Smartphones and Time Travel

Orianna2000 · May 17, 2014

Say you have a smartphone and you jump seven hundred years into the future. I assume technology will have advanced to the point where we won't use cellular communication anymore, so I'm guessing her phone won't be able to get a signal.

I don't know how these things work, so if her phone isn't able to connect to a cellular network, will it still display the date and time? Or will it be blank? Or show an error message? Or is it possible it might display the day/time it was when it last connected to a cell tower? (Thereby fooling her into thinking she hasn't time traveled?)

If necessary, I can sidestep the issue by having her phone be fried by the time travel. Regardless, I am curious of what a cellphone would display if all the cell towers were gone.

WeaselFire · May 17, 2014

Orianna2000 said:
I assume technology will have advanced to the point where we won't use cellular communication anymore, so I'm guessing her phone won't be able to get a signal.

Why guess? What does your story need? Does her smart phone or the use/non-use affect the plot line? Why are you even worried about it? And where does a maiden who time warped here from the 1300's learn how to use an elevator?

As for your curiosity, drive to the middle of the Utah desert. Or the Everglades. Or just about any concrete structure with an elevator. When you have no bars, look at your phone.

Jeff

Orianna2000 · May 17, 2014

WeaselFire said:
Why guess? What does your story need? Does her smart phone or the use/non-use affect the plot line? Why are you even worried about it?

As I said, I'm curious. I need her to not know whether she's time-jumped or not, so I will likely just fry her phone. But I want to know what my other options are.

And where does a maiden who time warped here from the 1300's learn how to use an elevator?

Elevator? Sorry if I wasn't clear---she isn't from the 1300s, she's from the 28th century. She jumped back to our time for a year, then returned home. Since she isn't controlling her time-jumps, she is understandably concerned about what century she's ended up in.

As for your curiosity, drive to the middle of the Utah desert. Or the Everglades. Or just about any concrete structure with an elevator. When you have no bars, look at your phone.

Great idea, but if I had a way of doing that, I would've. I live in the suburbs and can't drive. :-/

benbradley · May 17, 2014

If it takes five seconds for the time travel event to occur, and presuming the phone is "traveling through time" with her, the phone will show five seconds later. The phone has an internal clock that keeps time (this internal clock may drift 5 to 30 seconds a day) when there's no signal. When there's a signal, the phone's internal date and time is updated to the cell tower's time, which is accurate to a fraction of a second. There almost surely won't be a signal the phone recognizes, because the signal standards will have changed, if they even still exist as radio waves.

If she goes a year into the future, the phone will display the date a year in the future, because that's the updated date it will get from a cell tower. If she goes 700 years in the future, it will still display the date when she traveled, plus however many days it's been since then, until the battery goes dead.

Orianna2000 · May 17, 2014

benbradley said:
If she goes a year into the future, the phone will display the date a year in the future, because that's the updated date it will get from a cell tower. If she goes 700 years in the future, it will still display the date when she traveled, plus however many days it's been since then, until the battery goes dead.

Ah, this is very helpful. Thanks!

Smartphones and Time Travel

Orianna2000

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WeaselFire

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Orianna2000

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benbradley

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Orianna2000

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