Android vs. iPhone 4 Signal Strength Bars Comparison 253
thisisauniqueid writes "In light of the clamor over the iPhone 4 Grip of Death, AnandTech recently reverse-engineered the phone's signal-strength-to-bars mapping. Because Android is open source, we can determine the corresponding mapping for Android in combination with the 3GPP spec referenced in the source, allowing the signal-strength-to-bars mapping for both Android and the iPhone 4 to be plotted on the same axes. This shows that the iPhone 4 consistently reports a higher percentage signal strength (as defined by the fraction of bars lit) than Android GSM devices at the same signal strength."
noise floor? (Score:5, Insightful)
These measures aren't very useful without considering the noise floor...
iPhone wins (Score:0, Insightful)
dB attenuation? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about phones just print the dB signal loss and be done with it? A number should be far easier for someone to tell about signal strength than guessing by 0-5 bars.
Summarising... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:noise floor? (Score:4, Insightful)
"the noise floor..." of the receiver.
I agree!
I think they should have looked at the signal levels that calls begin to drop or get garbled data. THAT would be more interesting. What if the iPhone4 is "over reporting" because it has a more sensitive radio? If I were apple, or any company, I would show signals bars based on the chance of dropping data, not the raw signal strength. With having half the range as 5 bars, seems like that's what they did.
*Disclaimer: I have a WinMo phone. I really don't give a damn about any of these platforms. None of them suite me.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Smelly code! (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy hell the code for the Android OS StatusBarPolicy in the StatusBarPolicy.java file is a stinking mess. So much for Google having the best programmers in the world. A single public method -- installIcons() at the class level, and a pile of private methods doing all sorts of things. Hundreds of lines of different private variables and worst of all the slew of private anonymous classes.
This sort of mess make single responsibility principle weep.
Where are the posters from Friday... (Score:2, Insightful)
that commented on /. about how Apple was making false claims about the incorrect signal bars? Surely if the responders on Friday had the balls to stand on a pedestal and make grand claims based on no evidence, they can have the balls to come back and admit they were wrong.
so what if the calculation is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
so what if the calculation is wrong or different between phones! It has nothing to do with the problem the iphone is having. If you normally have 4 bars with the wrong calculation, and you hold it and get no bars with the wrong calculation, then there is something wrong with the design of the phone, All apple is doing is trying to confuse the masses with technical facts hoping to confuse the issue and save money from all the lawsuits that are being filed.
Re:dB attenuation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably 99% of the population has no idea that -80 dB is extremely good and -100 dB is awful. Further, the curve is logarithmic, which makes things confusing because most people are only particularly familiar with linear.
Backwards. (Score:1, Insightful)
Frame Error Rate (Score:1, Insightful)
Why not use Frame Error Rate to indicate signal quality?
After all, Signal Strength tells you little if the Signal-To-Noise ratio is low. ... Alan
Re:Well duh ... (Score:4, Insightful)
What the difference between a Mac fanboy and a bicycle?
Slap a chain on a bicycle and it doesn't blog endlessly about how being chained up is an improvement.
Re:Where are the posters from Friday... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:dB attenuation? (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't know that right now.
Switch every phone over to display dB directly and everyone in the world would understand it in 6 months, though some would bitch about it for years to come.
People don't need to know what the numbers MEAN, they need to know that at 100 it doesn't work, and at 96 just barely works, but 80 is golden, and they'll figure that out fairly quickly.
Of course in reality all people really want is the phone to give them a good reason why they lost their call, can't get calls or have shitty data rates, and that could more accurately be represented with a simple block of text when the users asks and a green or red light in place of the bars.
Re:noise floor? (Score:4, Insightful)
That would require they move away from their current setup that shifts away from 'inflating' your signal and 'inflating' apples awesomeness...
Ah, but from what I've heard the last few days (and this is also mentioned in TFA) it was AT&T who told Apple "This is how we want you to report signal strength on the iPhone 4/in iOS 4" and while Apple isn't without blame (they were after all the ones who implemented this) it could just as well be AT&T trying to hide flaws in their network that resulted in the iPhone 4 reporting signal strength in a strange way.
Re:so what if the calculation is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Shame on Apple trying to confuse people with "technical facts".
They should of course accept that everyone is as ignorant as you about the fact that ALL mobile phones get signal attenuation when you hold your hand around the antenna.
Re:Where are the posters from Friday... (Score:3, Insightful)
No one was claiming that Apple's response was a lie, just that it was misleading. There is still a hardware problem that won't be fixed for the users who have these devices, unless they want to slap on a case.
