmospheric conditions, etc. One can certainly get a location tracked through phone, but it’s not solely though GPS, it’s most likely combination of other positioning systems.
Probably would just use an IMU exactly as the plane itself already does for its own navigation. They get a lock on the ground, synchronize the IMU with the Earth’s orbit, and they keep track of where they’ve moved from the origin.
There’s no way there was no GPS, maybe your phone was trying to base your location with antennas and not GPS
I used to turn Airplane Mode on during my LSD trips many years ago, pretty useful.
I haven’t heard drifting referred to as limited slip differential trips before, but that’s good that you aren’t texting and drifting.
That problem relates to landing an airplane with a 5G tower near the airport. Nothing to do with passenger phones.
And honestly it’s a faulty radio in the airplane. They shouldn’t be disrupted by 5G towers at all… but Boeing doesn’t want to pay for replacement parts and neither do the airlines.
I didn’t make any claims to the effect. In fact, I wanted to make it clear that even these worries over 5G towers aren’t really relevant or a reason to keep such a claim alive. There is no need to take my word for it. The FAA has already covered it.
All the comments about technical details and practical details…
Are we forgetting that when dealing with millions of people, plus bureaucracy, in a potential death risk, it’s worth being slow and cautious about relaxing former safety rules.
That was my understanding, that once upon a time it was legitimately feared that mobile phones could caused accidents (and thought they had indeed caused one). So, besides the other issues people have highlighted in the comments, to walk back from the safety rule of turn-them-off is a slow process.
Commercial air travel is not known for going, “ah, it’s probably fine, don’t worry;” except in the case of emergency exit door bolts.
Also, I’d like to add:
You don’t need to use airplane mode on airplanes
… Please do follow the rules, and do what the cabin crew ask you to do. Otherwise, even if you don’t directly endanger the plane, you make it harder for them to do their jobs and keep everyone safe.
I am not a very frequent flyer. In fact last time was over a year ago. even then, we were insteuctes to set lelectronics to flight mode only during take off and landing.
I feel like this has been common knowledge. Airplane mode is more about “we don’t want some asshole talking to their client on the phone while we are trying to do the safety briefing and take off”
How to use WiFi in plane if you put your phone in airplane mode? nonsense.
My phone allows me to independently choose Wi-Fi and Bluetooth state separately from the cellular state.
When I turn on airplane mode it turns off everything but of course I can turn wifi on just after. But all the phones I have seen when you set in airplane mode it turns off cell wifi BT even nfc
Almost every android phone. Not sure about iPhone though.
It’s the same on iOS. They’re separate toggles.
iPhones don’t even turn wifi/bluetooth off when you toggle them specifically. They certainly don’t disconnect in airplane mode.
The quick wifi/bluetooth buttons are to disconnect temporarily when you’ve got a bad connection. Or if your husband started the car but you’re not in it, you’re just nearby. They’re not to turn the radios off.
Airplane mode is no longer about shutting down all wireless communication. It’s been for some time.
Now it’s shutting down the cellular connection only, wifi and bluetooth stay on.
The article is crap, but it is correct in that you don’t need to use airplane mode. I would, however, advise to still use it purely to preserve battery life of your device as otherwise it will very aggressively keep scanning for networks and drain it.
How old are your phones? I don’t notice any “aggressive scanning” when I don’t have airplane mode on. The other user is not able to switch WiFi on in airplane mode, my last two phones did that no problem and they go like 4-5 years back.
Cell towers, without mountains/buildings blocking them, reach 10+ miles and airplanes don’t fly that high… so you are within range of towers while flying unless you’re over the ocean.
However, connecting to a tower that far away requires running the radio at maximum transmission power which absolutely kills your battery. Also the towers reject your phone’s attempt to connect because they are programmed to ignore distant connections when they know a dozen other towers are within a few miles of that tower. If you’re flying over remote areas where towers will accept any connection you might occasionally get enough signal to call 911 but i likely won’t be a usable data connection due to how far away you are.
Wether it shows a connection or not, your phone is still reaching out trying to connect and doing handshakes with towers on the ground.
Being inside a metal tube doesn’t help reception either.
The article is crap,
It is Gizmodo after all
Yep. I do wish there was a toggle for the cellular radio by itself (rather than just mobile data). It’s annoying to have to go airplane mode then turn WiFi and BT back on.
Weird. On iPhone it remembers if turned BT and WiFi on while Airplane mode is on and will only turn off the Cell antenna. Do that every time I travel.
On Android you do have that toggle
And if you turn wifi back on once, it’ll tell you that it can remember and always leave Wi-Fi on if you want.
Don’t even have to find the setting
iOS has it as well.
There is? I know the control center button for turning on/off mobile data, but I wasn’t aware there was a way other than airplane mode to prevent it from continuously scanning for networks.
