• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

why are my signal bars innacurate?

Very simple reason for this. Your phone shows bar signals of the 3g network. When you use the phone you are seeing the voice bars because the 3g is not working at that time. You cannot use 3g/voice simulataneously like on GSM networks. This is normal to see for CDMA networks. GSM users dont notice this because the 3g/voice is connected at the same time, this is why you can surf and talk at the same time on GSM. Remember the old AT&T more bars in more places bragging? It was funny to me because the bars are really a poor judgement of signal quality. You could have full bars and be 115 db and not know it because of the 3g/voice simultaneous connections.
 
Upvote 0
what about when i have wifi on still says 4 bars? and if i bring in a dumb phone the EV fluctuates between 2 and 3 bars but rarely 4 bars. my bro's blackberry has only 3 or 4 bars most of the time but again, rarely 5...and my blackberry storm's range was -80 to -110. -80 being 5 bars and -110 having 0 bars or no service. also doesn't 1x coverage usually extend beyond 3g? so why would i have 4 bars of 3g and 2 bars of 1x. :-?
 
Upvote 0
I have about 87 dBm here in my house. That is a very bad signal, right?

-87dBm is not bad.

The value is a ratio related to one milliwatt of power. Given it's a negative number, it's below that value. For every -3dB, the actual power is halved. So -3dBm is .5mW of power... and so on and so forth.

So the more negative it goes, the weaker the signal strength.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones