Smart Phone And Magnets ?safe?

[tankerman1967]

Hey yall,

I am about to make me another cell phone case for my note 4 and I am trying to find out if a magnet flap will damage or hurt my phone. I have done a little research on this and have come up with about a 50/50 answer. Some say it will damage my mother board and others say it will now. I will be using a rare earth magnet on the flap and a small piece of metal on the case. I am unsure if I should.

I am hoping someone here is way smarter than I and can shed some light on it.

Thank yall in advance for yall's answers.

Jude

[raysouth]

Hello Tankerman,

I would have to go with those that say it may create a problem. Many of todays electrical items, cd's, dvd's, phones and medical devices such as pacemakers, etc., can suffer some somewhat.

Certain that there are more knowledgeable folks on the site and may be able to give better advice.

I use Velcro when I feel that a problem would present itself.

God Bless.

Ray

[NVLeatherWorx]

Although you find them used in several commercial models the majority of these magnets are very weak and don't pose much of risk as most modern devices do incorporate some shielding against ambient magnetic forces. However, using a rare earth version could pose an issue as they are typically natural in their magnetic properties and much stronger. The biggest issues where a magnet will affect anything is with your SIM cards and any added data cards; just like an old school computer disk or a CD, if you hit it with a magnet you will basically erase the data on it and we all know that the cards in our phones are what contain all of the operating systems and our favorite apps and other stuff.

I prefer to use a snap for mine as Velcro doesn't hold up to the constant use as well as a snap. I try not to use a magnet on anything that is intended for use with electronics.

As Ray said though, there may be other opinions here or even from outside of these forums so if you run across anything that is definitive (and sound in it's science) that is probably your best bet.

[Northmount]

Do a search here and you will find lots of info and lots of fairy tales too.

Many tablet and smart phone manufacturers sell their own branded cases with magnetic flaps. They also use separate magnets to turn the device's screen off when it is holstered. They use rare earth magnets for these cases, holsters, sleeves.

I had one case where it was questionable as to whether the magnets had caused a smart phone to seize up. Had to be rebooted by removing the battery and restarting it. It turned out the molded case was a bit too tight and was holding 2 or more buttons pressed on. Stretched the case and problem solved.

The processors and memory used in these devices are not affected by magnets. They don't have magnetic properties.

Even the old floppy disks were relatively immune to magnets. It takes an alternating magnetic field to erase or damage magnetically stored data. You might be able to simulate that by rapidly flipping a magnet over the storage material, but I haven't been able to do that.

And by the way, CDs and DVDs are optical, not magnetic. So no risk at all to magnetic damage.

If you want to be paranoid, keep cell phones away from DVD and CD players, and other sensitive electronics, including unsheilded network cables. I've seen the results for these, sometimes just a reboot, other times expensive repairs required.

Tom

[byggyns]

The only issue I've had with magnets and tablets / phones is that sometimes a magnet will wake up the device or select options on a screen unintentionally. I have a set of work keys with a magnet to release secure display locks. There have been occasions where the magnet brushed against the pocket where my phone was & woke it up. It decreases battery life, but other than that, no issues.

[tankerman1967]

thank yall for yalls insight. I think I will stay away from them. might go with a snap or something.

Thanks again

[cgleathercraft]

SD cards and flash drives are both electronic storage and not magnetic storage. Magnets will not affect them. Tried this myself multiple times without any data loss. I believe the same would go for SIM cards but I won't put my money on it in case I'm wrong.

One of my degrees is Computer Forensics. We tested this theory in the lab and found that it took an extremely strong magnet to have any affect on even the most vulnerable of digital media. Hard drives themselves have a rather large rare earth magnet inside of them (at least the older ones did). Even then the failure wasn't from the erasing of data, it was the read/write heads crashing into the platters when the magnet got close enough. Didn't cause data loss but made it VERY difficult to recover the data. Newer hard drives (and any magnetic storage for that matter) are mostly unaffected by any kind of magnetic interference unless you have a device specifically designed to scramble magnetic storage.

Tape drive erasers will scramble most forms of storage, including credit cards, but are rare to come across. Ran one across a running laptop...fried every piece of hardware inside of it.

long story short - unless your getting an MRI with your phone in your pocket, your data should be safe.

[TheCyberwolfe]

CGLeathercraft is right - I'm an IT guy by day, and modern devices are safe from magnetic interference. Go ahead and use the magnets on the flap.