So, my company issued me a new 7290 with Cingular/ATT service. Data only. Everything is working fine. But I started noticing my work computer speakers would buzz every few minutes. I was wondering why it started to do that. Then at home, my computer speakers there would buzz intermittently. Back at work and I'm standing in a co-worker's cubicle with my 7290 in my jeans pocket. Her computer speakers started buzzing! Then in another co-worker's office, her boombox, which was turned off, started buzzing? What the hey!?

I understand there's some sort of GPRS transmission causing this. But it's really annoying. My IT person said she can exchange it. Should I try that? Is there some fix I can do? I've searched this forum, but haven't found anything.

Thanks!

Nobbie

Shhhh...that's big brother...they can read your thoughts...be very very quiet!

just teasing! mine does the same thing!

It's the cellular radio waves crossing over, same thing happens if your on a LAN line phone, this happens more so with Blackberry as the network is always pushing to the device.

welcome to the GSM mosquito. It is normal.



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Wirelessly posted (Nokia 6310i: Nokia6310i/1.0 (7.00) Profile/MIDP-1.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0)

This usually only happens with unshielded speakers such as phones, clock and car radios, and cheap (computer) speakers.

It's definitely much more pronouced on a 7290 with Cingular. I have a Cingular-branded 7290 with a T-Mobile SIM and it isn't anywhere near as bad as the same device with a Cingular SIM in it. I'm guessing it's probably the 850MHz transmissions since T-Mobile doesn't use that band.

I get the same thing with my 7520, i know everytime BBToday refreshes because of it, Also it does the same thing in my car.

FYI, here's what I got from my RIM engineer last October, regarding this issue:

This is a known issue and actually is common on many GPRS devices. This will be fixed in 2005. See below for details:

RIM currently has Engineering resources in the audio, RF and certification groups that are working toward meeting new FCC requirements applicable to mobile phones under the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act of 1988 that come into effect in mid 2005. One element of this effort is to reduce the RF interference on all of our products, which works toward alleviating the user experience described in this letter.

It does it on my 7520 and every other nextel device I have ever owned. I have begun watching it closely I can tell when its gonna ring or when its a email or when its just refreshing. My kids think I am magic because I say my phone is fixing to ring and then it rings.

Very useful while driving. I usually listen to an AM talk station on the way home from work and I have a 3 second lead on all phone calls.

gotta love that, being able to tell when you phone is going to ring before it actually rings!




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If the thing is powerful enough to cause speakers to buzz, just imagine what it is doing when its in your pocket... right next to...
As engineers call it, FLK: Funny Lookin' Kids.

I'd worry more about 1.8Ghz and 1.9GHz GSM phones. Microwave ovens operate in the gigahertz range. Though with a lot more watts.

same thing with my 7290 and like others said from the way it causes the disturbance in my speakers i can tell if im going to get an email or if its just a refresh... a little annoying but i got used to it.. having verizon cdma phones i never had this problem in the past but all my nextel buddies have the same issue as my BB

My 7100g does it too. It's worse than my previous GSM devices, but not by much.

I have a 7280 on cingular and have this problem as well. Actually it is pretty serious -- I have a under-the-cabinet CD player/radio in my kitchen, and the buzzing would come out of that thing pretty loud as long as I am in the kitchen (6 feet away). I tried to make a call near the unit (6 inches) and the noise became thunderous.

I used to have an old b/w Blackberry with t-modile and did not notice this interference issue at all. Also with my other t-mobile phone, I'll have to put the phone right next to the radio speaker to get any interference (which is faint). So this one (7280 and/or Cingular) is definitely a lot more powerful !

I have a few related questions:

[1] Do you people who have the problem have it as seriously (i.e. causing buzzing even several feet away from the speaker)? I want to know if mine is worse than normal (in which case I might want a replacement).

[2] Is the buzzing noise coming out of the affected speaker *amplified* or not? I would assume so (otherwise this is REALLY powerful and carrying it on the belt seems dangerous), but what about the boombox that is off, and the computer speakers?

[3] How do I know the frequency the BB is using for communication?

Thanks,

snehne

Well, my company's IT person in charge of Blackberries was told by RIM that it should do that. Hah! They replaced it and now the new one is doing the exact same thing. Oh well. Hopefully, there'll be a fix this year as previously mentioned. Ugh.

