Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

When it comes to smartphones, they've delivered us a lot of mobile computing goodness. But nothing great in technology-land seems to come along without a catch. In the cell phone world, the unsavory lining to success is radiation.

EWG (Environmental Working Group) has served up a plethora of appliance and smartphone test results as it relates to radiation. What this means to the user, that's debatable, but anyone can find articles and test results to support just about any position on the topic. At this point, an overarching rule of thumb is cell phone radiation is not good for the body, but how much can the human body take is another question. Looking specifically at smartphones, EWG tested 83 products, and out of the bunch Motorola came away the loser. As for Apple?...

Apple's iPhone products faired in the middle to lower end of the pack (in terms of radiation output), and that's a good thing. Apple's iPhone 4 was the 36th lowest radiation producer, while the iPhone 3GS came in at 39 and the iPhone 3G faired the best of them all at 22nd. Interesting that Apple's iPhone 4 proved better in terms of lower radiation output than the 3GS...

9 of the top 20 phones performing the worst were Motorola devices. Specifically, the Droid line is not a good one to be holding next to your body or head, if you are worried about radiation. 4 HTC products made the worst of the worst top 20 offenders, while RIM's Blackberries were not stellar either, having 3 models performing badly. Both Palm devices, 1 Kyocera, and a Sony Ericsson model also made the bad boy list (Bad as in bad, not bad as in "cool" or "good")...

Whether Apple intentionally works on radiation or not, the results are promising. Here's to hoping the much rumored iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, due this summer or fall pushes Apple's rankings down even further - and that's a good thing.

1 Comment

1. Sachin de Silva ~ June 7, 2011 09:04
   I have an ipad 2. Does anyone know what the radiation levels are? Should I get a case?! Thanks a ton! :)

Leave your reply