Originally Posted by
dia1
Had an interesting experience--had the phone in my briefcase in a room adjacent to the MRI suite at a hospital. My fully-charged battery was totally wiped out. It did recharge w/o a problem.
I don't know if a MRI directly affects a cell phone, but a quick google search confirmed my suspicion that MRI machines are installed in rooms which are protected by a farady cage to prevent outside RF signals from corrupting their readings. If you are inside the faraday cage, your cell phone will not see any signal and will go to full power trying to find one. They usually give up after awhile and go to a standby mode to prevent killing the battery too quickly.