So this is becoming more of an issue to me..

[Se7enLC]

here is a better comparison which really shows how bad the Galaxy is compared to Moto phones.. this is a side by side comparison with Stock Moto Bionic vs. Stock Galaxy Nexus on the same tower, etc...

Like I said earlier I like my Nexus but it would also be good if the reception would be on par with other 4G phones..:frown:

View attachment 45355

The article I just linked to mentions that the Bionic reports 3G signal strength in the Phone Info page rather than 4G radio (even if you are connected to 3G) - and that the only way to get 4G signal strength measurements that they knew of was through logcat, looking for specific updates. That would explain the large discrepency in the numbers.

Do you know if that is no longer the case / could you verify that by comparing what you see on that info screen to what is shown in the radio signal messages in logcat? The guys at Anandtech seem to have done their homework on the signal strength issue, and while I don't want to just take their research to be gospel truth, I don't think they would make such a bold claim about the Bionic without testing it fully.

 

[lazarus2297]

So by that logic, you can compare 3G to 3G apples to apples, since both phones will be reporting signal strength and "bars" in the same manner. But when they are connected to 4G, other phones will continue to show the 3G signal strength (which is higher, as you'd expect)

well in theory they should still be receiving the same signal as they are on the same tower location and honestly 4G "pick-up" better as it's a lower frequency and thus penetrates buildings better..

I understand what the articles are saying and I haven't done the amount of research they have but EVERY phone that I compare my signal to mine is worse (except for other Nexi) I compared mine in 3g mode to a Dx2 shortly before that comparison was shot and it was just as vast a difference in received dBm's ...

I have been on different roms, and with and w/o the 4.0.3 leaked radios with no noticeable improvements..

 

[Se7enLC]

well in theory they should still be receiving the same signal as they are on the same tower location and honestly 4G "pick-up" better as it's a lower frequency and thus penetrates buildings better..

No, they are completely separate signals. The radios are completely separate. Not all towers are both 3G and 4G (so there's a very good chance that a 3G-only tower will be closer than a 4G tower, given that 4G is not at 100% coverage, yet). The frequencies aren't even the same, which means that the propagation through the air is different, attenuation loses, etc.

I understand what the articles are saying and I haven't done the amount of research they have but EVERY phone that I compare my signal to mine is worse (except for other Nexi)

That's exactly what the article is saying - ALL OTHER 4G phones show 3G signal strength in the "About Phone" page, and only the two specific phones mentioned in the article have the ability to even get the 4G signal strength - through a Service Console for one, and through reading logcat on the other.

I compared mine in 3g mode to a Dx2 shortly before that comparison was shot and it was just as vast a difference in received dBm's ...

That is a comparison that would be fair - so long as the Nexus is also in 3G and not LTE. There are toggle apps available to disable LTE to help get the comparison.

If you can, post that. I'd like to see how the 3G radio in the Nexus compares to other phones.

It sounds like the issue is that Android 2.x doesn't have complete support for dealing with multiple radios. 4G was shoehorned in, but the signal strength reporting didn't make it out to the UI. Seriously, just read the article, it explains it pretty well

I have been on different roms, and with and w/o the 4.0.3 leaked radios with no noticeable improvements..

Unless that Anandtech article is flat-out wrong, you are comparing 4G signal strength on the Nexus with 3G signal strength on other phones. The comparison is meaningless, so it makes perfect sense that you would see no improvement. Turn off 4G on the Nexus and the Bionic and Nexus will show the same signal strength

Note: Even though Android 4.0 seems to be the "fix" for the signal strength reporting, I wouldn't jump to believing that simply installing 4.0 using a ROM will fix the problem. How the radios report signal strength depends on the hardware, and some lower-level support would be needed to make sure that Android is reading the right signal for the right radio, etc. Again, that is IF Android 4.0 really fixes the problem.

HOWEVER - If you want to put the two phones side by side and do speed test and latency comparisons, those should be fair comparisons. I've heard that the Nexus does not do as well as other phones, but have not tested it myself. On signal strength alone, looking at the Bars and dBm reported by the phone in the way you are doing it is not producing the right results. Try the logcat method mentioned in the article and compare it to what you see in "About Phone"

 

[madspeed]

well at least for me, there's no 4G anywhere near me. So I just turned it to cdma only and works thusfar! Kind of a waste to have an LTE phone for this but...

 

[lazarus2297]

i did compare them and my nexus when on 4G and then on 3G showed the exact same dBm.. and i know they were on the same tower because the BID, SID, and NID were all the same and that didn't change when i turned 4G off...I am using the Phone Info menu which is more detailed than the about phone menu..

