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Help Possible signal strength bug?

xliderider

Android Expert
Jan 28, 2010
1,232
192
Where Diamond Head Stay
I believe there is a bug in the signal strength indication on the Fascinate, the one that shows the signal strength in -dBm.

You can see the signal strength of the cell signal on the Menu, Settings, About, Status screen. Or you can place a widget on your Home screen. There are several widgets available, I'm using Mobile Signal Widget.

I have a network extender, which basically creates a cell tower right in your home. With my Motorola Droid, I used to get signal strengths down to about -50 something and 60's in indicated signal strength. I can hold both of our Fascinates right next to the network extender's antenna and they will read no better than -86 dBm. So far I've seen signal strengths from -86 dBm to -106 dBm (terrible).

I believe there is a bug in the software (Baseband) on the Fascinate. Previously, I thought the hardware (antenna/radio) wasn't very good, but now it may be software related.

Has anyone seen a signal strength stronger than -86 dBm on the Fascinate?
 
What is this noise you speak of? I lose signal a lot in my basement, but I've never heard any weird noises...

Kind a trilling sound. A double or triple tone that repeats every 10 seconds or so. It's not any of the Notification tones that are user selectable from the menu. Must be a system tone.
 
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I'm on my Fascinate now, or I would post in the actual email response I got from Verizon customer service.

Basically the response was that I should contact the developer of the Signal Strength Widget for the problems I am experiencing with the phone. :eek:

wtf?

I replied that he didn't understand, and that this needs to get this up to higher technical support personnel.
 
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Yeah, the responder obviously didn't understand what you were talking about.

My signal has been fluctuating between -96 and -106db, however, I am in an area known for extremely poor signal strength. I'll have to check it when I go to work tomorrow and update it, as there is usually excellent signal there.
 
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When we were in the Verizon store they had the Fascinate and the Incredible right next to each other and I pulled up the dBm on both and the Fascinate was way higher. I asked him about it and of course he tried to BS me so I just nodded ok. Just like the Eris, the bug will have no impact on actual reception, it is all about asthetics.
 
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When we were in the Verizon store they had the Fascinate and the Incredible right next to each other and I pulled up the dBm on both and the Fascinate was way higher. I asked him about it and of course he tried to BS me so I just nodded ok. Just like the Eris, the bug will have no impact on actual reception, it is all about asthetics.

Makes figuring out which phone has the better radio difficult though. ;)

One more thing I noticed the other day... the signal fluctuates quite a bit AND it moves in increments of 5's like this:

-96, -101, -106, -101, -96 dBm. WTF? :thinking:
 
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I put FAS and Droid 1 side by side and compared the signal strength; Droid 1 showed -55dBm while FAS showed -86dBm. Hope it's a bug.

I also noticed that WiFi signal strength is very different as well. It showed full Wifi bars when I was right next to the Wifi router, but when I went to a different room it lost all bars. (it's only about 20 feet from the Wifi router ... ) Droid 1 still showed 4 bars under the same condition though.

The problem was FAS actually lost the Wifi connection and changed the mode to 3G.
 
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I also have a Network Extender and range from about -86 to -91 while within about 100 FT of the extender. I have no issues with call quality, so tend to agree with the posts that call it a bug in how signal strength is measured.

One final note, my SF gets on the network extender almost instantly where my BB Storm 2 took up to 15 minutes to register > Progress!

Really liking this phone!
 
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