Anandtech - "Investigating the Galaxy Nexus LTE Signal Issue"

[budmonster]

How does someone know if a tower is capped or a phone is capped? I'm getting odd speeds. After you read my results, do you guys think my house is just in a bad 4G area or my GNEX or something else? I dont want to get a Rezound thinking that it'll fix my problems.

Here is what I'm getting at my house roughly:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4598810/home.png (Today I'm not getting anywhere near these.)

I decided to go to VZW at the mall the other night to check out the Rezound for speed comparisons(didnt have 4G on, they couldnt fix it?) Anyways, the mall is maybe 4 miles from my house. Halfway there at a red light I took this speed test:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4598810/halfway.png

Everything doubled and I also reached 4 bars. When I got to the VZW store I put my Nexus up to the model Nexus and did speed tests. Both our phones had 4 bars and we go the same speed, around 7-9mbps D/L and 4-5 U/L.

Is my phone fine, is my home location just not receiving a good signal? Its just odd that not matter where I go I just haven't reached speeds above 33/11. People getting 70/30 is insane to me. I'm in the suburbs, maybe I should try to get to downtown Pittsburgh and see what I get?

Don't know if this matters but a guy on another forum is in my area and said this:

Your GN speeds are WAY better than my GN speeds were. I wasn't getting 700kb to 3MB in my house, when on my TB I was averaging 15 down. And, I was getting no signal (3G) at work, when I did with my thunderbolt. And, when I walked into most buildings, I would often lose a data connection.
So, it may have been my phone, but I read enough about the phone series having issues that I decided to take it back. Now, all is good again. I am averaging 15megs down in my house again and I get a signal at work and I don't drop data in buildings.

 

[Droid800]

I'm going to be blunt in my response to this: You're a freak. Assuming you're not left-handed, in order to sufficiently block the CDMA antenna to the point that it actually causes a noticeable degradation in signal you must be death gripping the phone in a position more appropriate for throwing a split finger pitch than holding a mobile device. And worse, if either of your hands is able to block the LTE antenna in the upper-left corner of the device, then may the late Steve Jobs forgive me, but you're holding it wrong.

Click to view quoted image


In all seriousness, I would love to see a picture of how you actually hold the phone. For someone who so-called "small" hands, I would be absolutely amazed if your hands came anywhere near that LTE antenna while holding the phone normally in a portrait orientation.

http://cdn.androidcentral.com/sites...ostimages/108579/galaxy-nexus-review-main.jpg

http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Nexus-Prime-front.jpg

Not really. Because I have smaller hands, in order to reach the top, I have to have most of the left side covered. That results in the LTE antenna and the CDMA antenna being blocked. I've seen my data speeds stop in their tracks and freeze just from holding it the way that I need to hold it if I need to reach those elements.

 

[Johnly]

sad....oh pathetic...sad.....

 

[Iceman0803]

I'm starting to wonder if maybe VZW has made some optimizations to the LTE network in my area. I'm now consistently getting 14 to 15Mb download speeds vs the 4 to 6Mb speeds I was getting before. All with my signal strength averaging around -100 dbm.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[mitra88]

We were back in the movies today, but a different theater. There was a period when the Nexus dropped its data signal for about 15 minutes. During that time the Razr had either a 3G or 4G signal for about 80% of that time. This was different than what I've been seeing in other areas. Although I've said before the 'no data' time has been a bit better on the Razr than the Nexus, this time it was pretty significant.

Yet in other areas it seems that the Nexus holds on to a 4G signal a bit better. So it looks like there's a threshold below which the Razr still receives a data signal and the Nexus doesn't. Above that threshold it seems the Nexus is quicker to get and hold on to a 4G signal than the Razr. And above THAT threshold, there's little difference between the two.

I've come to believe this is far more important than these Speed Tests which I'm beginning to think are really not that accurate in real world performance. Just test two phones with very different speed test results and then try to load some web pages. You'll probably find little difference in the web page loading times and certainly not in line with what you'd think would happen as the result of those speed tests (assuming both are showing 4G signals).

It's a pretty complicated interaction and it's not even always consistent.

As for those coverage maps, I take them with a grain of salt.

Ken7. Thanks for the valuable feedback about your comparison test.

It seems like your tests are proving my prior assumption that the issue of GN might be just hand-off / authentication problem. GNs are simply letting go of the tower signal too early, compared with other 4G phones, I guess.

