Why The Signal Meter Does What It Does Acording To HTC

[BetterMost]

I just came from a Verizon Corp. store and low and behold there is tech guy from HTC there showing the employees the ins and outs of the Inc. So we got into a discussion about the signal strength meter here is HTCs explanation on why it seems to be wrong. He claims as part of the power management system the phone when not in use meaning not making a call or connected goes into a minimum power mode that also effects the signal meter. He made a call on my phone to how how it works. Once the phone call is placed you immediately see the bars raise and the 3G come on after disconnecting the bars fall again once in the power saving stand by mode. So I guess its not defective after all just very smart.

 

[fish2587]

very nice to hear and ya know, that totally makes sense. thanks for giving us the input, even though i never cared for how many bars i have. if i can make a call and connect to the internet, it doesn't matter if you have 1 or 5 bars. but thanks!

 

[russell5]

Does make sense because every says they have little bars but still have great service. Same thig with me (i don't even look at the bars i wish i could get rid of them lol)

Thanks

 

[jasperwill]

thats a cool little feature. i bet most phones do this already though.. does anybody know if this is a power saving feature that most phones have and just dont show the effects on the signal meter?

 

[justbrae1]

I mentioned this a few days ago, when i noticed my phone showed no 3g service, but as soon as I open something that needs a lot of bandwidth, it cranks up the radio power and pulls in full speed at very good signal strength.

 

[paimon.soror]

I hope more threads like this show up so that people stop bashing the phone/HTC. Things are done in ways for a reason, heck, for all we know the battery issue is an issue that has a reason behind it as well. Considering about 80% (shot in the dark) of us are having battery problems, do you really thing that QC didn't notice it? Thanks for taking the time to ask/post this.

 

[wiretap]

My HTC 8925 did the same thing so I guess I was just used to it. Most smartphones now have dynamic radio power to adjust for better battery life. They'll use just enough juice to still get a signal. You'll notice if you put the phone in a faraday cage where it can't get a signal, the battery will drain in a few short hours because the phone cranks the power to the radio trying to lock onto a signal.

 

[jasperwill]

I hope more threads like this show up so that people stop bashing the phone/HTC. Things are done in ways for a reason, heck, for all we know the battery issue is an issue that has a reason behind it as well. Considering about 80% (shot in the dark) of us are having battery problems, do you really thing that QC didn't notice it? Thanks for taking the time to ask/post this.

the reasoning behind the battery is that people dont really heavily use a phone that is considered a toy more than a buisness tool.
so far im really happy with this phone. the battery life could be better (dont want to charge it every night) but its lasting through the day for me.
on my curve i could go 3-5 days without charging. but this phone is about 12-13 hours. this phone also does alot more than my blackberry did for me. so i understand me using the battery quicker.

i think once people get used to the phone they will use it less during the day and it will be fine. if you are someone who HTC considers a heavy user you will buy a second battery and charge 2 every night. and they are fine with that. the QC didnt miss anything they are just balancing size/cost/customer use as well as they can.

 

[czm2000]

Holy cow! I didn't believe it so I just made a phone call. My bars went from 1 to 3. The second I hung up it immediately went back to 1.

I have never been a complainer of the bars or whole signal thing in general because I've always had great quality calls. But its great to know why the bars are so low.

 

[vzwuser76]

This may sound bad at first but read on...
I was talking to my brother today and kept getting a popup on my phone saying something like "call halted due to low signal issues" and then had a button that said dismiss. I would press that and say hello around 3-5 times and get my brother back. During a 10 minute call this happened around 6 or 7 times.

When I got off the phone I called customer service to see if there was tower trouble in my area. It was overcast today but thought maybe a tower got struck by lightning or something cuz I really haven't had any major signal issues with it so far. The CSR said there were no tickets up and they were transferring me to tech support.

While waiting for tech support (on a landline) I looked at my phone location. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it shows your location as the nearest city to the tower you are running off of. Normally my location shows as Miller or Ree Heights (South Dakota), but it now said Grandview. I had never heard of that town. I cycled my phone and it went to Ree Heights. I mentioned this and asked if with it being overcast, is it possible to get a different tower which maybe farther away than my home tower, similar to having the atmospheric conditions right to get radio from Chicago or even Mexico (my older brother used to try this when he was in high school). He said that's very possible as atmospheric conditions can greatly affect mobile signal strengths. He went on to say that if signal became an issue we could always get a network extender and so on.

After finishing that call I looked up Grandview, SD. It is about 90-100 miles line of sight away! Now with my location showing as my home tower I called back my brother and had a 20 minute conversation with no hiccups whatsoever. An odd tale I know but I thought some of ya might get a kick out of it, I knew it threw me for a loop when I saw that.

