A couple months ago, I found out that a seemingly pointless On* feature can actually be extremely useful.
On a trip to the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona , I found myself looking for food. The local café had closed earlier than I thought, and we were pretty far south of I-10. So, we needed to look and see if we could find any nearby restaurants or break out the rations. But, even Verizon’s great cellular service wasn’t working, so we couldn’t access Google Maps to check restaurant hours or even call them.
Since then, I’ve used the feature several times on rural drives. Once, I was in an area that technically should have some cell signal, but I was between two small hills with enough vegetation to block a handheld cellular signal. Worse, I was stuck in deep sand that I had unexpectedly run into. As with the last time, I disabled Android Auto, connected to the hotspot, and was able to get pulled out.
A car is actually a kind of Faraday cage, or basically a steel cage. With all of the metal around you, it can be very hard for radio signals to get in and out of the car. So, when you’re at the edge of normal cellular coverage or in a low spot, a phone inside the car will lose signal. The Bolt EUV’s small sharkfin antenna probably isn’t the greatest, and it may be possible to upgrade it for a longer “whip” antenna of some kind. But, that’s probably only going to shrink the dead zones a little around the edges. Cellular signals can’t penetrate mountains or go over them, no matter how much power or how good the antenna is.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Apartment cooldown continues nationally as rents drop for third consecutive month - Silicon Valley Business JournalAmong larger metropolitan areas, tech-centric cities are seeing more pronounced apartment rent declines, which could be correlated with job losses being disproportionately felt in those places.
Read more »
Apartment cooldown continues nationally as rents drop for third consecutive month - San Francisco Business TimesAmong larger metropolitan areas, tech-centric cities are seeing more pronounced apartment rent declines, which could be correlated with job losses being disproportionately felt in those places.
Read more »
Apartment cooldown continues nationally as rents drop for third consecutive month - Jacksonville Business JournalThe U.S. apartment market continued its slowdown last month, the third consecutive month of declining rents.
Read more »
Father of 2-year-old, Nadia Lee, charged with her murder after nearly two-month searchFather of 2-year-old, Nadia Lee, charged with her murder after nearly two-month search, police say
Read more »
Amazon Says It'll Pay You $2 Per Month to Spy on Your Phone's Internet TrafficAmazon is offering customers $2 a month to customers willing to install an app that will track all the traffic on their phones. Not worth.
Read more »