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Signal strength questions

So it's two more days til I activate and I am noticing my Motion seems to switch between 1 and 2 bars.

1-Does Metro's call quality and data speed decrease dramatically with say 1 bar?

2-Will my signal strength go up once I activate and can update the PRL?

If data and calls are problematic with Metro at the 1 bar strength and that stays 1 bar, I could have an issue here. :(

Bruce in Ocala, FL
 
So it's two more days til I activate and I am noticing my Motion seems to switch between 1 and 2 bars.

1-Does Metro's call quality and data speed decrease dramatically with say 1 bar?

2-Will my signal strength go up once I activate and can update the PRL?

If data and calls are problematic with Metro at the 1 bar strength and that stays 1 bar, I could have an issue here. :(

Bruce in Ocala, FL

I don't have much answers for you but from what I notice when my Motion has 1 or 2 bars it does affect the data speeds. As for calling I've been amazed to be able to call when I have 1 bar and it has good quality to it. Of course results will vary because of location.
 
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So it's two more days til I activate and I am noticing my Motion seems to switch between 1 and 2 bars.

1-Does Metro's call quality and data speed decrease dramatically with say 1 bar?

2-Will my signal strength go up once I activate and can update the PRL?

If data and calls are problematic with Metro at the 1 bar strength and that stays 1 bar, I could have an issue here. :(

Bruce in Ocala, FL

This are my speeds with 2 bars :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYR9gtUTbwY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
 
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your signal bars dont affect your 4g speeds ive had 1 bar before running a speed test and i was at 4500 kbps just keep in mind your phone is cdma /4g hybrid meaning two radios running for two different functions your signal for calls and 4g for data.

Negative.

This all changed with 4.0. With 4.0 your service indicator represents how good, or how many "bars" you have of whatever service is being shown such as LTE, 3G or 1X. Say you are showing 1X and you are showing 4 bars. Then you move into an area of LTE. Your service indicator will adjust to show how good the signal is for LTE such as 1, 2, 3 bars etc.....A lot better than on Gingerbread where all you had is a 4G icon that operated separate from the service Icon so you couldn't tell how good your 4G service was. You could just see that you had it.


I started noticing that when my phone switched to E or "1X", it would show full bars and as soon as it would switch to 4G the bars would go away and down to 1 or 2 even though i haven't moved. I thought, well that's weird. And then it dawned on me. I did a lot of research on this and at the time was coming up with very little. Luckily I finally had a few people explain how it all works and how it was changed with 4.0.
 
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Fuzzy, as I'm not yet activated, all I'm showing in that area are the bars (2 right now) and the Wifi strength.

I was just guessing with no data activated at all, my bars were phone strength, correct?

Do you think I may get more bars when I am able to update the PRL?

Thanks,

Bruce in Ocala, FL-and yes, thankfully, tomorrow is my activate day
 
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Fuzzy, as I'm not yet activated, all I'm showing in that area are the bars (2 right now) and the Wifi strength.

I was just guessing with no data activated at all, my bars were phone strength, correct?

Do you think I may get more bars when I am able to update the PRL?

Thanks,

Bruce in Ocala, FL-and yes, thankfully, tomorrow is my activate day


Okay so you don't have any service yet but you are showing bars? I'm I getting that right?
 
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Varies between 1 and 2,so, Yes.

Bruce in Ocala, FL

Hmm. Well the wifi indicator is it's own and doesn't affect the service indicator. The service indicator should be showing nothing if you don't have service on the phone. That's strange. I mean if the phone doesn't have service, what is causing it to show that it has service? I'm confused on that one.
 
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Hmm. Well the wifi indicator is it's own and doesn't affect the service indicator. The service indicator should be showing nothing if you don't have service on the phone. That's strange. I mean if the phone doesn't have service, what is causing it to show that it has service? I'm confused on that one.
Even though he doesnt have service it still shows whatever carrier towers that phone is provisioned for but the tower just wont let anything through so you get that recorded lady saying your call can't be completed @this time
 
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your signal bars dont affect your 4g speeds ive had 1 bar before running a speed test and i was at 4500 kbps just keep in mind your phone is cdma /4g hybrid meaning two radios running for two different functions your signal for calls and 4g for data.
Since your in tampa your 4G runs on AWS(2100/1700) and voice runs on PCS(1900) so it would always show your PCS(1900) signal in the signal bars but i didnt know that change in ICS
 
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Even though he doesnt have service it still shows whatever carrier towers that phone is provisioned for but the tower just wont let anything through so you get that recorded lady saying your call can't be completed @this time

Interesting. Evey phone I've had, when not connected with the carrier, shows an empty service icon.

So taking that into consideration and to try and answer your question Bruce, when you update your PRL and actually get data coverage, your service indicator will reflect the strength of the current data coverage. So Yes, it will change as I'm sure the indicator at the moment is only showing the actual voice service for that particular area.
 