The cell data button only disables data, but the airplane button disables the cellular radio entirely and doesn’t disable WiFi or Bluetooth. If you want WiFi and BT disabled, you need to tap them separately.
However… the airplane button remembers your last preference. If you tapped airplane and then disabled WiFi and BT, it will disable them next time you turn on airplane mode. If you last used airplane mode with WiFi and/or BT enabled, it will only disable the cell antenna.
That’s what airplane mode is. Try it out in the control center. It doesn’t disable my WiFi unless I had WiFi disabled when I last turned airplane mode off. Similar with Bluetooth except turning airplane off turns my Bluetooth on even if I had it off before.
Of course, an OS update or a reboot might reset the value of the previous WiFi state. 🤷♂️
Right, but the person I was replying to appears to be saying there is a toggle button to that isn’t airplane mode to turn off the antenna, unless I’m misunderstanding.
Perhaps this is what they meant:
There’s a separate cellular toggle yes.
Meh - flights have USB ports now if your battery is low.
USB ports and outlets lol I haven’t been concerned about preserving my phone’s battery life while flying in a long time now lmao
But that’s just a waste of electricity then? And battery health?
Unless you’re really into flying the effect is minimal
It also costs you nothing to disable it. And if everyone keeps it disabled for all their flights, it’s not minimal anymore. So I don’t really see the problem here.
Imagine the savings if all of those people just didn’t fly! lol
That doesn’t change that disabling cellular makes a difference, so I don’t see your point. Just because something’s not perfect, doesn’t mean it can’t make a difference.
It just makes such a tiny, insignificant difference that it really doesn’t matter one way or the other.
Ive always forgotten to set this anyway. No planes taken down so far (but it will drain your battery)
Airplane mode is a blessing. If the OS is trustworthy (i.e. FOSS Android) then it actually works, it turns off that crappy unprivate cell connection and you have anonymous Wifi only.
It saves battery and you can use your phone without anyone being able to track you easily.
Btw Google hides the GPS quicksettings toggle for a reason, edit the shortcuts and add it.
… What? You think WiFi is anonymous?
If you randomize your Mac address (which is default on GrapheneOS and Fedora now) you are pretty anonymous to the wifi network.
Of course websites see where you are, they always do that. Use Tor or a VPN.
It can sometimes triangulate you better than the cell towers.
WiFi isn’t as safe as they apparently think it is lol
If the SSID you connect to is unique enough, there’s a site that can literally pinpoint your location. If you have any other SSIDs around you, it’s basically guaranteed. That’s why there’s a bunch of apps that log the SSIDs around you, to get your location without having to ask.
That’s not even considering the entire rest of WiFi that’s not anonymous
In my country, 2G phones could interfere with radios with that da-dada-da-dada sound. I know people who have personally had that happen to them while trying to land airliners and it made listening to ATC more difficult.
I don’t think it’s an issue anymore though.
Definitely not an issue in the US anymore. T-Mobile is the last carrier to support 2G and they’re shutting that down in April this year. I think most Android phones explicitly disable 2G now too because it’s not secure.
Mine had it disabled by default, but still available for emergency calls, and the option to enable it.
Mine has it disabled, but available if I eamt.to enable it (with a security warning.)
That’s because phones and airplanes were operating on the same frequency. They don’t do that anymore… in part because there’s a dozen phones on every flight that haven’t been put in airplane mode.
“You have a reminder set for 5pm today,” my phone said.
“A reminder? What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a notification to ensure you don’t forget something, but that’s not important right now,” the phone replied.
Then I remembered I’d left it in Airplane! mode.
😆 It might be nice to have a phone that tells me “Remember, we’re all counting on you. Good luck.” Otoh it would probably keep calling me Shirley.
You can absolutely do that with a text to speech app and the app Tasker on Android.
It would have to be Leslie Neilson’s voice though.
Just have it play an mp3 clip of that scene in the movie.
“5pm today” can also get ambiguous if you’re flying across time zones.
I think it’s still worth doing so your phone isn’t rapidly trying to connect and disconnect from nearby cell towers as you ascend and descend. Maybe there’s already protections in place for this case but it makes sense that it could add a lot of unnecessary strain on certain cell towers.
This is the primary reason I do it, although more for my battery life than the cell towers.
Not to mention the battery drain.
It’s been a long time since I’ve flown on a plane without at least a USB port to plug into, most have had full outlets to plug into lmao
I take short flights the whole year (like 6-10 per month) and I never had the USB chargers.
Those are like 1h flights tho
It’s been a long time since my charger has actually stayed plugged into one of those worn-ass outlets in a plane.
Also, I don’t want to have to juggle multiple charging devices in the tiny cramped space where I’m already stressed and miserable.
Budget flights don’t have that kind of luxury.
I can still flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/i1wwfycW5sg?feature=shared&t=175
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
