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One thing nobody is questioning: why does the perceived signal strength (what is displayed) affected by how users hold the phone? If the displayed signal streng

One thing nobody is questioning: why does the perceived signal strength (what is displayed) affected by how users hold the phone? If the displayed signal strength doesn't correlate well with actual signal strength, I don't see how gripping it a certain way should make any difference??

ynniv 16y ago
The little bar diagram that phones display is an oversimplification and generally wrong. It's a bit like downsampling your monitor to 5 pixels and complaining that they don't accurately represent the original. Most bar displays compute some form of signal or signal to noise ratio, but even that is a joke compared to the complexity of modern digital multiplexing, shared control channels, inter-tower hopping, and that doesn't even consider what happens to your voice packets after they are on the ground at a tower. Your phone doesn't even have the proper instruments to deduce the likely hood that you will have a clean connection. If people want to complain about actual dropped calls, thats one thing. To nitpick the weather prediction that is your reception "bars" is absurd.
- mirkules 16y ago
  My question has nothing to do with the formula used to render the display, or the accuracy of visualization of signal strength. What I'm questioning is: if it's truly just a display (software) issue, why is it affected by gripping the phone in a certain way? The software problem (incorrect visualization) is seemingly triggered by a hardware issue (gripping the phone). They describe the problem as if it is strictly a software issue, but it is clearly triggered by a hardware issue.
  - panacea 16y ago
    No, they admit it's a hardware issue. They're just saying that the software 'readout' overstates the degree of signal loss. Simplified example: Holding the phone the 'wrong' way drops signal strength 20% If the bars displayed signal strength as such: 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Then the hardware issue would result in the loss of one bar. However they're saying their bars display (for instance): 20% 85% 90% 95% 100% So the hardware issue can show you losing 4 bars.
  - ynniv 16y ago
    I understand that you think you are right. I do. But you're clearly a software person (as are most people here), just like me, and we see the world as simple and properly abstracted. The reality here is that this is not a simple problem, and will never become one: there are just too many variables. Here's an example that might be simpler to relate to: audio. The power of sound is measured in watts (as any stereo will advertise). If someone were to make a noise measurement tool, they might display the level in watts. This would be wrong because we don't perceive sound linearly, and "a little more" would actually display as much more particularly at higher decibels. But even reporting volume in decibels does not reflect how "loud" something is. We perceive loudness in a complex manner, and even at low volume a person yelling can sound loud. This is why pop music and commercials are louder at the same volume[1]. Now imagine that we will create a display of 5 bars that will show how loud something is. We would start with the logarithm of power (dB) because thats pretty easy. But now people put their hand over the device and it still sounds loud, even though our display shows it to be half as loud. Is this a broken system? Not really - just a complicated one. So please, I understand that you do not understand. But try to understand that this is complicated, and Apple actually has some idea what they are doing. [1 | http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/discovering-reason/index.cfm?article=part3&fuseaction=get_article http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/discovering-reason/in...]

ynniv 16y ago

The little bar diagram that phones display is an oversimplification and generally wrong. It's a bit like downsampling your monitor to 5 pixels and complaining that they don't accurately represent the original. Most bar displays compute some form of signal or signal to noise ratio, but even that is a joke compared to the complexity of modern digital multiplexing, shared control channels, inter-tower hopping, and that doesn't even consider what happens to your voice packets after they are on the ground at a tower. Your phone doesn't even have the proper instruments to deduce the likely hood that you will have a clean connection. If people want to complain about actual dropped calls, thats one thing. To nitpick the weather prediction that is your reception "bars" is absurd.

mirkules 16y ago
My question has nothing to do with the formula used to render the display, or the accuracy of visualization of signal strength. What I'm questioning is: if it's truly just a display (software) issue, why is it affected by gripping the phone in a certain way? The software problem (incorrect visualization) is seemingly triggered by a hardware issue (gripping the phone). They describe the problem as if it is strictly a software issue, but it is clearly triggered by a hardware issue.
- panacea 16y ago
  No, they admit it's a hardware issue. They're just saying that the software 'readout' overstates the degree of signal loss. Simplified example: Holding the phone the 'wrong' way drops signal strength 20% If the bars displayed signal strength as such: 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Then the hardware issue would result in the loss of one bar. However they're saying their bars display (for instance): 20% 85% 90% 95% 100% So the hardware issue can show you losing 4 bars.
- ynniv 16y ago
  I understand that you think you are right. I do. But you're clearly a software person (as are most people here), just like me, and we see the world as simple and properly abstracted. The reality here is that this is not a simple problem, and will never become one: there are just too many variables. Here's an example that might be simpler to relate to: audio. The power of sound is measured in watts (as any stereo will advertise). If someone were to make a noise measurement tool, they might display the level in watts. This would be wrong because we don't perceive sound linearly, and "a little more" would actually display as much more particularly at higher decibels. But even reporting volume in decibels does not reflect how "loud" something is. We perceive loudness in a complex manner, and even at low volume a person yelling can sound loud. This is why pop music and commercials are louder at the same volume[1]. Now imagine that we will create a display of 5 bars that will show how loud something is. We would start with the logarithm of power (dB) because thats pretty easy. But now people put their hand over the device and it still sounds loud, even though our display shows it to be half as loud. Is this a broken system? Not really - just a complicated one. So please, I understand that you do not understand. But try to understand that this is complicated, and Apple actually has some idea what they are doing. [1 | http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/discovering-reason/index.cfm?article=part3&fuseaction=get_article http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/discovering-reason/in...]