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Since your in tampa your 4G runs on AWS(2100/1700) and voice runs on PCS(1900) so it would always show your PCS(1900) signal in the signal bars but i didnt know that change in ICS

It's hard to find any information on the details of how the signal and data implementation change in 4.0.

This was taken from a post I found and kinda explains it better than I did.

"From what I've read, the ability to properly display the LTE signal strength was not supported in Android until Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (though this could be inaccurate). I do know for sure that earlier Verizon phones (such as the Thunderbolt) deceivingly displayed "4G LTE," but then displayed the 1XRTT signal strength. That's why occasionally as you traveled out of an LTE coverage area, you would have 4/full bars, and then suddenly drop to 3G. In actuality, you were dropping below -120 dBM of LTE signal, and were near a tower that had voice/3G on it, but no 4G. The Thunderbolt to this day still displays the signal in the same way. I'm not sure if the recent Android 4.0 leak for it has changed this functionality.

The first phone to display LTE signal strength correctly was the Galaxy Nexus. The LTE bars displayed are in fact representative of LTE signal strength, and not 1XRTT/Voice. I know that Motorola's Blur UI on the RAZR models added an extra screen to the system information page that displays (separately) 1XRTT and 4G LTE signal strength (the actual dBm values, rather than a signal bar visual), so I believe that the RAZR and RAZR MAXX both display 4G LTE signal accurately. As for any other phones, I don't have personal experience with them, so I could not say for certain.

So, basically, to answer your question: It depends on what phone and what version of Android you are running. "



And another post


"It really depends on the phone and OS you're running. For example, in Android 4.0 or later, the phone will display the signal level of the connected network in your case LTE. Along with that now it properly displays LTE accurate measurement RSRP (Reference Signal Received Power)which tends to be about 20dBm lower than the usual RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator).
For example, my old HTC Thunderbolt used to display RSSI out of EV-DO nonstop, even when I was on LTE. With Galaxy Nexus we started to see RSRP values and people started freaking out how the reception sucked. Now with the likes of Galaxy S3 and the bulit in ServiceModeApp.apk we can properly measure RSRP and RSRQ straight out of the baseband, which completely matches the notification bar indicator.
Hope this helps. "
 
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It's hard to find any information on the details of how the signal and data implementation change in 4.0.
This was taken from a post I found and kinda explains it better than I did.
"From what I've read, the ability to properly display the LTE signal strength was not supported in Android until Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (though this could be inaccurate). I do know for sure that earlier Verizon phones (such as the Thunderbolt) deceivingly displayed "4G LTE," but then displayed the 1XRTT signal strength. That's why occasionally as you traveled out of an LTE coverage area, you would have 4/full bars, and then suddenly drop to 3G. In actuality, you were dropping below -120 dBM of LTE signal, and were near a tower that had voice/3G on it, but no 4G. The Thunderbolt to this day still displays the signal in the same way. I'm not sure if the recent Android 4.0 leak for it has changed this functionality.
The first phone to display LTE signal strength correctly was the Galaxy Nexus. The LTE bars displayed are in fact representative of LTE signal strength, and not 1XRTT/Voice. I know that Motorola's Blur UI on the RAZR models added an extra screen to the system information page that displays (separately) 1XRTT and 4G LTE signal strength (the actual dBm values, rather than a signal bar visual), so I believe that the RAZR and RAZR MAXX both display 4G LTE signal accurately. As for any other phones, I don't have personal experience with them, so I could not say for certain.
So, basically, to answer your question: It depends on what phone and what version of Android you are running. "
And another post

"It really depends on the phone and OS you're running. For example, in Android 4.0 or later, the phone will display the signal level of the connected network in your case LTE. Along with that now it properly displays LTE accurate measurement RSRP (Reference Signal Received Power)which tends to be about 20dBm lower than the usual RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator).
For example, my old HTC Thunderbolt used to display RSSI out of EV-DO nonstop, even when I was on LTE. With Galaxy Nexus we started to see RSRP values and people started freaking out how the reception sucked. Now with the likes of Galaxy S3 and the bulit in ServiceModeApp.apk we can properly measure RSRP and RSRQ straight out of the baseband, which completely matches the notification bar indicator.
Hope this helps. "
On the Indulge & Connect i'm pretty sure the signal bar was for voice because back in the day when 4G was terrible indoors, I had 3 bars throughout the house but it would fluctuate from 4G to 1x later on to 3G. I cant really tell now on the S3 since i do have steady 4G throughout the hous
 
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On the Indulge & Connect i'm pretty sure the signal bar was for voice because back in the day when 4G was terrible indoors, I had 3 bars throughout the house but it would fluctuate from 4G to 1x later on to 3G. I cant really tell now on the S3 since i do have steady 4G throughout the hous

Yeah Gingerbread was different.
 
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