I know how that could happen (I’m an EE):
You can vary the frequency at the towers quickly and at regular intervals to force the phone to relock on the signal. It forces the phone to transmit continuously.
Phones are just radios. The ratio between transmitting and remaining passive and receiving is called ‘duty cycle’.
Normally, once your phone locks on to a tower its passive until it has a reason not to be. Duty cycle could be as low as 5%.
You can force the phone to keep relocking with the tower such that the duty cycle approaches 100%.
I don’t think it had anything to do with the cold.
Thanks for that info about the phone losing its charge so fast. A new type of cell tower was pointed out to me today. It is much lower than previous towers and just looks different. We saw several of them and wondered if they were for 5G or what. Maybe just for ruining people’s ability to use their phones when they are in DC. ... coming soon to a place near you?
Interesting. Is there anything someone could bring or use to stop this signal?