During the Christmas weekend, I ended up replacing my two other Thunderbolts with GNs. Now, I have three GNs in my hand.... One last Thunderbolt of mine is far away in west coast. So, I may no longer do the comparison test with Thunderbolt. But, now, I will try to do the comparison tests between the same GNs.

Once again, thanks for the valuable info. That comforted me who bought three GNs in two weeks!!!

 

[Ken7]

I would assume so. Nothing about the 4G network is actually going to change, they're just going to shift the voice calls from the 1x network to the 4G LTE network. The 1x radio in our phones would then no longer be used for voice calls until we are in a 3g only area.

Brandon

I saw that they began rolling this out this month. Anyone know which areas and is there a way to check on this on the phone?

 

[Ken7]

Not really. Because I have smaller hands, in order to reach the top, I have to have most of the left side covered. That results in the LTE antenna and the CDMA antenna being blocked. I've seen my data speeds stop in their tracks and freeze just from holding it the way that I need to hold it if I need to reach those elements.

If you're downloading something or accessing a website, why would you need to reach the upper part of the phone as he showed in his 'do not' pix? Hell, I'm left handed, don't have large hands and never wrap my hands around that area on the top. There's a difference between tapping the top area of the screen and gripping the phone around the top.

 

[Ken7]

Ken7. Thanks for the valuable feedback about your comparison test.

It seems like your tests are proving my prior assumption that the issue of GN might be just hand-off / authentication problem. GNs are simply letting go of the tower signal too early, compared with other 4G phones, I guess.

During the Christmas weekend, I ended up replacing my two other Thunderbolts with GNs. Now, I have three GNs in my hand.... One last Thunderbolt of mine is far away in west coast. So, I may no longer do the comparison test with Thunderbolt. But, now, I will try to do the comparison tests between the same GNs.

Once again, thanks for the valuable info. That comforted me who bought three GNs in two weeks!!!

No problem mitra88, thanks. One thing I should have noted, each time I lost signal on either phone in the theater, my wife's IPhone never lost its 3G signal. But even that isn't consistent. We were in a Petco store and toward the rear of the store I lost my 3G & 4G (didn't have the Razr at that point), but her Iphone also lost it's 3G even though it did hold on to it a bit longer.

I remember when I had my Charge, it would drive me nuts that almost every time I lost both a 3G & 4G signal (too frequently), my wife's IPhone would have it. Her response was always 'you have a bad phone'. She was right!

It will be interesting to see if you have any significant differences between your 3 Nexus's. I'm guessing not.

 

[CarryMe]

Her response was always 'you have a bad phone'. She was right!

Can you remind me what was wrong with your Charge? Thanks.

 

[Tom in Bristol]

I would assume so. Nothing about the 4G network is actually going to change, they're just going to shift the voice calls from the 1x network to the 4G LTE network. The 1x radio in our phones would then no longer be used for voice calls until we are in a 3g only area.

Brandon

And it doesn't look like VoLTE is happening any time soon. The post that first mentioned it in this thread referred to a Feb 8, 2011 article/announcement from VZW. A lot changes in tech so did a google for more...below are closing comments from a December 14, 2011 article:

VoLTE will NOT take off in 2012: ABI - CIOL News Reports

"So, a few operators will commercially launch VoLTE in 2012, either for pride or for IMS. They won’t see much VoLTE traffic until significant numbers of VoLTE capable phones make their way into subscribers’ hands. The majority of operators will continue to deploy LTE for data only and keep VoLTE in their plans for 2013 or later."

Think we wanna see the GNex work better before we see VoLTE.

 

[milan03]

How does someone know if a tower is capped or a phone is capped? I'm getting odd speeds. After you read my results, do you guys think my house is just in a bad 4G area or my GNEX or something else? I dont want to get a Rezound thinking that it'll fix my problems.

Here is what I'm getting at my house roughly:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4598810/home.png (Today I'm not getting anywhere near these.)

I decided to go to VZW at the mall the other night to check out the Rezound for speed comparisons(didnt have 4G on, they couldnt fix it?) Anyways, the mall is maybe 4 miles from my house. Halfway there at a red light I took this speed test:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4598810/halfway.png

Everything doubled and I also reached 4 bars. When I got to the VZW store I put my Nexus up to the model Nexus and did speed tests. Both our phones had 4 bars and we go the same speed, around 7-9mbps D/L and 4-5 U/L.