I don't have a picture but when i compared my Nexus with 4G OFF vs. a Droid X2 (non-LTE phone) it was a similar if not exact signal difference. I can post pictures tomorrow of my phone with just 3G then with 4G and you will see the signal dBm is pretty much the same.. I do know they are different radios.. and LTE is in the 700MHz band and in my area Verizon's CDMA (3G) network is on the 850Mhz band so the signal degradation would be pretty similar.. where Verizon operates it's 3G network in 1900MHz then the LTE signal should have a better coverage footprint based off same tower locations..

Simply put the Nexus does not receive as good a signal as other phones, 3G, or 4G

 

[Se7enLC]

i did compare them and my nexus when on 4G and then on 3G showed the exact same dBm.. and i know they were on the same tower because the BID, SID, and NID were all the same and that didn't change when i turned 4G off...I am using the Phone Info menu which is more detailed than the about phone menu..

More detailed, sure - but the information comes from the same place, so it's just as inaccurate. Use the method described in the article on your Bionic and you will see. Don't take my word for it, read the article, it describes the issue with the Bionic in great detail and shows exactly how to get the accurate reading.

3G and 4G CAN be the same. And they CAN be different. If you are going to compare two different phones to eachother, use the method described in the article to get an accurate signal strength measurement.

I don't have a picture but when i compared my Nexus with 4G OFF vs. a Droid X2 (non-LTE phone) it was a similar if not exact signal difference. I can post pictures tomorrow of my phone with just 3G then with 4G and you will see the signal dBm is pretty much the same.. I do know they are different radios.. and LTE is in the 700MHz band and in my area Verizon's CDMA (3G) network is on the 850Mhz band so the signal degradation would be pretty similar.. where Verizon operates it's 3G network in 1900MHz then the LTE signal should have a better coverage footprint based off same tower locations..

Similar, sure, but none of that is a way of predicting what it will do. Cell signal can change from one room to another, so it can certainly change with 150Mhz. (and different radio and tower).

Instead of posting more photos of the Nexus, Post another side-by-side of the Nexus and the Bionic - but this time use the correct method of showing 4G signal strength described in the article. Lets call it independent verification of their experiment. They could be completely wrong, and you could be the one to prove them wrong!

Simply put the Nexus does not receive as good a signal as other phones, 3G, or 4G

I don't agree or disagree with that statement since I'm not walking around with two phones to compare them. Your method of testing it is flawed, however, and I linked to the article explaining exactly why and exactly how to correctly measure 4G signal strength on your phone to make a comparison. Whether you want to believe them or not is up to you - but I don't think they just fabricated the entire contents of the article.

 

[texanmike]

So I posted this at galaxynexusforums.net but I'll post it here too. I was a proud nexus owner (the 3rd in my area.. only because two brothers got to the store before I did)...

OK. This is a sad day for me. I just spent an hour at the verizon store only to determine that I cannot stay with the Nexus. I am on the rezound (but I might switch to the razr... the manager told me to try this one first...).

I spent an hour comparing all kinds of things about the signal including signal strength in different areas of the store. I am in Bossier city LA which has decent coverage. I have compared my nexus to the Thunderbolt (my old phone) the Rezound and the Razr and hopefully I can provide some help or guidance to everyone with this little experiment.

First I checked against the thunderbolt. With an average signal of -98 in all areas of the store (never better than 93 never worse than 107-- this was my nexus... just realized that wasn't very clear). The thunderbolt literally back to back with the nexus had an average of 84 never better than 77 never worse than 90. There was almost a always a 15-20% difference in the signal strengths. That is when I did something interesting. I compared it to the thunderbolt without the back on. Without the back on my thunderbolt was an average of -99 never better than -92 and never worse than -105 and always within 1 or 2 Dbm of the Nexus.

I did the same with the Rezound. With the normal battery back the signal was an average of -79 never better than -72 never worse than -84. I then compared it to the extended battery back. (If you notice it has less copper... very interesting by the way.. because it has roughly the same amount of copper as the Tbolt... and this is where it gets VERY interesting...) I took the Tbolt and the rezound with the extended battery? ALMOST IDENTICAL. 87 on the RZ no better than 75 no worse than 90. When I took the back off of the rezound? -99 never better than -94 never worse than -105.

I couldn't move the razr around like I could the Rezound/Nexus/Tbolt because it was wired in... but right next to each other the nexus had almost always had 15-20% difference between the razr.

My suspicion is that there would be a way to fix the signal issue but it would not be a software fix. It would seem that the signal issue on the Nexus is related to the antenna. I wonder if they could find some contacts and somebody could create an aftermarket back that would improve signal.

I'm not hating by the way. I absolutely loved my Nexus. It was the best PDA i've ever had but I found that I was more often having to connect to wifi instead of being able to use it to tether. Just not what I had in mind. I tried very hard to work around it but I couldn't even get 4g and rarely had 3g in my office. With my old tbolt I always had 3g and usually had 4g. I'll tell you how my rezound does tomorrow. I'm just trying to provide constructive feedback here...

