360°: The Silent Killer

Cellphones are very much the 'must have' stuff that are had by simply everyone in the world today, be him a peasant from Bangladesh, or a Sydneysider who twitter frequently using his more-advanced PDA or Blackberry. They're just so important that we can never dream of getting rid of them, regardless of the known side-effects that these gadgets are carrying to us users.

Being well-informed of the apparent danger of shortwave radiation, which cellphones can easily emit to us everyday without most of us realizing it, I got freaked out a little, but there seemed to be nothing I could do to help me alleviate my anxiety before.

But I just found an extremely useful website that would make it easier for me to protect myself and the ones I love. The site contains a comprehensive list of thousands of mobile phones available in the market, together with the descriptions with regards to the phones' respective "Specific Absorption Rates (SAR)", which is a "measure of how much radiation is absorbed by the body when the phone is sending a signal to the network." Apart from having detailed descriptions on the level of hazard that each phone model exerts on us users, the site is also amazingly user-friendly. It has been designed to make it easier for us to make comparisons between a phone model to another. The is also a list of 'the Safest Phone', and vice versa. Therefore, it can be said that this site gives you proper guidelines on the most 'harmless' cellphone options out there; something that sounds trivial at first, but it can indeed increase your lifespan for a few years, I guess!

I took the opportunity to check for my phones' SAR, and the results left me terrified. I'm currently using two cellphones; Nokia 6500 slide, as well as Sony Ericsson s500i, which I got as my birthday present 2 years back but still functions well.

The results shows that SAR while held at the ear for my SE phone is 1.35W/kg, with the hazard bar being

You might think that my older SE phone must've its hazards explained by its relative age compared to my newer Nokia, but the result for the latter didn't seem to be comforting, either. Its SAR while held at the ear is 1.28W/kg, which makes it meekly safer to use compared to my SE. Looks like another trip to a mobile phone store is truly justified this time around.

So, if you feel like purchasing a better, safer phone, Samsung Impression SGH-a877 is for you. Not only does it look sleek, it exposes you to the least amount of SAR among its peers. With its SAR value while held at the ear being as low as 0.35W/kg, it's just the safest bet for the people out there, whose safety is put at their highest priority.

The worst phone out there is clearly Motorola's MOTO VU204. Its value of SAR is as high 1.55W/kg while held at the ear. A clear no, no.