 

[amarryat]

That all sounds good, but I think that there could still be a hardware issue with some of the phones.

Mine is great. But when I was in the VZW store the other day for another phone on my family plan, the technician noticed that I had the Incredible and asked how I like it. I told him it's great etc, how much better it sounds than my last couple of phones..... He told me his is having signal issues, and I told him that from reading this forum that the meter just is not calibrated well. He told me that in this store, he has a horrible signal - I looked and I had 4 bars. So we compared - his incredible was at -93db, mine was -73. Side by side. This was after the update, and he got his as well.

 

[vzwuser76]

That all sounds good, but I think that there could still be a hardware issue with some of the phones.

Mine is great. But when I was in the VZW store the other day for another phone on my family plan, the technician noticed that I had the Incredible and asked how I like it. I told him it's great etc, how much better it sounds than my last couple of phones..... He told me his is having signal issues, and I told him that from reading this forum that the meter just is not calibrated well. He told me that in this store, he has a horrible signal - I looked and I had 4 bars. So we compared - his incredible was at -93db, mine was -73. Side by side. This was after the update, and he got his as well.

From what I understood the update had nothing to do with signal reception or the siganl meter, but a bug fix for exchange accounts. But it does sound like there is some inconsistency with the radios in the phones. So far mine has been fine.

 

[SBacklin]

I just came from a Verizon Corp. store and low and behold there is tech guy from HTC there showing the employees the ins and outs of the Inc. So we got into a discussion about the signal strength meter here is HTCs explanation on why it seems to be wrong. He claims as part of the power management system the phone when not in use meaning not making a call or connected goes into a minimum power mode that also effects the signal meter. He made a call on my phone to how how it works. Once the phone call is placed you immediately see the bars raise and the 3G come on after disconnecting the bars fall again once in the power saving stand by mode. So I guess its not defective after all just very smart.

He's full of crap. (the HTC rep, not the OP) Because what you're seeing is that when you make a call it will show the 1X bars. 1X tends to be stronger anyway. (1X=Voice/SMS/Slow Data, EVDO = Data Only) After the call ends, it goes back to showing 3G. Power management system my derrier. The 3G bounces all over the place. When I use 3G the bars don't magically go up either, they still bounce around. They are just making excuses for faulty software work.

 

[INTREPID-NY]

This may be an explanation, but it's ridiculous. I'm sure most people look at the bars before making a call not during. That's the point of signal meter -should I make a call now or wait? Also, I doubt this "feature" saves much batter power. And finally, when my DI is connected to my car via Bluetooth, the car displays the bars properly. That is, the phone may show 0 or 1 bar, but the car will show 4 or 5 bars. By the way, I've had no reception problems with the DI. What annoys me is the random reboot problem - luckily it's infrequent for me and the reboot takes about 30 seconds.

 

[SBacklin]

This may be an explanation, but it's ridiculous. I'm sure most people look at the bars before making a call not during. That's the point of signal meter -should I make a call now or wait? Also, I doubt this "feature" saves much batter power. And finally, when my DI is connected to my car via Bluetooth, the car displays the bars properly. That is, the phone may show 0 or 1 bar, but the car will show 4 or 5 bars.

I agree, it is ridiculous. Not when countless people are reporting either poor performance or situations don't follow what the HTC rep described. What it is, is HTC doing what HTC does best....makes excuses for poor work. If it was really a power saver feature, the bars would be steady. They will go down when powered down and always shoot up when using full data. They don't. They keep bouncing. I don't buy the lame excuse. If it suppose to work how the HTC rep says it does, then they still didn't do it right....bouncing 3G signal even if the phone is in use.

 

[jasonb1985]

very nice to hear and ya know, that totally makes sense. thanks for giving us the input, even though i never cared for how many bars i have. if i can make a call and connect to the internet, it doesn't matter if you have 1 or 5 bars. but thanks!

exactly. who cares how many bars it shows, as long as it works well.

 

[JonnyBadd]

This may sound bad at first but read on...
I was talking to my brother today and kept getting a popup on my phone saying something like "call halted due to low signal issues" and then had a button that said dismiss. I would press that and say hello around 3-5 times and get my brother back. During a 10 minute call this happened around 6 or 7 times.

When I got off the phone I called customer service to see if there was tower trouble in my area. It was overcast today but thought maybe a tower got struck by lightning or something cuz I really haven't had any major signal issues with it so far. The CSR said there were no tickets up and they were transferring me to tech support.