Hey, I noticed that if I place my hand between the 7290 and my speakers, the buzzing stops! Hmmm...This while still receiving signals. I met a guy on the plane that had a Treo 600. His does the same thing and he places it in the bag that it was shipped in. He says it works great. Just looks ugly.

So, my question is: Is there a nice case out there that cuts this buzzing out? Something slim that doesn't add a lot of bulk and perhaps protects the screen from my keys in my pocket?

The newer GSM berries are PC4---that's up to 2 watts of RF power at 800MHz. Ouch! More than double the RF output of CDMA...

This is definitely normal for the Cingular 7290's. Possibly other models but we only have 7290's from Cingular. Ours cause interference with computer speakers, phones, radios, and the audio systems in our conference rooms. The latter is a real issue as mostly our executives have the Cingular 7290's. It really doesn't matter if a speaker is powered or not and the interference is easily caused at distances of six feet and more.

As I said, the same Cingular 7290's when equipped with T-Mobile SIM's do not cause interference until the device is right next to a speaker. None of our T-Mobile 6230's or 7230's cause interference until placed inches away from a speaker. We have some Nextel Blackberries as well but they are only used in our eastern division as Nextel provides better coverage out there but I have no first hand experience with them.

Yes, all GSM phones cause interference but not all to the same degree. Your carrier -- or, more accurately, the frequencies used by your carrier since T-Mo doesn't use 850MHz -- can make a difference as to how bad the interference is as well.

Then I would take your phones back. I have a 7290 Cingular and have had minimal, i repeat, minimal problems with buzzing and never from 6 feet away. there are times when if the volume is really low on the car radio it will buzz for a second or two while gathering data. other than that, no buzz

Welcome to wireless...any TDMA-based device including GSM devices will be plagued with this until shielded properly. If you're only just noticing it with a particular device, consider yourself lucky and will agree that I didn't seem to notice it as much with Verizon but I still got it then too.

Should have clarified that -- the intereference occurs on cheap/poorly shielded electronic devices at that distance. We have an abundance of really crappy computer speakers that will pick up one of the local Tejano stations and the board room mics were not shielded at all (lots of excess cabling acting as an antenna as well).

It's less of a problem with the better equipment, but Cingular SIM-med devices still cause interference at noticably greater distances than their T-Mobile SIM-med counterparts.

I think it's funny when the overhead speakers in our conference and training rooms pick up our devices sitting at our workstations about 15 feet away and broadcast it over the presentation but we all just ignore it as we're so used to it. Shielded equipment elsewhere in the place is a nice feature that we've all come to love.

Does anyone know if RIM has made the fixes referenced above?

They might have. The 8700c isn't as bad as the 7290 when using 850Mhz but it will still cause nearby speakers to buzz.

I work in the corporate Av world and the BlackBerry buzz is everywhere. I am talking about professionally installed shielded high end systems and they still pick up the BlackBerry RF. Most cabling acts like an antenna and the blackberry RF is strong, even with channels down it still gets into the system. This is a GSM issue only as far as I know, my 7130 on the Telus network does not do this.

If you think GSM is bad, try any Nextel phone with Direct Connect. Press the Direct Connect buttons and you will get tons of radio interference. Then try it next to a computer monitor, but dont do it too long or you will damage the monitor.

Doug

I guess your IT person is not very smart, and/or has never owned a cell phone before.

Most of my users have their PC under the desk, so I install the BlackBerry cradle/USB cable on top of the PC. It's close enough for them to readily access the BlackBerry while the desk acts as an insulator and as a result the feedback noise from the telephone or desktop speakers is eliminated.

So what are we saying then? Just deal with it? It is 2006 now, did they come out with a fix? I can't imagine what the fix would be other than getting a new Blackberry. My Cingular 7290 is terrible in this regard. Every speaker in the house from 8 even 10 feet away. Makes my monitor go crazy. Even makes my RollerMouse go nuts. I can't imagine what it is pumping through my skull when I use it.

I love my Blackberry but it seems like the FCC ought to be having a fit about this kind of thing. Are there any kind of shielded cases/gloves out there? Can I wrap it in tinfoil? Anything?

