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Android vs. iPhone 4 Signal Strength Bars Comparison
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."
These measures aren't very useful without considering the noise floor...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
iPhone offers more bars overall than Android to obviously it is going to report more bars at a given signal strength.
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.
All mobile phones have tradeoffs in antenna design in order to look pretty, because people don't like visible external aerials. Apple have come up with what should be a very good design but compromised it by not coating the metal in a dielectric layer. Apple have created bad publicity for themselves by coming up with a BP-like response to the complaints, but this won't affect their sales because Apple buyers don't take any notice of negative publicity for Apple products.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
...they independently confirmed a bug that Apple had already confirmed?
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.
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 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.
You should perhaps rethink the temporal line on these events.
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
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.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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*
..don't panic
Why does a Mac critic have a problem with the chain on a bicycle?
It restricts what you can do with the bike.
What's the difference between a Google Fanboi, Microsoft Fanboi, and Apple Fanboi?
Apple Fanbois sing once the chains are on.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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 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.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!