Comment by kurthr

When close enough, and especially when GSM antennas are mis-tuned it's perfectly possible to turn on the ESD protection diodes on low voltage inputs. For 1.8v IOs with weak current driven pull-ups you can trip the TTL threshold hysteresis.

I saw this once in a pre-production cell phone where tact-switch IO inputs were being spuriously activated. Figuring out that part of the UI required pushing physical buttons, suddenly made sense of "why do your batteries only last an hour".