Things You Never Knew Your Cellphone Could Do!!!

THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOUR CELLPHONE COULD DO



There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.

Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for

survival. Check out the things that you can do with it: -




1

EMERGENCY

* The Emergency Number worldwide for **Mobile** is 112 .* If you find

yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is an

emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to

establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112

can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. **Try it out.**







2

Have you locked your keys in the car? Does you car have remote keys?




This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone:

If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call

someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone.

Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person

at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on

their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your

keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away,

and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you

can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

Editor's Note: *It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a cell phone!"*





3

Hidden Battery power




Imagine your cell battery is very low, you are expecting an important call

and you don't have a charger. Nokia instrument comes with a reserve

battery. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with

this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This

reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time.

AND



4




How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?




To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone:

* # 0 6 #

A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your

handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. when your phone get

stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They

will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the

SIM card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either.

If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

Please spread this useful information around


Give it a go guys I hav'nt tried these myself but but sounds good......

That car unlocking one sounds ace!
I can't get the "reserve battery" one to work, but maybe I need to let my battery run down first.

im def gonna give the car unlocking one a try later on :)

The car unlock one must be dependent on the unlock fob sending an ultrasonic signal, or owuld it work with infrared? (all sorts of uses could spring to mind if it would, but I don't think mobiles usually transmit infrared signals during a voice call).

Is the reserve battery function only available to Nokia phones?

That whole post look like one of those internet urban myths that get emailed around from time to time. The way it is spaced, the capital letters, and the mix of well known truth and unlikely claims.

1. Emergency calls

This one is fairly well known, anyone who has fiddled with their phone will know it, though the exact number depends on the network, the phone and the SIM card. The bit about making emergency calls without a SIM card depends on the network. Not all support it, though I have not tried.

2. Remote car unlocking.

Clearly this is only going to work if the remote is ultrasonic. Most are radio or infrared these days.

3. Hidden battery power.

I have tried this on my nokia and it does not work. I doubt that nokia would implement that feature because if they did then phones would have third less life than they would otherwise which would put nokia at a competitive disadvantage.

4. Looking up the IMEI code.

This one is very well known. The police and consumer advice TV shows regularly advise people to note their phone's IMEI to deter theft.

Emergency calls without a SIM card is interesting, more specifically some prepay handsets are locked (latched) to a network, I wonder if you can make an emergency call if the only network available is not the network the phone is locked to? (I have no joy from 'Google' on this one).

Someone at work had a magazine, with an article about remote unlocking, this week. I'll try and find out this week which one it was.

Hidden battery power: I have never heard of this, why would Nokia have this feature and not advertise it? Have a look at 'Enhanced Full Rate EFR', not sure what it is, but it is activated by *3370# on Nokia handsets.

I would not worry about keeping a note of your handset IMEI if you are on a contact, unless you use more than one handset with the same SIM card. When you have lost your phone (or had it stolen) call your provider to get the SIM blocked - their records will have the IMEI that was used with the SIM card which they will bar the handset and pass on to the other networks to bar. If I were on Prepay I might consider make a note of the IMEI but been able to bar the handset sound good and it may deter some theft but this has just created an export boom in stolen handsets. Once your handset has been barred it may not work in this country but it will work in plenty of others.

The car unlocking one only works with some cars. It was done on Brainiac's Test Tube Baby a couple of weeks ago. I know it works on VW's that are less than 3 years old, as I've tried it on a few.

didn't work on my clifford alarm :)

I think the 112 emergency number is part of the GSM spec, so may not work in the US. Could be wrong however. Anyone noticed that when you have a keypad lock on SE phone you can still type 112 and connect? :) won't let you type any other combination of these digits though. clever.

I seem to remember reading that some Premiership footballers had also found another and unusual use for mobile phones :surprised:

The batter backup worked on my 7250i. Quite a cool trick, especially as the battery is dead and needs to charge almost everyday :P

That reminds, I should really buy a new phone.

112, 999 and 911 can all be dialled with the keypad lock enabled, as it is a requirement that anybody should be able to call the emergency services without knowing how the phone works. In theory it is a GSM requirement that the call can be made without a working SIM card, although I have never tried it.

There is no way an ultrasonic signal could be transmitted over a mobile phone network, since the GSM codec is optimised for voice frequencies only and discards a tremendous amount of redundant information. Also, why would the phone manufacturers include a speaker which is capable of transmitting frequencies out of human audio ranges? It would cost more money, apart from being pointless.

The battery point I have never heard of, despite 7 years working for Orange and knowing more about handset codes than I ever wanted to. I really don't see the point of including reserve battery power.

The last point is valid - you should make a note of your IMEI, although the network will have a record of it anyway, as it is logged when you switch on your phone and also periodically when making calls to check the phone is not blacklisted.

Cheers,
Stephen

I got this email too. Got excited then thought about it logically, then googled it :)

http://urbanlegends.about.com/librar...nlock_door.htm
http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/phonelocks.html

Well the battery getting extra power... There is some truth in this, but not in the way that the poster is implying.

There are programs that one can download that when your phone is connected to your PC can allow you to reduce the microphone quality, the amount of out-bound transmissions to the respective network provider, aerial strength and other features that are not on the phone settings.

I know this because P2K manager is such a program and it uses a method called seem editing.