With All this Said I need to fing the Pres of my Company some speakers for his PC that will not buzz like this it is driving him nutz and in turn he is driving me nutz!!! does anyone know of a good quality shielded pc speaker that can help reduce thr RF interference or stop it all together?

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

It probably won't help to get new one.I have the same problem as well at home. My subwoofer makes a buzzing noise whenever my 8700 is transmitting data.

Mine new-ish (6 mos) 8700 also doing this -- and for whatever reason, the particular sound it generates makes me feel violent. I've come "this close" to chucking the BB across the room just to make it stop ;) And forget even having the BB turned on if I want to listen to anything on noise canceling headphones or talk on my landline corded headset...

I saw from a 2005 post in this thread that this was something that was supposedly being addressed. Does anyone have any more recent info on that?

I have new (3 months) 8700c and have learned to tolerate the annoying interference on speakers (car, computer, tv, clock radio, etc).

I was, however, recently amazed when by BB was sitting on a small ledge over a GFCI outlet in my kitchen. There was a loud chatter coming from the outlet which I thought was just a deffective GFCI. Turns out it was the phone updating (validated by turning the phone on and off in the location and recreating the interference).

I would have to say it now concerns me carrying this around in my pocket all day......

The Blackberry-induced buzz on my speakers and headset phone (the amplifier cradle was between the two) was driving me crazy, so I started experimenting with ways to attenuate the RF interference. I found that a simple sheet of aluminum foil is a field expedient solution. I took a 24-inch length, folded six inches in from the long ends to provide stability, which then formed a U. When rested on its side, it's about 12 inches high. I placed this around my Blackberry with the open end to the front, and the buzz problem went away. There does not appear to be any interference with the operation of my Blackberry. It LOOKS funny sitting on my desk, but I can live with that. Next step is figure out how short I can cut it without the problem coming back, and then asking someone to bend a small piece of tin to the same dimensions.

There were extensive tests done years ago to see if the RF from standard cell phones does any damage to organic tissue(your brain), and they couldn't find any link to cancer, or anything. It was on a documentary or something...

The sound that you are hearing is voice coil of the speaker being energized by the electromagnetic field produced by the cell phones radio transmitter. A speaker voice coil is technically an "inductor", which is often used in circuitry for it's magnetic and resonant properties. This makes it an excellent "antenna", and a speaker's voice coil design is almost identical to that of the antenna used on standard metal detectors(aka treasure finders). Couple their RF sensitivity with the fact that the speakers cone structure will highly amplify any voice coil resonation in the audible frequency range, and you have yourself a very efficient RF receiver/amplifier, although of admittedly useless bandwidth. Almost any speaker is capable of this, although shielded speakers will block most of this. Most speakers aren't well shielded, though, and this includes some very high-end speaker with cabinets made only of wood. While the actual drivers, themselves, inside the cabinet may have some built-in shielding, the increased efficiency of the more expensive driver will make them that much more sensitive in the first place. Couple that with the fact that the larger driver size(likely the woofer or subwoofer) in a typical home tower enclosure amplify whatever is picked up by the voice coil even more than a small speaker, and you could see how it might be quite loud also...

All of this with no active amplification... Cool, huh???

Edit: Forgot to say that, as partially mentioned before, the amount of interference can depend greatly on the frequency range that the phone is operating in, and this can depend on what carrier's SIM is installed in the multi-band phone. Since lower frequencies inherently travel further over a given distance with less loss than a higher frequency, Nextel's iDEN network has been one of the worst, operating in the 800-900MHz range...

If you find that a thin metal layer will block most of the RF interference, you could always coat the inside of the back cover of your BB with a thin layer of metal. You could remove the back cover(and battery cover, if applicable), and spray the insides with spray paint or laquer. While still wet, you could then sprinkle and shake metal filings onto the inside until fully coated, and after that dries, spray over the metal filings a few more times. This would put a solid metal barrier around the back of your BB, similar to the aluminum foil solution...

now how does that song go . . . "he wrapped his head in aluminum foil and rubbed his belly with linseed oil"

you should probably use olive oil . . . fewer transfats!

The cause of that annoying voice when your phone received any signal is the poor designed of your computer audio speaker.Put some metal shield of your audio speaker amplifier,observed proper grounding to prevent rf interference enter on your audio devices.