Does the Galaxy Nexus properly display LTE signal strength?

[Tom in Bristol]

I know they all display LTE when they are in LTE coverage areas. I never said they didn't. LTE phones do not actually display the signal strength of the LTE radio, though. The signal strength they display is the voice signal strength. That's why the Revolution (I believe) has a separate menu indicating the two different signal strengths, that of the voice radio and that of the LTE radio, both in numerical format.

Again, the number of signal strength bars displayed is never representative of LTE signal strength. This is the case on all existing Verizon LTE phones.

Your post triggered a recollection that I'd wondered about re indicator bars back when I got a Bionic on launch day. At that time my area didn't have 4G but we got it here a week later. On CDMA I would consistently see 4 bars with a drop to 3 bars when inside a building. After 4G began it was nearly always 2 bars inside and 3 bars when I went outside to smoke.

A thread here on AC-Bionic referred to an Anandtech article that might offer you some more info at:

AnandTech - Motorola Droid Bionic Review - Dual Core with 4G LTE

"The Bionic also is the first device (to the best of my knowledge) that reports 4G LTE signal bars based on channel quality in addition to just received signal strength. Devices like the Droid Charge and others can be somewhat misleading and just report the bar visualization based on signal strength. It took me a while to figure out how to actually get to the Bionic’s 4G LTE signal metrics, as it isn’t the number shown in “About” - that’s actually just what’s reported from MDM6600 for EVDO or 1x."

There is more in the article that if far above my tech savvy, including a listing using aLogcat alongside a screenshot of the Status page...hope it will provide you with info and you'll be able to make sense out it all.

I'm about a mile from our cell tower that is on top of a good sized hill which may explain why my Bionic has never suffered from the data drop-outs-3G/4G fluctuations that seem to plague so many Bionics, but Ill still be quite happy to get the promised OTA 'soon' and 'later this year'! (Sounds kinda like a GN launch promise, huh?)

 

[potatolover1102]

I do know my thunderbolt accurately shows 3g signal in the bars because I have been to plenty of buildings where I. Get 2 bars of 3g and no voice covergae and even the verizon banner is gone meaning no voice network so I'm pretty sure all new phones show the bars of what network you on/ what the indicator shows. It works the same on my droid 3

 

[S.Meezy]

Signal bars move with what the system says is 4g signal, unless I'm not properly understanding what you're saying...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOA9vMEOPBg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

VS910 4G Kangwich

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

Signal bars move with what the system says is 4g signal, unless I'm not properly understanding what you're saying...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOA9vMEOPBg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

VS910 4G Kangwich

I believe this... My gf has an iphone and has a crappy signal at her place. I get full bars with 4G in the same location. We both have verizon.

 

[milan03]

This is actually a very interesting subject. So far only LG Revolution displays LTE signal levels. You can run a logger in monitor LTE signal levels on Motorola phones but it's a hassle. No other Verizon LTE phones display it unfortunately. I doubt Nexus will, but I hope I'm wrong.

 

[S.Meezy]

This is actually a very interesting subject. So far only LG Revolution displays LTE signal levels. You can run a logger in monitor LTE signal levels on Motorola phones but it's a hassle. No other Verizon LTE phones display it unfortunately. I doubt Nexus will, but I hope I'm wrong.

This phone does something well that no other phone can?!?! Haha, awesome... and very, very strange...

VS910 4G Kangwich

 

[Droid800]

This is actually a very interesting subject. So far only LG Revolution displays LTE signal levels. You can run a logger in monitor LTE signal levels on Motorola phones but it's a hassle. No other Verizon LTE phones display it unfortunately. I doubt Nexus will, but I hope I'm wrong.

I would wager that it will because of the differences in the indicator itself.

 

[humpagardengnome]

I stumbled on a free app in the android market that you might wanna take a look at if you want one click access to network signal strength info on the fly, search " Simple Network type"

 

[thedeceiver]

So, now that the phone is actually out there... do we know? It doesn't appear to be measuring LTE to me. I can have zero bars and get 12Mbps down... I can have full bars and get 1Mbps.

 

[sc4fpse]

Yeah, still appears to be measuring 1X.

edit: Okay, maybe not! According to AnandTech, it does display LTE signal strength, and not 1X strength. That's apparently the reason behind the discrepancy in dBm on the Galaxy Nexus (although the article's author neglects to discuss the legitimate issue of LTE reverting back to 3G much more often on the Galaxy Nexus than previous handsets.

But, assuming the article is in fact correct (and the evidence sure seems to report it)... HURRAY!