Upcoming radio fix: cosmetic-only... or not?

[musicalprogrammer]

I'm one of the unfortunate Gnex owners who is experiencing a lot of call and data drop issues (I live and work right in the middle of 4G coverage, but both my house and office seem to shield signals to a large extent). This past Wednesday, I went to a VZ corporate store fully intending to exchange for a Rezound, but got to talking with the local "tech guru" about the nature of the upcoming radio fix.

According to him, the fix will supposedly address the way the device is reporting the signal strength (this I already knew); however, the kicker is that as a result, the way that the device then interacts with the cell towers will somehow make the connection issues go away. Apparently it has something to do with the exchange between the tower/device and how the tower transmits information based on the reported signal strength. I'm a software guy and don't understand the details beyond that.

This is the first I'd heard that simply fixing the reported signal strength will improve connectivity and actual signal. I've read some forum posts speculating that baseband/firmware updates might actually strengthen the radio receiver, but the VZ guy made it sound like simply lowering the reported dBm will make a sizeable impact (for reference, I'm sitting in my house on the upper floor by the window at -110 dBm 30 asu right now).

The guy seemed very knowledgable, as I tested him with about a dozen other technical questions where he responded the "correct" answer. However, he has vested interest in my keeping the device (costs his company money for me to exchange it for a lower-cost Rezound); thus, I'm taking his advice with a grain of salt and deferring to the forum community for feedback as to whether the rep was being straight-forward with me or not. As much as I like the device and would hate to exchange it, basic functionality is paramount and I don't want to take a chance getting stuck with a device that can't perform adequately.

Any thoughts?

 

[KneeDragr]

That seems counter intuitive.

If the phone 'thought' it was getting a worse connection, the logical thing for it to do would be to ask the tower for a stronger signal, not vica versa.

However I guess its possible that the phone itself, if it 'thought' the signal was poor, might go through different routines, i.e. noise cancellation and amplification on the signal, which may then error out or produce incorrect results if fed 'normal' data.

 

[Revolutionary]

If the phone has predefined signal tolerances dictating when a transition is made from a weaker 4G signal to a stronger 3G, or from a 3G signal to a sufficiently strong 4G signal (which it does), then inaccurate reporting of the 4G or 3G signal by the device could cause erratic shifts between networks. If the problem is that the signal strength reporting is wrong, or that the tolerances are too strict, then "the fix" could be as simple as that tech says.

Granted, I don't know if he's right. Just saying that it seems plausible to me.

 

[JoeNM84]

Makes sense to me. It is kind of like an automatic transmission on a car, when it gets to a certain RPM it wants to switch gears, but this can be adjusted in a car and it makes sense that it can be adjusted in a phone with signal strength.

 

[blazin247]

This is the million dollar question. I know, personally, that I don't want to return my GNex if the radio update fixes the problem, but on the flipside, I will most certainly return it if I know it doesn't. The problem is we have 2 days left in our return window, and no update in site. I'm pretty sure this isn't by accident.

 

[TabGuy]

To quote the late Steve Jobs, "You're holding it wrong."

 

[LD5050]

I loaded the 4.0.3 Radio image on my stock ROM, and I haven't had the dropped signal issue since. My area hasn't implemented 4G yet, if that matters, but will be soon.

 

[menelfloss]

I have the same experience of living in a large city full of 4G service. 5 blocks away from my home my phone gets -85dbm. In my stucco home I get -100 to -120. I have experienced dropped calls, bad audio quality, clicks and squelching.

I have spoken to customer support twice and been back to the store twice. I checked the signal strength of my phone with the one on display at the store today and they were within 2 points of each other, So I feel my phone's radio is not under performing compared to others.
Nobody I have talked to knows how this phone will be affected by the 4.0.3 update, but they all feel it will stabilize the signal issue.

I reset my phone to factory settings, and have used it non wifi 4g all day. I have noticed the signal fluctuate from 2bars 4G to all grey 4G to 3 bars 3G. I was on the phone quite a bit and had 1 dropped call.

I have been assured that if I continue to have problems I can always exchange for another Gnex after the month is up.

I like this phone enough to gamble with the possibility that through software the signal will get better.