Use your mobile phone to unlock car
Posted by Tim Hillebrand on 07/1/08 in General
There is an email circulating that states that you can unlock your car door keyless lock with a cell phone. If you lock your keys in your car, you can supposedly call home if you have a spare set of keys. Ask the person who answers to hold your remote key device up to the phone and push the open button. If you hold your mobile phone about a foot from the door, it is supposed to unlock the door even though it is a different kind of frequency. Yet some people swear in works. Others say it’s bunk.
I lost my extra key thingy so I can’t try it myself. If you would care to try it and let me know the results, I would be interested to get to the bottom of this. And, if you have an explanation of how it could possibly work, I would be interested to hear that as well.
Thanks for your help.
Written by Tim Hillebrand · Filed Under General
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As with most unsolicited emails of this kind, it’s a hoax.
yep, it’s a hoax:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/keyless.asp
…Though I would pay good money to see a flashmob descend on a shopping center parking lot and all try to open car doors with their phones.
I’m sure it works, it’s the same principle I use for hunting Rabbit. I hide in the bushes and making noises like a lettuce. Maybe I can just hide my phone in the bushes and catch them that way.
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/keyless.asp
I love these kinds of hoax email. It merely serves to point out that most people have no understanding of virtually anything that they use/own/operate in their lives.
It is all magic to them.
Amazing that it can be funny and sad at the same time
As Mr. Clarke said, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Of course, I have always felt the adverse was true as well…any sufficiently subtle magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Z
No, the guys over on CNET’s Crave blog (http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9943547-1.html) explained it about a month ago:
“Your phone as a key The most preposterous tip promises that you can unlock your car door with the magic of a cell phone. It goes something like this: “If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away.”
Even if the e-mail says something like “It works fine!”, this is pure fantasy. Keyless entry works on a radio frequency, and a radio frequency cannot travel over a phone line. Also, as anyone who has a car with keyless entry can attest, you have to be close to the car for it to work.”
Had cause to try it one day in desperation. Locked my keys in the boot, so got my wife to try it for me with her set of keys from home.
Didn’t work.
Ended up breaking into the car in the usual way, popping the boot and canceling the (inevitable) alarm once I had my keys in my hand.
I can say it works. I have a BMW 530 and I phone my wife, she have a spare keys and it works!!!