Eight tech solutions to avoid mobile phone radiation

The latest study on the incidence of mobile phone usage and cancer, which took 10 years, was inconclusive. The next study will take a staggering 30 years to complete and if the results do conclusively show a correlation, it will be a little late for the current generation.

Headsets, corded and wireless, are a great way to reduce mobile phone radiation near your head but are not the only options, as CRN found out.

The most basic headset keeps the mobile phone at arm’s length, but just make sure you put it in your coat pocket rather than your pants. While you may reduce the prospect of brain cancer it’s not such a good idea to park the phone next to your reproductive organs.

Two buds are better for music and videos but a real hassle to get on and off in a hurry. And no matter how you wrap, they will always need to be unknotted.

The Apple iPhone earbuds have been spotted on some Blackberrys because they are apparently more robust than the RIM equivalent.

The single-ear corded headset is simple and dependable. No batteries to run down, less tangling with only one cord, a solid boom mike with noise cancelling.

However, any cord still restricts head movement; how many times have you stood up from your desk and had the earbuds pull out of your ears?

The jury is still out as to whether the Bluetooth wireless headset is acceptable outside of the office or car. Their dwindling size makes it more likely bystanders will assume you are shouting at them and not your phone company.

The Bluetooth transmitter-receiver is far less powerful than that of the mobile phone; the signal range is just a couple of metres instead of a kilometre or more. Still, you’ll have to decide whether you’re comfortable with any kind of transmitter wrapped around your ear hole.

Who said handsets were dead? In one of the best retro moves in the past 80 years, companies like Native Union have started producing deskphones to plug directly into your mobile phone. The phones themselves are very simple affairs with a single button and – oh joy - no power supply. Moshi Moshi phones work with Skype and Google Talk on the iPad.

The Moshi Moshi range sports highly attractive designs by a famous designer and are priced to match. The Bluetooth version, which does away with the cord between handset and base station and takes calls from your mobile or computer, goes for $199.

If you’re worried about cancer it’s a little counterintuitive to put a mobile phone base station inside your house. At least your mobile phone won’t have to boost its signal to get reception.

A femtocell connects to your broadband internet connection to improve mobile phone reception indoors. Current models support 2 to 4 active mobile phones in a residential setting, and 8 to 16 active mobile phones in enterprise settings.

With these things, placement is everything. If you buy your neighbour a femtocell linked to your mobile phone carrier you’ll get great reception without the radiation! (If my neighbours are reading this, I’m just joking, ok? You’re great. And sorry about the cat.)

The mobile phone dock is a good idea that doesn’t seem to have taken off in Australia. When you come home your mobile phone connects via Bluetooth to the dock, which is plugged into your wireless DECT home phone. Now you can use the low-radiation wireless phones to make calls using your mobile phone plan and use up all your free calls. Take that, greedy telcos!

Unified communications throws open the door to all sorts of cool things. Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager (UCM) has an iPhone app that lets you place and receive calls over your wireless LAN rather than the GSM network used by mobile phones. If you leave WiFi coverage, the call will automatically switch to GSM again. Nice.

The impressive bit is that you can physically “throw” a call on your iPhone to another phone – it looks like you’re casting a line with a fishing rod. The phone call is transferred to either a softphone (a PC-based application like Skype) or to your deskphone.

Putting a shield around the phone may appear a sensible way to cut down radiation. However, that little barrier makes it harder for the phone to contact the base station, so the phone will boost its signal even higher to compensate, producing more radiation, less battery life and worse reception.

And those little plastic stickers on the back of phones – don’t get me started. That myth was busted by the BBC eight years ago.

Nevertheless, you can still find online sites selling protective shirts, headbands and overcoats. These boxers provide “certified 32 dB shielding at 1GHz”. Available in sanitary white for men and women.