Is my phone fine, is my home location just not receiving a good signal? Its just odd that not matter where I go I just haven't reached speeds above 33/11. People getting 70/30 is insane to me. I'm in the suburbs, maybe I should try to get to downtown Pittsburgh and see what I get?

Don't know if this matters but a guy on another forum is in my area and said this:

If you live in the suburbs, don't expect to get over 30mbps unless your area is densely populated and your tower has a high traffic.
Verizon remotely dials down sites that aren't in a huge demand to preserve the bandwidth .
If you wanna see 70mbps go to a busy area of a large city during the off peak hours and try.
It has nothing to do with your phone, it has everything to do with the location.

 

[willstilson]

If you live in the suburbs, don't expect to get over 30mbps unless your area is densely populated and your tower has a high traffic.
Verizon remotely dials down sites that aren't in a huge demand to preserve the bandwidth .
If you wanna see 70mbps go to a busy area of a large city during the off peak hours and try.
It has nothing to do with your phone, it has everything to do with the location.

I was actually able to get 46.xx down and 15.xx up last night....on my gf's LG Revolution. AN LG REVOLUTION!....we were in Queens, around 1am. We were outside and I did a speed test on my Nexus and one on her phone to compare. My Nexus had full 4 bars and -88 dbm. It pulled 20.xx down and 5.xx up. She laughed at me. I repeated the tests on both phones, a few times, each time yielding similar results. I'd love Verizon to explain this to me, because this has nothing to with how many bars I have or how my phone displays signal strength. Her "first wave" LTE phone was able to consistently pull double the bandwidth of my GNex. Something is not right. Perhaps I should send both devices to Anandtech so they can publish another article on this.

 

[mitra88]

I was actually able to get 46.xx down and 15.xx up last night....on my gf's LG Revolution. AN LG REVOLUTION!....we were in Queens, around 1am. We were outside and I did a speed test on my Nexus and one on her phone to compare. My Nexus had full 4 bars and -88 dbm. It pulled 20.xx down and 5.xx up. She laughed at me. I repeated the tests on both phones, a few times, each time yielding similar results. I'd love Verizon to explain this to me, because this has nothing to with how many bars I have or how my phone displays signal strength. Her "first wave" LTE phone was able to consistently pull double the bandwidth of my GNex. Something is not right. Perhaps I should send both devices to Anandtech so they can publish another article on this.

Did you set both phones to the same server? Even at the same time and the same location, each phone may grab a different server. Needless to say, the result will be completely different.

 

[Ken7]

Can you remind me what was wrong with your Charge? Thanks.

I got very frequent 'no data connectivity' issues. I couldn't access anything involving data whereas my wife's IPhone always had its 3G connection. I eventually sold the Charge. Not a good experience.

 

[Ken7]

And it doesn't look like VoLTE is happening any time soon. The post that first mentioned it in this thread referred to a Feb 8, 2011 article/announcement from VZW. A lot changes in tech so did a google for more...below are closing comments from a December 14, 2011 article:

VoLTE will NOT take off in 2012: ABI - CIOL News Reports

"So, a few operators will commercially launch VoLTE in 2012, either for pride or for IMS. They won?t see much VoLTE traffic until significant numbers of VoLTE capable phones make their way into subscribers? hands. The majority of operators will continue to deploy LTE for data only and keep VoLTE in their plans for 2013 or later."

Think we wanna see the GNex work better before we see VoLTE.

But there's the mention of 'VoLTE capable phones'. Someone else said that LTE phones should be OK, but I really wonder if that's the case. Either way it doesn't look a concern for the near future.

 

[milan03]

I was actually able to get 46.xx down and 15.xx up last night....on my gf's LG Revolution. AN LG REVOLUTION!....we were in Queens, around 1am. We were outside and I did a speed test on my Nexus and one on her phone to compare. My Nexus had full 4 bars and -88 dbm. It pulled 20.xx down and 5.xx up. She laughed at me. I repeated the tests on both phones, a few times, each time yielding similar results. I'd love Verizon to explain this to me, because this has nothing to with how many bars I have or how my phone displays signal strength. Her "first wave" LTE phone was able to consistently pull double the bandwidth of my GNex. Something is not right. Perhaps I should send both devices to Anandtech so they can publish another article on this.

You live in NYC so getting those speeds is normal. Use common sense, make sure you're using the same exact server, test one phone at a time, etc.

