Well, you could….
But should you? Mobile cellular signal boosters like weBoost’s Drive Sleek are great for inside the car. Put the phone in its cradle and use your car’s Bluetooth to give you a great hands-free solution. With the phone in the cradle you’ll see a massive increase in reception even in areas with really bad cell service. It’s a great solution and one of the best things about it is, it’s not that expensive.
But is it right for home?
About ten years ago, several cell companies (including the one that would later become weBoost) sold kits that let you use a cradle booster at home. Essentially what you got was a power adapter and a way to mount the cradle on the desk. These proved to be unpopular and were eventually discontinued.
Really though if you wanted to you could build something like that very easily. You’d need something that adapted wall AC power to a 12 volt car cord. You can find that sort of stuff on Amazon all the time. You also would need some way to mount the cradle but again that’s not super hard. You could probably make something with parts on hand.
But that completely ignores the question of whether or not you should.
And my opinion is, you shouldn’t.
I think that a cradle booster for home is about the worst solution for cellular boosting. You have no choice of where to use the phone. It’s going to be wired to one specifc spot. You may as well have a land line if you’re going to do that. Sure you can use a Bluetooth headset and get some range, but it’s just not a very good solution all around.
You will certainly save a few dollars by doing something like this but it’s not going to make you happy. Maybe if you are in a trailer or something like that perhaps but I would think you would still want to be able to walk around. Perhaps a trailer could benefit from something like weBoost’s Drive 4G-X RV mobile cell booster but realistically that won’t be much less expensive than a small cell booster like the Home 4G. The Home 4G is a better option in this case as well.
It’s the gain, really
Mobile boosters are limited to 42dB of gain, and cradle boosters generally have far less. Even though you wouldn’t think you’d need a lot of gain for a small space, small spaces are often crowded with walls and wires just like larger one. I would recommend a 50dB booster at minimum even for a small space. Most of the consumer boosters today are at 65dB or more. That’s just recognition of the fact that you need a lot of power to overcome certain problems.
That’s the most important reason that you won’t find a mobile cell booster terribly appealing in your home. It just won’t work as well. Instead of trying to create a frankenbooster, shop for the great selection of signal boosters we have at Solid Signal. You’ll find a number of refurbished options that will help you save money and they’ll make more sense than using a mobile booster indoors.
