Mark Wallace wrote: > When my cell phone is turned off, it goes directly to voicemail without > ringing the phone. This means that they have to scan their entire > network for it in a second or two (I might be in New York or > California). If what you say is true.
I know very little about the mechanics of cellular, but I expect the way that it works is there is some system that is recording the last tower to have communicated with your phone. If no handshake has happened for a while, it assumes your phone is off or unavailable. So it doesn't have to scan the entire network, it just has to check a flag in a database. It should be easy enough to test this: take the battery out of your phone and see if there's any difference WRT the way that voicemail behaves. > > I was also told by law enforcement that they can find a turned off cell > phone if they try hard enough (It would have to be at the level of a > missing person investigation, not a lost cell phone) Could you ask them how? I'd be very surprised if it's by virtue of some communication feature of the cell phone. As Mike K pointed out, we wouldn't be allowed to bring a cellphone on board a plane at all if it were able to transmit while turned off. > > It is still using some power when it is turned off, because it will run > the battery dead in a few days turned off, so it might still be giving > some sort of signal. I think more than the passive burn that a battery > does when it is in a turned off appliance, the burn caused by contact of > the battery with the heads. I always assumed that was more due to the properties of that kind of battery than activity within the cellphone. Again, this is easy enough to test: take a fully charged battery out of the phone for a few days, put it back in and check the levels. Turn the phone off for the same amount of time, turn it back on and check the levels. > > A flash light battery left with the batteries in it will go dead because > of the passive connection, we are talking about the turned off cell > phone still doing something. > -- > Robert Mark Wallace > 60 Delaware Road > Newburgh, New York 12550-3802 > Telephone: (845) 566-0586 > > They told me that I needed to upgrade Windows. So I upgraded it to > Linux for free. For a free download, go to > http://www.ubuntulinux.org/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > Dec 2 - MythTV > Jan 6 - Git > ============================================================================= michaelMuller = [email protected] | http://www.mindhog.net/~mmuller ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Henry Spencer ============================================================================= _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Dec 2 - MythTV Jan 6 - Git
