Wow, I have been coming to the same office location/desk for almost a year, and I typically bounce back and forth from 3G to one or two 4G bars intermittently throughout the hour. Since the update my 4G is stayed at full bars. That is absolutely excellent.
The resent update reverted back to the way the signal bars where displaying before 4.3 update.
The signal bars represent 1x voice instead of data. That is why the signal bars show higher even though data strength might be weak.