Do your signal strength bars look accurate?

vicw926a4

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That would explain why my bars are kind of all over the place as well. I have a consistent signal of between -70 and -95 depending on where I am in my house. But the phone still makes and receives calls.

If what you are saying is true, WTF? I always thought bars told the tale for the voice signal strength. That's what they used to do before there was even such a thing as a data signal.

Not saying you aren't right, just sayin.

No kidding..... I just verified that the bar display does switchover while a call is active, so apparently it is true. Whenever I dialed #48, the bars suddenly jumped up from nothing to 4 bars, and back to nothing when I hung up. I agree with your WTF.. I haven't been able to find anything to document that fact, and I had no expectation that the bars displayed had anything to do with Data/3g.
 

DaRkL3AD3R

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That would explain why my bars are kind of all over the place as well. I have a consistent signal of between -70 and -95 depending on where I am in my house. But the phone still makes and receives calls.

If what you are saying is true, WTF? I always thought bars told the tale for the voice signal strength. That's what they used to do before there was even such a thing as a data signal.

Not saying you aren't right, just sayin.

It's true my friend. I believe they decided to only show 3G signal unless 1x was being strictly used, such as in a phone call, because smart-phones rely on data more than 1x. On an older phone that data wasn't relied upon as heavily, such as my LG Voyager seen in the picture, it was more important to see the 1x signal at all times and being able to see 3G was just a bonus. As you can see, they are quite indeed separate signals, and now that I have my Network Extender installed all my phones maintain 4 bars for the 1x signal (for reference sake, this phone used to get 0-1 bars of 1x). But note that 3G has remained unchanged. I still get on average 2-4 bars of 3G signal.

Its just the way it is. Like I said, as long as your 1x signal (the dbm report in the Phone Status page) is high then you should be able to use your phone fine. Don't worry so much about the bars you see in your notification bar unless you're away from home, without Wifi and need to use data. Thats when those bars become a problem.



By the way, I'd greatly appreciate some clicked thanks for this post as it solidly confirms that the the issue Cory mentioned at the beginning of this thread is in-fact not an issue at all :)
 
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vicw926a4

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Hang on vic. You are telling us that you're getting 1 bar, but you have -67 dbm signal strength. I just want to confirm something with you: 1x and 3G are not the same. They are two seperate signals, and have seperate bars and signal strengths. The number reported under Phone Status is your 1X, radio signal. You do not see the bars for this network unless you are making a phone call. The bars you see in your notification bar when your phone is idle at the homescreen is 3G. The fact that you have -67dbm means you have perfect signal, but only for making phone calls or sending texts. If you're getting only 1 bar for 3G, that means your data signal in your house is poor. The only option to workaround this is to use Wifi or to go elsewhere, as there is no Network Extender that I am aware of for the 3G signal :(

The 1x extender only uses 40kbps of your home broadband bandwidth per call, with a maximum of 3 simultaneous calls (120 kbps up/down load.) 3G uses upwards of 2mbps (1000kbps = 1mbps just for reference,) and having this attached to your router could have a serious impact on your internet usage on other devices, not to mention:

To have a 3G Extender in home seems pointless, as any home with a broadband router most likely has Wifi. And since Wifi is on average, 5-10x faster than 3G, it would be futile to want to extend 3G signal when one could just connect to their true broadband.

But to summarize as for your bars problem: 1x (network extender) is not 3G, and thus putting an extender in your home will not improve your 3G bars. Hope this cleared things up for you.

Thanks for all that. I had no expectation of 3G access via the Extender - my purpose was to improve voice only. I always use the Wi-Fi at home.

The bigger story, of course is that the bar display shows 3G strength, except when on an active call. I did verify that on my DX, and it is apparently true, which is encouraging. I'm astounded that this display is being used this way, and I haven't been able to find anything in a quick search of the User Guide or website that explains that oddity. Do you know a reference description for it? I wonder if it is an Android thing, or what? Never would have guessed it is the case, and I bet thousands of other new users have been scratching their heads over the apparent irregular bar activity.

One other point - you referred in another post you said your Signal:Noise ratio dropped from -100 to -110 to -40 to -55. Is there a Signal:Noise Ratio display on the DX? I haven't been able to find any, except for the Signal Strength.

