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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is Gizmodo after all
Meh - flights have USB ports now if your battery is low.
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.
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
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.
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
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.