Mike

 

[Crazed_Z06]

As I said in another thread, Ive had the Droid X, Thunderbolt, Bionic, and now the Nexus.

One thing Ive noticed with the Nexus is the signal indicator is much more accurate.. just like Verizon said. A lot of times with my TB and Bionic, I'd be in an area and the meter would show two bars of 4G, but when I tried to do anything, the "up arrow" on the meter would stay illuminated and no data would ever come through. It would try for like 2-3 minutes and finally kick over to 3G. On the Nexus, those area will show ZERO bars of 4G and is very quick to kick over to 3G when the 4G signal dips low. So data connection is basically the same on the Nexus as on the TB and Bionic.. actually it's a bit better because it switches over in fringe areas faster and reports the signal more accurately.

I havent had any problems at all with Voice calls.

 

[texanmike]

double post

 

[texanmike]

As I said in another thread, Ive had the Droid X, Thunderbolt, Bionic, and now the Nexus.

One thing Ive noticed with the Nexus is the signal indicator is much more accurate.. just like Verizon said. A lot of times with my TB and Bionic, I'd be in an area and the meter would show two bars of 4G, but when I tried to do anything, the "up arrow" on the meter would stay illuminated and no data would ever come through. It would try for like 2-3 minutes and finally kick over to 3G. On the Nexus, those area will show ZERO bars of 4G and is very quick to kick over to 3G when the 4G signal dips low. So data connection is basically the same on the Nexus as on the TB and Bionic.. actually it's a bit better because it switches over in fringe areas faster and reports the signal more accurately.

I havent had any problems at all with Voice calls.

I didn't have a similar experience with my nexus. I found that data was always hit and miss. When I was in downtown houston for example, I got great service. (Go figure). At my house I never hit 10Mb down on my nexus. I have hit 20 twice and stayed around 17 in my apartment. The real test will be at work tomorrow. I will let you guys know when I get to work what I see. I have NEVER seen 4G on my Nexus in my building at work. It came and went on my Tbolt. If it shows up on the rezound (and is backed up with benchmarks) then we will know there is a signal issue with the phone.

Also, just for the record, I had 2 Nexii (plural?) The first I took back before everyone reported that the signal was terrible. I believe in fate but not in coincidence. My second Nexus performed very similar to my first. Secretly, I'm hoping that within 2 weeks an OTA is issued and everyone reports that their nexus gets better signal than any phone they have ever seen. Unfortunately everything I have seen tells me that's not happening.

Mike

 

[lazarus2297]

I found an app that gives both signal strengths (at home I am only on 3G) in the picture the phone on the left if my OG Droid, and the reason the Evdo RSSI is weird is the phone isn't active and Evdo is only used for data. Verizon uses CDMA (1xRTT for voice) that is the CDMA RSSI so for this comparison really I am only comparing the OG Droid and Nexus when it comes to receiving a voice signal tomorrow if i get into town (with 4G) i will see if i can get comparison of the nexus and other phones..

So just for reference.. the phone has a CDMA radio for voice and Evdo is the data connection and they do not always have the same RSSI.. but still has you can see the nexus is a whole 10dB worse than my OG Droid... I am not trying to be a nexus hater b/c i do like it but to argue that it just displays different signal strengths is not correct.. as you can see when comparing apples to apples the Nexus's apple is rotten..

View attachment 45457

 

[lazarus2297]

here is a pic of just my nexus to show that the signal fluctuates alot in the same location as this screen shot was taken same spot on my desk a couple mins later also it shows that the cdma (voice) RSSI and Evdo(data) side of the radios don't always have the same RSSI but seemed to stay pretty close to each other..

View attachment 45458

 

[Liderc]

My Nexus signal seems fine:

3G:

View attachment 45463

4G:

View attachment 45465

I still don't think this is a widespread problem, it's specific people having specific issues. If it was the phone, we'd all have a similar experience.

 

[lazarus2297]

mine can get that kind of signal too... that's not my point... I never said the phone couldn't get a good signal... mine will go down to -75 at home but then it will bounce around as high as -93..

my point is that it's worse than other phones and therefore in lower signal areas (in malls etc..) it will make a huge difference

the app by the way is called CDMA Field test .. i didn't test it in a 4G area so i am not sure it will report 4G LTE properly..

https://market.android.com/details?...=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImpwLm1hcnVzZS5jZWxsaW5mIl0.

 

[Liderc]

With my Nexus beside my OG both on 3G the Nexus is at -84, OG is at -79. Your data is just that, your data, if everyone had the same data then maybe we could agree, but that's not the case.