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General discussion

Cell Phones and Magnets

Nov 3, 2006 10:13AM PST

My wife gave me a cellphone case that stays closed with two magnets. Is it safe to use with a cell phone? What about with a with a micro SD card which my cell phone has?

Discussion is locked

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i don't know
Nov 8, 2006 10:23AM PST

i don't know if it is safe or not, but you should keep it away from the magnets, just for precaution...
i have never had a problem with magnetic storage and magnets, but people say it's not that safe to keep them close...

magnets are powerful... by moving them, you alter the magnetic field, and it creates electricity!
and if you alter an electric field (by turning on and off a circuit), you create magnetism...

but i don't know if you have any dangerous electromagnetic thing at your house that can erase data from your cell phone...

if you have a floppy disk (does it still exist?), try to erase it by moving the magnets around it... and you will be afraid enough to respect the laws of phisics!

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Magnets and cellphones
Nov 10, 2006 8:41AM PST

Magnets are extremely bad for hard drives. The hard drives are usually using a magnetoferrous surface, so a magnetic field can interfere with the data integrity.

As alexandre points out, magnets are always risky around electronics, but at the same time, electronics are full of magnetic field. I imagine the magnets in your phone case are too weak to cause damage to a phone that doesn't have a hard drive in it. Probably too weak to cause much risk at all. But there is a risk and it's a good question to ask.

Molly has a case for her Treo that has a magnet on it and she hasn't had any problems with it.

I've even seen magnets in cases for regular iPods. I'd steer cleear of those, even though the danger is small, it's still much more with a hard drive.

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Magnets only affect some phones...
Nov 15, 2010 12:28AM PST

Some of the "Smart Phones use a magnetic switch and can be turned on by a magnet, so far it only seems to happen when the phones are inside the case/holster...nobody seems to be certain why yet.

Flip top phones are largely unaffected by magnets, at least those of the strength that you or I come in contact with. It's a fallacy that magnets of the same general variety harm hard drives, There are two very large magnets inside most hard drives!!!