HOUSTON -- Many Houstonians rely on their cell phones for a constant link to the world. So when the cell phone has static or drops calls, it can be a big nuisance.

A new product called the Internal Cell Antenna claims to solve cell phone shortcomings, but does it work? News2Houston consumer investigator Emily Akin put it to the test.

Armando Trevino uses his cell phone every day as part of his job as an editor for an online business newsletter.

When he started getting e-mails about a cell antenna he wondered, "does it?"

"It doesn't look like anything -- just a piece of plastic -- something painted on it, I didn't know. It doesn't look like it really is anything," Trevino said.

But looks can be deceiving so News2Houston had Trevino test it.

"The instructions were a little difficult to understand, but I guess I figured it out because it did work," Trevino said. "I noticed that it did improve my reception, especially in a part of town where I had never gotten reception before."

"We had so much demand for it, we had people calling and asking for it that we decided, well shoot, let's bring it in and give it a try," said Steve Greenbaum with Phone Warehouse.

Greenbaum owns Phone Warehouse. He said that they tested the cell antenna before they stocked it.

"We put them on a couple of phones and sometimes we saw a difference and sometimes we didn't see a difference," Greenbaum said.

But customers really seemed to like them.

"We sold quite a few of them and we had a lot of people who came back and bought seconds and thirds believing in them," Greenbaum said.

Trevino also thought it worked for him.

"It's worth the price to be able to get a signal where you might not otherwise get one," Trevino said.

The antennas sell for about $20 in stores. A check at various stores online found them as low as $5.