I live in a rural area and am constantly cursing my phone because the signal was lost right in the middle of a conversation or because I needed to call someone but couldn’t because I had no signal. After some preliminary research, I found some mobile phone boosters in various places online so I took them to the test.to answer the question - do they work - or is it hype?

At $300 - $1000 for vehicle use systems, these babies aren’t cheap to just go blow your money on without knowing if they really work or not.  The big question is “how do you know if they really work without buying one?”

I was fortunate enough to have a friend who swore by his and said he could get reception anywhere with it - but to be perfectly honest - I did not believe him, so I asked for a “test drive” of his system for a week. He was very reluctant on giving it up at all but did agree to let me have it for the weekend so I could perform a series of tests with several phones and in various dead areas that I knew of.  The system I borrowed from him was the Cyfre DBSW 819 “Poconos”, which also receives some rave reviews online. Now this isn’t one of those stickers that everyone was trying to sell 5-10 years ago that only managed to accomplish one thing - voiding your warranty. Instead, this is an actual antenna/repeater system that is installed directly into your vehicle.

Let me first start off by saying that I absolutely despise installing anything in my vehicle. I like my vehicle to remain clean looking at all times, and quite frankly, I hate trying to move around in tight spots for vehicle installations. I was VERY pleasantly surprised as this was a snap to install - literally took 5 minutes, was really clean, and unles you were looking under my seat, you would not have even known it was there.

Now of course, this review is not about how easy it is to install this thing - it is about how well it works for its intended purpose.

I unplugged the system and went to my ‘favorite’ (sense the sarcasm?) dead zone, which happens to be only about 4 miles from my home. I pulled off the road and sure enough, no bars, no signal, no nothing.  So next, time to test the system - plug it in. Nothing…

After waiting a few minutes to see if this system is going to work or not, I am starting to get a little agitated. I was thinking, c’mon, at least give me one bar, but nope, nothing - nada. I started thinking that maybe I did something wrong so I went over my install. Antenna fastened  to rear window (check), power plugged into accessory outlet (check), upon physically checking the unit, I realized that I had not physically plugged the antenna into the unit - DOH!

Okay, so now the antenna is plugged in to the unit. Just to make sure there were no errors with the readings, I unplugged the unit and then back in to cycle the power, checked my phone…. 3 bars! What? Thinking this may be some sort of false positive, I sat there and stared at my phone for a minute and then thought, okay, I will make a call.  I called my wife, who was at home, and of course the first words out of her mouth are…., you guessed it “Where are you at?”

Of course, when I told her she didn’t believe me because none of the phone carriers get good reception in this area, so, being as it was so close to the house, she came to see. Her phone immediately gained 2 bars of reception when she came to my truck (these have a very limited range of only about 5-7 feet).

Of course, I tested the unit out in NUMEROUS other spots across the coast where I normally have little to no reception. What I have noticed is that it does not work on “specialty” networks for things like email, instant messenger, etc, but works great with normal phone networks. I tested this on phones from Verizon, Cellular South, T-Mobile, and Sprint/Nextel and it worked fabulously with all tried.

The Cyfre system, in my opinion, is the best thing you can get if you need reception in areas where you do not normally get it. Keep in mind that this does not create a signal, it is a more in tune amplifier which will “pull” signals from further away.

Since I need mine for work and my wife often travels a highway with little to no reception coming home from work at night, I ordered two - 1 for me and one for her. $300/unit was well worth the investment.

So in answer to the question of do they work, you will hear a resounding YES from me!

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