Cell Phone Radiation in Nokia Phones (SAR)

I randomly found this page while goofing off trying to research cell phone radiation:

The Nokia SAR Information Page

Here’s another interesting page with some more non-Nokia SAR ratings on cell phones.

What’s a SAR Rating?
SAR stands for specific absorption rate, and it’s basically the measurement of how much radiation goes into a certain amount of tissue. For the USA, the limit set by the FCC is 1.6 W/Kg per 1 gram of tissue. That means anything over that (whether a cell phone’s next to your ear or on a belt or whatever) is not allowed for sale in the USA.

So what’s the SAR values in some Nokia mobile phones? Thought you’d never ask. See the full entry for more…


The worst phone (”most radiated phone”) in the US is actually the Motorola 120c, which I might add may be one of the crappiest and ugliest phones I’ve ever used in my entire life. It really sucks.

The problem with cell phone radiation and SAR values is no one actually KNOWS for sure how it affects the body. Sure, there’s some studies that say it “may” lead to an increased chance of cancer and brain tumors (or was that MSG?), but the problem is cell phones haven’t been around long enough to really study the long term effects. I think most people agree that whatever it does can’t be good.

So if we look up a couple of popular or upcoming Nokia cell phones, here’s what we get (the higher the number the worse it is):
Nokia Phone SAR value when next to ear SAR value “worn on the body”

Nokia N91 0.72 W/kg 0.31 W/kg
Nokia N90 0.22 W/kg 0.54 W/kg
Nokia N80 1.04 W/kg 1.02 W/kg
Nokia N71 0.19 W/kg 0.19 W/kg
Nokia N70 0.55 W/kg 0.72 W/kg
Nokia E61 1.14 W/kg 1.13 W/kg
Nokia 8801 0.64 W/kg 0.77 W/kg
Nokia 6682 0.82 W/kg 0.96 W/kg
Nokia 6260 0.77 W/kg 0.57 W/kg
Nokia 6101 0.79 W/kg 0.59 W/kg
Nokia 1110 1.21 W/kg 1.19 W/kg

So that’s that. The worst phone of them all, the Nokia 1110 aimed at emerging markets/developing countries really is the worst phone in terms of cell phone radiation. I guess it’s not too much of a surprise to see that the Nokia N61 PDA/Blackberry with one of the higher SAR values. The N71 has the lowest SAR rating of the bunch, and I’m not really sure why - it’s got some pretty decent high-tech features (dual cameras, 2 megapixel camera and vga cam for videoconferencing) along with the typical Nseries bells and whistles.

It is comforting to note that top five cell phones with the most amount of radiation come from some of Motorola’s older models. Remember the V70??

Then again, Motorola apparently has the lowest one with their MPx200 at 0.2 W/kg. Which matches the values we got for the Nokia N71.