 

[Ken7]

Did you set both phones to the same server? Even at the same time and the same location, each phone may grab a different server. Needless to say, the result will be completely different.

There's only so many excuses we can come up with as to why the Nexus radio doesn't perform as well as another phone's under certain circumstances. When the results invariably seem to favor another phone's radio, the excuses get a bit old after awhile. Why is it that it's always the Nexus radio we need to find the reason for why it did what it did? Just saying.

Today I was carrying both the Razr and the Nexus around with me today. The Nexus in my left pocket and the Razr in my right pocket. We did different things today, went to the movies yet again and were in different areas.

I just looked at both phone's cell standby stats and found the Nexus was without a signal 3% of the time today (unbeknownst to me) and the Razr showed 0%. So at different times of the day the Nexus had no signal, but I didn't see it. The Razr had no such issue. Now let's not hear anyone saying "but if you switched the Nexus to your right pocket and the Razr to your left, the results would have been reversed.

On the brighter side, the Nexus battery was holding up better than the Razr's and again, when I did look at both phones, the Nexus seemed to have the 4G more often. The bottom line is that it seems the Nexus radio hits the 'reception floor' sooner than the Razr. I noticed this a bit before, over the last few days as I had mentioned, but today seemed like a wider disparity...I just didn't see it happen.

 

[karn101]

I was actually able to get 46.xx down and 15.xx up last night....on my gf's LG Revolution. AN LG REVOLUTION!....we were in Queens, around 1am. We were outside and I did a speed test on my Nexus and one on her phone to compare. My Nexus had full 4 bars and -88 dbm. It pulled 20.xx down and 5.xx up. She laughed at me. I repeated the tests on both phones, a few times, each time yielding similar results. I'd love Verizon to explain this to me, because this has nothing to with how many bars I have or how my phone displays signal strength. Her "first wave" LTE phone was able to consistently pull double the bandwidth of my GNex. Something is not right. Perhaps I should send both devices to Anandtech so they can publish another article on this.

I also live in Queens and pull down 40+. (Flushing)

It's not the phone. You may have had a different server.

 

[nkd]

Here is what I found. This phone is really good in really densely populated areas specially mid town and business areas and mall and colleges and such, I am just talking about my city. As you go in to more residential areas that our on the outer edges of the city the signal struggles big time. I mean my 3g signal is around 15dbm less stronger than the razr I had, and that is in the best case scenario, sometimes its like -98dbm where the razr only got to -84dbm in 3g mode at worst case scenario. Razr usually hovered around -75 to -80 where nexus stays around -93 to -98dbm.

Today at work the phone dropped 4g like crazy. It was like the phone was tripping out. I had 4 bars of 4g and minute later I had none, I Know bars don't matter but I went to signal strength and it went from -83 for a few minutes to -120dbm in the same damn location. -83 to -120, wonder why the phone is not able to sustain a signal at the lower dbm for more than a few minutes.

I drove to verizon store to return something and it happened again while i was in my car listening to radio for a few mins before heading in to the store. 4 bars to no bars, to 4 bars again after 30 seconds. It would not let me even browse a webpage during this, thats why I knew that it was about to drop all connections because I was getting webpage error.

I went in to return and told the guy what happened and he basically said,"Trust me bro we have had more than enough people come back with signal complaints about this phone, verizon knows and google knows it very well. He literally told me that he heard verizon didn't wanna let the phone out but google wanted to launch it before holiday season and it was not ready for launch."

He is like he didn't know how much of it was true but only true thing he knows is that he has dealt with a handful of people about the signal problems.

While I was at it I went to the rezound demo and ran a test, I got a 24mb down and about 19up while my phone was busy droping 4g all together. Funny thing is that when I stepped out the store I got 4g and ran a test on speakeasy just like the rezound and I only got 8down and 4up.

Funny thing is that I am getting much reliable 4g connections at home with 1 or 2 bars than I am getting with 4 outside by my work. I don't know if it doesn't like being around too many towers.

 

[willstilson]

Did you set both phones to the same server? Even at the same time and the same location, each phone may grab a different server. Needless to say, the result will be completely different.

You live in NYC so getting those speeds is normal. Use common sense, make sure you're using the same exact server, test one phone at a time, etc.

Yes both devices were set to New York, NY, so unless there are multiple NY, NY servers, that vary in throughput, then that was not the issue.