Can someone please get a RFEE to explain things? (Score:5, Insightful)
IANARFEE, but I am a EE who works with RF.
For all of the millions of dollars being lost on productivity aimlessly discussing 'bars'..
Can someone please dissect the antenna and then connect it to a calibrated spectrum analyser? This is so mindbogglingly trivial to do it is beginning to hurt my soul. I do similar exercises at work with new, untested antenna designs. I am sure I am not the only one.
For comparison, do the same to other phones and publish actual measurements of received signal drops and the effect from the disturbance caused from closing your hand around the antenna. This is similar to how touching an old rabbit-ears style antenna effects the picture on a analog TV broadcast, if the effect is as I suspect.
Voila! An actual, meaningful assessment of what the phone bars mean in real numbers from a calibrated instrument.
An uncalibrated receiver, such as the iphone, is not a proper tool to do this.
*grumble* *off my lawn* *grumble*
Re:Summarising... (Score:4, Insightful)
It won't affect sales because in normal use, the iPhone 4 has better reception than previous iPhones. If there was a real problem, that would affect sales, but the average phone buyer doesn't read slashdot and gizmodo, and so doesn't get put off by this sort of hysteria.
Re:Smelly code! (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no reason you can't get the job done and do it well at the same time. I'd rather work on well-written code by a "clueless programmer" than a spaghetti mess written by a top notch guru, every time.
Re:Summarising... (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that the Nexus One suffers from the same problem with 3G reception if you grip the phone along the metal strip at the back.
Re:noise floor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Smelly code! (Score:3, Insightful)
an if statement is a goto
Except that an if statement only goes to the line after the condition. A goto can go to anywhere. An if statement may be a particular case of a goto, but it is a very narrow one.
Re:Well duh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does a Mac critic have a problem with the chain on a bicycle?
It restricts what you can do with the bike.
Re:Well duh ... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the difference between a Google Fanboi, Microsoft Fanboi, and Apple Fanboi?
Apple Fanbois sing once the chains are on.
Re:Well duh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am saying that I hear a LOT more from people saying what Apple fans would say than I am from the actual fans. Especially in threads that nothing to do with either.
Re:Summarising... (Score:3, Insightful)
Me either. Which implies that when you hold the phone normally you get better reception with the iPhone 4 than with previous iPhones.
Re:Well duh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the difference between a Mac fanboy and a bicycle?
Slap a chain on a bicycle and it doesn't blog endlessly about how being chained up is an improvement.
Then why is it always the Google fanboys who go on and on about the chains?
Re:dB attenuation? (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point of a "signal strength" meter is so that one can determine when one is approaching a "no signal" zone and so that one can determine how well their phone will work at a given location without having to make a call. It is disappointing that traditional signal strength meters (with 3-6 "bars") fail to do this reliably.
You can tell if the phone will work or not should you try to make a call or transmit data by a simple on/off indicator like you said. If the meter just displayed the S/N ratio, it would be the equivalent of having a traditional meter with lots of bars. This would convey more information, probably take up less space on the display, and allow people to generate detailed enough data that they might be able to fix things in places where performance is bad.
The problem of large or mysterious numbers could be remedied by offsetting the value by some fixed amount so that "0" is where the S/N ratio is so bad that the phone can't do anything.
I'm all for it.
Re:dB attenuation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not leave user interface design to people who know that there are a lot of colorblind people out there?
Re:is anyone surprised? (Score:1, Insightful)
You can't 'fudge' something which has no governing standard. You could put in 5 bars, or 0 bars for pretty much any value you wanted, and it would be a 'standard' for your phone. The problem is that there is not full standard across all phones. It's up to the manufacturer to decide what constitues 5 bars to 0 bars. Other than the item of interest that Android went slightly more conservative on their scale than Apple has, they are not all that disimilar in scale.
Why bars at all? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do they use bars at all? Why don't they use numbers? I suspect it has something to do with early phones and a little dedicated LCD space of bars was cheaper than a full numerical display, but we're well beyond that now.
Re:Summarising... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not because it's visible. It's because bits that stick up tend to break. And the fractal-style antennas that are in modern phones have very similar performance to external aerials. Given the choice between the two, it's a no-brainer.
Re:Smelly code! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right about one thing: You've reminded once again that I made the right choice in quitting the industry after holding a variety of lucrative sysadmin, software development, IT, and technical lead positions from 1983 to 2009. Too many projects where getting it done mattered more than getting it right, ending up in the software equivalent of a Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. I'm so glad to be done with that.
Re:Summarising... (Score:2, Insightful)