I just saw your latest response that you put in after I started making this entry. I surely do thank you for your help. I think this point ought to be clarified and made more apparent, especially to new users.
 

Matt Kline

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It's true my friend.

I'll be damned.

I just confirmed this myself by calling for my data estimate a few times. Every time I made a call my bars jumped consistently every time to 2 bars (this is the worst place in my house). Everyday I find out this phone is less and less flakey. I love it.

On a side note, is it just a coincidence that the worst calling signal I get happens to be really close to my modem? I wonder if the wifi is throwing off my 1x signal. But unlike the iphone, I can still make and receive calls.
 

Matt Kline

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I was also just thinking that this is either Android or Motorola specific, since the iphone antennagate fiasco is dealing with a voice signal being registered by the on screen bars.
 

DaRkL3AD3R

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No problem to both you guys. Likewise I am glad to have confirmed that the Droid X is functioning properly and is not having signal issues :)

As for the signal to noise ratio I mentioned, that's what I "believed" the dbm signal strength stood for; how much of your signal is just noise and how much is actual signal. The closer you get to 0 means the better your signal, thus the lower you are the more "noise" you are picking up, which in-turn has negative impacts on your accurate signal. I could be getting overly technical here though and for future references I will refer to the dbm as signal strength as I should :)

Edit: I haven't read anything regarding this, so I can't say whether its an Android thing or Motorola. But I'm willing to bet it's just the software and you could very easily get an app or with the proper maintenance OTA update have the option of viewing both signal strengths in the notification bar. I highly doubt we'll get this option, from Motorola at least, but I can't see why we can have apps to do all sorts of nonsense, but can't get one to read your signal strength from the Phone Status page, and place it in the form of bars in your notification bar (pst pst developers, this would be nice ;) )
 
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Cory Streater

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This seems like a reasonable explanation, and I appreciate your posting this.

Having said that, I haven't had a Verizon or Sprint smartphone in years that displayed 1x connectivity and 3G/EVDO connectivity separately. I'm sure there have been some, but none of the Droid line nor the Windows Mobile or Palm phones I've owned have done this. Furthermore, the X's signal meter behavior is much more erratic than the HTC EVO and Droid (in the same location).

I'm not saying your wrong, but if you're right, then the way these guys have been displaying signal strength on these phones has been wrong for years.
 

DaRkL3AD3R

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No problem Cory.

I'm sure these phone manufacturers and maybe even the carriers have their reasons for displaying your signal strength as they do. Most likely for simplicity sake. But everything seems fine once you see your dbm readout, make a call and find out your bars are exactly where they should be. I get the feeling that if we had two seperate sets of bars and two seperate dbm signal strength readouts this would be perfectly clear. Sadly yes its wrong of them to be so misleading and not give the full details. Not much we can do except cope with it :(

At least we know theres nothing wrong with our phones, and at the end of the day thats what really matters
 

vicw926a4

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...Edit: I haven't read anything regarding this, so I can't say whether its an Android thing or Motorola. But I'm willing to bet it's just the software and you could very easily get an app or with the proper maintenance OTA update have the option of viewing both signal strengths in the notification bar. I highly doubt we'll get this option, from Motorola at least, but I can't see why we can have apps to do all sorts of nonsense, but can't get one to read your signal strength from the Phone Status page, and place it in the form of bars in your notification bar (pst pst developers, this would be nice ;) )

I just found and installed a free App called REAL SIGNAL, which puts bar displays for CDMA and EVDO side-by-side in the notification bar. Looks great to me. The CDMA bar readout is consistent with distance from my extender. The EVDO readings pretty much parallel the regular bar readings, and it shares its erratic nature. It can be configured easily, and the service can be turned on and off within the app. Looks like it will be really helpful, not to be fixated on Bars, but it illustrates which service the regular DX bar display is showing.
 

DaRkL3AD3R

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I just found and installed a free App called REAL SIGNAL, which puts bar displays for CDMA and EVDO side-by-side in the notification bar. Looks great to me. The CDMA bar readout is consistent with distance from my extender. The EVDO readings pretty much parallel the regular bar readings, and it shares its erratic nature. It can be configured easily, and the service can be turned on and off within the app. Looks like it will be really helpful, not to be fixated on Bars, but it illustrates which service the regular DX bar display is showing.

