iPhones may be running interference on iPods

As I said over at Macworld last week, carrying around an iPhone hasn’t yet freed me from the tether of carrying around my 30GB iPod as well. Since they’re about the same size, I often find myself slipping them into a pocket together, or laying them down on the desk next to each other.

Then I started to notice something odd with my iPod. I’d go to adjust the volume and the meter would jump all over the place. Once could have been a fluke, but after a couple times, I hit upon a realization: it only seemed to happen when the iPod was in close proximity with my iPhone.

It doesn’t happen all the time: my guess is that it’s when the EDGE radio is at its most active, transmitting either data or voice. Somehow, that appears to wreak havoc with the iPod’s touch sensitive scrolling, even from several inches away. Pointing the antenna end of the iPhone (the black plastic part) at it seems to make it fluctuate the most.

I don’t know much about FCC regulations, but I thought that devices weren’t supposed to cause harmful interference? This never happened with my old phone (a CDMA/EVDO handset). Anybody else noticed this with their iPhone, or with other phones?

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