While waiting for tech support (on a landline) I looked at my phone location. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it shows your location as the nearest city to the tower you are running off of. Normally my location shows as Miller or Ree Heights (South Dakota), but it now said Grandview. I had never heard of that town. I cycled my phone and it went to Ree Heights. I mentioned this and asked if with it being overcast, is it possible to get a different tower which maybe farther away than my home tower, similar to having the atmospheric conditions right to get radio from Chicago or even Mexico (my older brother used to try this when he was in high school). He said that's very possible as atmospheric conditions can greatly affect mobile signal strengths. He went on to say that if signal became an issue we could always get a network extender and so on.

After finishing that call I looked up Grandview, SD. It is about 90-100 miles line of sight away! Now with my location showing as my home tower I called back my brother and had a 20 minute conversation with no hiccups whatsoever. An odd tale I know but I thought some of ya might get a kick out of it, I knew it threw me for a loop when I saw that.

People still live in the Dakotas?

 

[SBacklin]

exactly. who cares how many bars it shows, as long as it works well.

Well, mine works well with the signal thing bouncing around. However, there are people that use it and since its there...it should work the way it should...not half assed. They shouldn't and I sure as hell shouldn't have to accept some defect just because it supposedly doesn't hamper performance.

 

[JonnyBadd]

I just came from a Verizon Corp. store and low and behold there is tech guy from HTC there showing the employees the ins and outs of the Inc. So we got into a discussion about the signal strength meter here is HTCs explanation on why it seems to be wrong. He claims as part of the power management system the phone when not in use meaning not making a call or connected goes into a minimum power mode that also effects the signal meter. He made a call on my phone to how how it works. Once the phone call is placed you immediately see the bars raise and the 3G come on after disconnecting the bars fall again once in the power saving stand by mode. So I guess its not defective after all just very smart.

I smell Bull _____.

 

[justbrae1]

I smell Bull _____.

Check your drawers. When I turn on PDAnet with Bluetooth DUN, it provides more power to the radio, and I was seeing -81 Db, when I turned it off, instantly to -105(which is the consistent reading in my house until I make a call or an app requires high amounts of bandwidth).

 

[SBacklin]

Check your drawers......

lmao...that's just wrong

 

[JonnyBadd]

Check your drawers. When I turn on PDAnet with Bluetooth DUN, it provides more power to the radio, and I was seeing -81 Db, when I turned it off, instantly to -105(which is the consistent reading in my house until I make a call or an app requires high amounts of bandwidth).

Nah dude it's BS - it's faulty.

 

[BetterMost]

I smell Bull _____.

He said its part of the power management system. Said the bars wont show because the radio is on 1/2 power when idle said its on just enough to keep a signal to the tower. When a call comes in or an out going call is demanded only then will the radio show the right signal because at that point it goes to full power.

 

[SBacklin]

He said its part of the power management system. Said the bars wont show because the radio is on 1/2 power when idle said its on just enough to keep a signal to the tower. When a call comes in or an out going call is demanded only then will the radio show the right signal because at that point it goes to full power.

You're still forgetting the fact that we're talking about two different radios. 1X is for voice. Those are the bars you see when on a call or sending SMS. The 3G...is data. That is why me and others are calling BS on what he said because 1X for almost all instances tends to be stronger or more bars...at least that is my experience with CDMA systems. So him showing you the 'example'....it means nothing. With that said, 3G indication is what is fluctuating..whether or not people are surfing or not. So something is wrong there. HTC tends to make up BS to cover sloppy work when it shows. I'm not saying they can't make awesome devices but, obvious software bugs always seep through. The Eris had this issue....from what I've seen and read...they fixed the Eris....so why wasn't this fix carried over? Also, if HTC did include that kind of power saving feature for this phone...then it still isn't working right...as I mentioned already because, even on a data session...the thing still fluctuates all weird.

 

[vzwuser76]

You're still forgetting the fact that we're talking about two different radios. 1X is for voice. Those are the bars you see when on a call or sending SMS. The 3G...is data. That is why me and others are calling BS on what he said because 1X for almost all instances tends to be stronger or more bars...at least that is my experience with CDMA systems. So him showing you the 'example'....it means nothing. With that said, 3G indication is what is fluctuating..whether or not people are surfing or not. So something is wrong there. HTC tends to make up BS to cover sloppy work when it shows. I'm not saying they can't make awesome devices but, obvious software bugs always seep through. The Eris had this issue....from what I've seen and read...they fixed the Eris....so why wasn't this fix carried over? Also, if HTC did include that kind of power saving feature for this phone...then it still isn't working right...as I mentioned already because, even on a data session...the thing still fluctuates all weird.

When I had my 3G multimedia phone, my voice would show 1 bar and my EVDO would show 2-3 bars. That's just my experience though.