Gadgetory

I'm jessica's all court for CNN here with josh Stone of RootMetrics now they partner with cnet to provide the coverage maps that you see for mobile phones on cnet com and I'm going to see just how they independently test the signal strength and the data connections for all the cell phone carriers in the area so Josh this is a pretty big briefcase here and I see that you've got a bunch of phones and battery pack strapped to it what am I looking at our kit starts with off-the-shelf consumer phones there's a phone for each of the major carriers we're testing in the market and all of them are connected to this master device it's actually controlling and automating calls and each of these phones is running our proprietary software and collecting samples around signal data and texting what we typically do is we run in a proprietary software this randomly selects way points along a route for the drivers they're able to plan their routes and select three indoor locations at each way point that are publicly available like a supermarket a gas station that kind of thing so right now I see that these phones most of them look like they're calling a phone number what are they doing exactly these are actually calling a server and holding an actual call and testing the signal strength back to that server at the same time so they're going to upload what photos videos yeah exactly so every five minutes we will run through signal strength data uploads and download speeds and text performance now to the carrier's actually use your data to go ahead and find out where their weak spots are so that they can improve their network they can and do use that reporting to and improve technology throughout the markets great thank you so much this has been really fun thank you I'm Jessica doll court for C night you can catch all of our content at cnet com you