Its only a slight exaggeration, while you will never be able to read the newspaper, it is possible to recognize a newpaper but that also requires perfect atmospheric conditions, something you almost never have over an ocean.
People also fail to grasp just how big the search area is. Something like 8 million square kilometers. Enough to fit 8,000,000,000,000 newspapers and you are looking for partially submerged debris (possibly not much bigger than a newspaper) hidden in waves. To say thats monumental is an understatement.
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Cell phones dont connect to satellites, nor does wifi. The antenna's and frequency simply dont work at that range and crossing the ionosphere, even if there is something that tries to register it. If the plane had some satellite data connection for onboard internet or telephone, then Im assuming it was shut down along with acars, transponder and all other comms.
Phones do connect to satellites, not for communication tho but for gps and other similar services (unless we are speaking about a satellite phones which use satellite as a mean of communication and by pass ground network) but the gps network deals with billions of devices and I believe it is not built to pin point or track people the other way around, also the phones are probably dead either battery drainage or just being under water