The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I know a lot of recent topics have been about magnetism affecting watches decreasing the accuracy immensely, but my question is: For things such as cells phones and other electronic devices (any device that can cause a magnetism problem in a watch), how close do they have to come to the watch to actually affect it? Cause if a cell phone from like 2 feet away caused the watch to be magnetized, that would suck... I'm assuming 2 feet would be an extreme case, but I would like to be cleared up on this because it could be a hassle if the watch is constantly magnetized.

Thanks,
crasian1030

That's a difficult question to answer because there are a lot of factors at play.

The potential problem is created if the watch is withing the magnetic field, and the size of that field will depend on the size and power of the magnet. In a cell phone I imagine that the watch would need to be pretty much on top of the magnet because it's pretty small, but as has also been discussed there is the whole magnetic / electro-magnetic issue and I don't understand enough about electo-magnetism to know if that's a problem.

The other issue is that watches are all shielded from magnetism to some degree - the real issue is the balance spring and that's obviously inside the case and therefor shielded. Additionally some watches are designed to be anti-mnagnetic with soft iron cores to protect the hairspring.

Finally, modern balance springs are made of materials that are designed to be resistant to magnetism - generally not completely anti-magnetic though.

In terms of cellphones specifically, I wouldn't store it next to a watch, but you won't need huge amounts of separation.

Ok, thanks. So it wouldn't be too much of a problem, good!