[Cboldt]

Your phone is seeking a cell tower, it's part of the phone function. If your phone fails to find a tower, it will keep hunting, a big power draw, until it finds one.

That phone/tower connection is what enables tracking your phone's approximate location over time, as long as it is on.

[Steven W.]

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

And, cell towers will switch you over to the next nearest tower to keep bandwidth available.

[STARLIT]

When my son was at college there wasn't a cell tower close by. Everyone had to talk outside on the lawns. I mentioned this to a Verizon supervisor/ because I was going to switch providers. Not that it would have helped in my thinking but I threatened any way.

The supervision told me it wasn't a problem to reprogram my son's phone. I first had to go to the Verizon store and tell them to strip all the programs off. Then take the phone to his college and have it programed while there at the college.

When they finished with the phone my son was able to talk while inside the buildings even though the tower was far away.

[EMI_Guy]

OK.

But I’m “seeing” a radiated signal coming from the phone. Why would it have to “send” in order to recognize a better cell tower connection. To me, that would be a “receive” state on the phone.

Is it a handshake so to speak the phone sends to the tower telling the tower “I’m connected to you right now?”