I especially liked the article that alphaeagle posted from IEEE. Only thing is, something about that article just didn't seem... right.

I am not an engineer, but do have a little experience with radios and electronics (I've been a ham radio operator for many years, did rescue comm for Civil Air Patrol, and was a QA engineer for Kentrox). I felt that this article was a bit heavy on the fear (a lot of insinuation and an apparent lack of correlation) and left some gaps in the science. I would have felt much better about this article if I knew it had been peer reviewed (a la Nature, NE Journal of Medicine, etc.)

According to the world's most popular bet settler, cell phones emit 1-2 watts. As CZBB mentioned, perhaps the real risk comes from larger quantities of operating phones. That said, I would think it odd that a commercial aircraft body would make that effective of a waveguide (it's an awfully wide tube); the possibility of a 100 cell phone "death beam" killing the nav or other extraordinarily priced (and tested) avionics seems strange.

Considering that the captain is The Boss Of The Flight (and the FA's his/her representative), I'll respectfully comply with orders to disable PEDs. That said, it seems reasonable and sensible to ensure that the safety policies we put in place are borne out by science relevant to the technology we're using at the moment.

N.B. CZBB did mention the exceptionally annoying phenomenon of phones tripping multiple cell towers at once (and quickly draining the battery). That said, IIRC, Aircell's technology (used by GoGo Inflight) uses cell data networks, perhaps with a phased (electronic antenna "aiming"/focusing) array to avoid tripping a zillion towers at once.