Would a cellphone work on the moon?

Only if you installed a tower. No matter how good an antenna you had, a digital cellphone will only work within a certain range of a tower because of timing constraints (35km, or 120km for extended range)

Of course, you'd need some air to hear the phone ring, and a consumer grade phone might not take vacuum and extreme temperatures so well.

No it wouldn't, for a few reasons. One, the range of a cell phone is a mile at best. This means that if must be within a 1 mile radius of a cell tower to work (satellite phones are a different thing entirely but I'll get there). I'm not POSITIVE, but I'm pretty sure there are no towers on the moon, due to problems with the power grid, or rather, lack thereof, on the moon. Also, the satellite corresponding to the phone company one would have isn't pointed at the moon. It's pointed at, well, the earth so it can send and receive text messages, phone calls and various other data. So even if there was a cell tower on the moon, your call would just go off into space, depending on where you were on the moon (pointed towards or away from the earth and satellites). For about a mile. So, no, it wouldn't work. Well, not yet......

2

The moon no longer has cellphone service, but it once did. Cell phone service at the moon didn't last long. The Apollo 18 astronauts put up a cell phone tower. But the tower was destroyed by aliens.

GSM signals probably wont work on the moon. CDMA based service like verizon wouldn't too. in fact, any satelite based cell phone service will not work. why? for the simple reason that there is no communications satelite that is currently serving the moon. maybe in the future, but not right now. but can u imagine the long distance tariff?! astronomical!!!

If there was a cell tower on the moon, and another phone for it to actually call, then yes. You would also need all of the equipment for that cell tower to function properly.

They dont require gravity to make the signal work.

So providing you had a phone tower and an exchange and someone to call, you could call.

Exactly the same requirements as we experience here on earth.

So the answer is YES.

How would we know. We got no friends on the moon to ring!

No For two reasons.

Firstly it is too distant from any cell (hence CELL PHONE) and the electronics would overheat as they are air cooled.

No, there are no cell towers on the moon.