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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."
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."
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.
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.