Signal Issues!!

[terryh215]

My phone will not get higher than one bar in my house. It goes from no bars to one bar. My gf's phone, which is an iPhone, gets two bars constantly maybe even three. I know I'm in a rural area with Sprint but shouldn't are signals be about the same? Is this an Nexus issue? I'm still on my 14 day trial. Was thinking of trading it in.

 

[ChuckG73]

I would try a new sim card 1st, before swapping phones. My Brother in Law has a iPhone 5s and I have a Nexus 5 on ATT, in rural areas we seem to get the same signal strength.

 

[mclasser]

There are many complaints about the weak radio on these phones. Try going into the mobile network settings and changing the default network from LTE to 3G. This gives me 1, sometimes 2 more bars.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 10.1 using The Android Central mobile app

 

[DaveG67]

I know I'm in a rural area with Sprint but

Well THERE'S your problem. Sprint doesn't provide signal, unfortunately.

 

[B. Diddy]

So you get fewer bars, but how is the actual reception? Are calls clear? Do you drop a lot of calls? I've found that with my Nexus 5 on T-Mobile, I can have 1 bar and completely normal reception.

 

[gidgiddonihah]

I'd like to point out: the iPhone will calculate bars differently for several reasons I'm too tired to explain now. This can result in this discrepancy. Look at the N5s detailed signal info in settings. Quote my post tomorrow so Tapatalk reminds me if you want a detailed explanation .

For a more accurate comparison try this:

http://lifehacker.com/5929546/see-the-actual-signal-strength-on-your-iphone-with-this-quick-tweak

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[IAmSixNine]

to add to what gidgiddonihah pointed out, not all devices represent signal the same.
Id recommend getting an app from the app store that will give you the actual measurements of each receiver.
Since your on sprint this will be 1xRTT voice / text and CDMA2000 / EVDO for data and LTE for data. All of these will have separate signal strengths since they are all different receivers and transmitters.
Once you begin to separate them out then do a comparison from device to device.