That sounds great vic thanks for the tip. I'll definitely give this app a look
 

Chad_G_77

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One other thing to consider... when your phone is connected to wifi it lowers the radio power so that it only needs enough juice to monitor for incoming calls. Once your wifi is connected, it starts grabbing all the data from there. When your wifi disconnects, your radio signal shoots back up. I'm not sure if that correlates to the signal strength you're showing on your phone, but thought I'd throw that in.
 

Cory Streater

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I don't think that Real Signal program is totally compatible with the X. When I look at the "signal" and "high" values, they read something like -12 and -1 respecitvely or some weird value like that. On my Incredible it's reading numbers like -74 and -59, respectively which seems like numbers I would expect to see. Nonetheless, I was up the street from my house earlier, in a strong signal area, and all of a sudden I went from 4 to 0 bars. It failed to connect to the network and the bottom of my phone started getting really warm. I've had this happen a few times, so I guess an exchange or a return is in my future :/
 

vicw926a4

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I don't think that Real Signal program is totally compatible with the X. When I look at the "signal" and "high" values, they read something like -12 and -1 respecitvely or some weird value like that. On my Incredible it's reading numbers like -74 and -59, respectively which seems like numbers I would expect to see. Nonetheless, I was up the street from my house earlier, in a strong signal area, and all of a sudden I went from 4 to 0 bars. It failed to connect to the network and the bottom of my phone started getting really warm. I've had this happen a few times, so I guess an exchange or a return is in my future :/

I know - I don't understand the digital values in the app on the EVDO side, but I think it is giving pretty good relative strength readings on EVDO and especially CDMA. I think it really provides some valuable visual evidence.

I'm beginning to suspect that the radical swings on the regular DX bar display that I experience, are due to switchover between 3G and 1G, and that the regular display is showing the signal strength of whichever mode is currently active. In my case, 3G is quite weak, so that when it is active, I typically see 1 bar or so - when it switches to 1G, I see a solid 4 bars. I plan to see if I can find a means of disabling 3G to confirm that for myself.

I'm also frustrated that no one from Motorola or Verizon has provided a concise description of how the bar indicators actually function. It's pretty pathetic, I think.
 

DaRkL3AD3R

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One other thing to consider... when your phone is connected to wifi it lowers the radio power so that it only needs enough juice to monitor for incoming calls. Once your wifi is connected, it starts grabbing all the data from there. When your wifi disconnects, your radio signal shoots back up. I'm not sure if that correlates to the signal strength you're showing on your phone, but thought I'd throw that in.

I saw this today as well, and can confirm. It definitely drops signal so its just enough.
 

Dubbayoo

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My last phone, basic LG VX540something flip showed 4 bars all the time because I have network extender at home. It usually showed 1-2 at best before I got that.

My Droid X sometimes shows no bars until I actually make a call, then it will jump to 3-4. Call quality is excellent though.
 

Topweasel

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So let me get this right. Just want to make sure I am reading this right.

1. By Default 3G is represented by the bars.
2. When 1X is in use or, 3G is disabled, or 3G signal is lost the bars represent 1X signal.
3. When connected to Wifi 3G is disabled.
4. When connected to Wifi 1X antenna is powered only enough to maintain minimum connection to receive calls.
5. So basically the signal strength bars can go all over the place depending on where you are and what task you are currently doing.

As for why not show 1X as a basis. Why do that? Just about every square inch of not Alaska gets 1x service so of course 3G would be more pertinent to a smartphone.
 

Chad_G_77

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I've yet to experience no 3G signal so I can't verify the part about 1X being in use... But when my phone is on 3G and I'm not connected to wifi, my phone shows bars as well as a 3G logo in the top right corner. Anytime you're connected to 3G, you'll have both the bars and the logo.

As for being on wifi, yes, this disables the 3G part so that the phone is not having to use as much radio power. It's a bigger drain on the battery to have the radio constantly searching for a data signal and the wifi draws less power since it stays connected to one specific source. When connected to wifi, the phone basically goes into a low-power monitoring situation for incoming calls.

I've tried a couple of different scenarios to test my battery drain. One day at the office I turned my wifi off and used 3G only. This caused my battery to run out by early afternoon following a lot of usage. The next day I turned the wifi back on and let it stay connected all day. My battery life was much better and I still had 40% at the end of the day.