50% speaker / microphone quality would be represented by a four digit code, I haven't tried it myself but I have a guide and other stuff, I'm not bothered about attempting it though.

I'm pretty sure its legal but I'm also sure its warrenty voiding :)

The hidden battery power used to work on old nokias. Worked on my nk702. Can't ever remember having a real use for it though.

Also, the IMEI thing is pretty useless nowdays. Any determined theif can change the IMEI number but i know it results in a hefty jail sentence if you're caught.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BenW

Any determined theif can change the IMEI number but i know it results in a hefty jail sentence if you're caught.

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'hefty sentence' if your caught with a stolen phone with a changed EMEI number, or with your own phone with a changed EMEI number, or both? Just morbid curiosity, nothing else ;)

The battery power thing is probably specific to lithium based batterys.
They are easly damaged if the voltage drops too low*, at which point most devices would switch off to save the battery.. however they would be easly capable of running quite a bit lower.
If the code works for you, dont expect your battery to last very many charges, although it would be extremely usefull in an emergency with flat battery.

*aswell as overcharging/overheating. This is why they *need* smart charging circuits, which also offers the advantage of fast charging within an hour or two. If lithium was not so easy damaged/explosive we would probably be stuck with traditional chargers that take 15 hours.

What a load of carp.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by |SilentDeath|

The battery power thing is probably specific to lithium based batterys.
They are easly damaged if the voltage drops too low*, at which point most devices would switch off to save the battery.. however they would be easly capable of running quite a bit lower.
If the code works for you, dont expect your battery to last very many charges, although it would be extremely usefull in an emergency with flat battery.

*aswell as overcharging/overheating. This is why they *need* smart charging circuits, which also offers the advantage of fast charging within an hour or two. If lithium was not so easy damaged/explosive we would probably be stuck with traditional chargers that take 15 hours.

---

You are completely right, Lithium Ion batteries should never be run completely flat. Doing so will drastically reduce the batteries ablity to charge back to it's orginal level (something which happens with time anyway, that will just speed it up) and shortens its lifespan. It also "stresses" the battery and can make them unstable - in much the same way as Dells laptop Sony made batteries do.

I forget the exact figure, but a huge amount (20%+) of calls made to the emergency services are from people dialing 999 in thier pocket by mistake. I remember reading once that the emergency services were at one stage calling for the mobile manufactures to stop producing phones with the abilty to dial when the keypad is locked, as it causes more problem than it solves.
And BTW, posting "TRY IT!" is not a great idea.

As for the phone trick - hmm. Might well work in some circumstances, but even with ultra sonic the huge compression used over GSM network and the fact that most of the low quality mic/speaker in most phones cant produce such frequencies, will stop this working. If it was that easy, you could just stand next to someone and 'record' them using thier electronic key fob, then play it back to open thier car. Most car makers have though about that one.

Also, you dont need to write down the IMEI number. You only have to turn your phone of for the network to log it automatically. They have to do this by law.

Here is a better "trick" - hide you phone in your bosses office with it set to sillent and auto answer. Then dial in to hear what you boss really thinks of you.

The unlocking with a mobile phone works. At least it does on my aygo black. I read this and just hand to try it. To my amazement and my mates it worked. You have to place the phone in the correct place I think though since mine didn't open at first after moving the phone around a bit it unlocked the car, I couldn't believe it however I couldn't get it to close. But it definitely works on some cars at least.

Nice thread. I'm amazed, but they actually work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moby-Dick

didn't work on my clifford alarm :)

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thats because ur clifford is proberly worth about 800 quid u smug git lol :mrgreen: :p :lol:

How does the car unlocking thing work then?
Are those remotes that work operating on 27kHz so it doesn't get removed in the gsm encoding? I'm thinking that a current is induced in the microphone wires, then on the other phone the speaker wires act as a aerial. Sounds mad though, still can't believe it works.

Cliffords must work on 400kHz or some other higher frequency...?

GSM only encodes up to around 7.5KHz, so anything above that will be filtered out. Given the human voice only has a range up to around 4KHz, this makes sense.

Cheers,
Stephen

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dorza

The unlocking with a mobile phone works. At least it does on my aygo black. I read this and just hand to try it. To my amazement and my mates it worked. You have to place the phone in the correct place I think though since mine didn't open at first after moving the phone around a bit it unlocked the car, I couldn't believe it however I couldn't get it to close. But it definitely works on some cars at least.

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How far away was the key fob when you did this experimant?

If this works on your car, go buy a new alarm right now :P

None of this seems to work with my Orange SPV / Alfa Romeo 156

Quote:

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Originally Posted by badass

How far away was the key fob when you did this experimant?

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I wasn't miles away like the information in the first post would suggest is the workable range however I was a good 60m away from where the key was with no direct line of sight to the car, there were buildings/houses in the way. Its up to people whether they believe what I say or not I know what happened and as I said my mate with the key couldn't get it to lock the car after it was opened.

they are all good ideas pitty i dont have a nokia phone that battery increase would come in very usefull. thanks for that suki uk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fat jez

GSM only encodes up to around 7.5KHz, so anything above that will be filtered out. Given the human voice only has a range up to around 4KHz, this makes sense.

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Of course. I was thinking it would be based on the human hearing range but that seems more logical.

... so how does it work? I can't believe it does...