Type of waves used in cell phone comm?

[pgardn]

I have received conflicting information from the internet regaurding cell phone/mobile phone communication. Some articles site radio waves and others microwaves and still others mix the two when trying to explain the signals used by cell phones/mobile phones? What am I missing?

I did some experiments involving older cell phones and the newer I-phones. A wire mesh can clearly block some of the older cell phones ability to receive a signal but the I-phones seem immune. My experiments, which basically involved wrapping phones in wire mesh and calling them, prove what? are my observations faulty?

Finally I read that blue tooth technology uses radio vs. IR? But then the article explained how IR was used in "cell phones" so I got confused even further?

Help. As I type this, I am using a laptop, what type of waves is it receiving and sending. WiFi are classified as?

Thanks.

 

[jtbell]

I am using a laptop, what type of waves is it receiving and sending.

WiFi uses frequencies in the 2.4, 3.6 and 5.0 GHz frequency bands, depending on the protocol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

You can think of these as either at the upper end of the "radio" frequency range, or the lower end of the "microwave" frequency range.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum