13 ms·
What the fuck Android? Why are you helping mobile carriers lie to their customers?
by rjbwork 8y ago
What the fuck Android? Why are you helping mobile carriers lie to their customers?
- wwright 8y agoBecause mobile carriers and other large businesses have always been their customers, not consumers. Google’s only incentive for helping consumers is that it might give them more data for their large business partners.
- jarfil 8y agoSignal bars are meaningless anyway. Even a raw dB measurement wouldn't tell much about the service quality, so they might as well switch to a "coverage / no coverage" indicator.
- kurthr 8y agoTo go a step further for GSM (I don't know precisely for 4G, but I suspect it is the same) the base station determines both handset dB/SNR/Quality and commands the handset power which usually is limiting performance. It is likely this setting that allows the handset to report its "number of bars"... So if you don't let them lie on the handset... it's likely that the network providers would just start lying to the handsets at an even deeper level than they already do. Just get the marketing silliness out of the way at as high a level as possible so engineers can make our coverage better.
- gsich 8y agothere are at least 4 values. rsrp, rsrq, sinr, rssi rsrq is probably the important one. You can clearly see usage of the cell tower with that.
- tjoff 8y agoNumber of bars (1-2 vs. 4-5 or whatver max is) seems to give a pretty decent indication of latency and bandwidth to me. I get that it isn't perfect.
- bdamm 8y agoSeems to be a lot of situations where a bar or two is no service, and others where service is great. So as a determination of whether I can use the phone it is pretty meaningless.
- tjoff 8y agoYour experience will vary, but perhaps: 4-5 bars => 98% likelihood that everything is great. 1-2 bars => 20% quite good, 50% pretty decent, 20% quite bad, 7% bad, 3% no service. How is something like that meaningless? That is immensely useful. You can also reason about it depending on the context. Downtown but inside a bar in a cellar? Or out in the country far from civilization? That it isn't perfect doesn't make it meaningless.
- aasasd 8y agoIn my experience, two bars perfectly indicate the threshold of ”there's service, but no service at all might've been better—at least there wouldn't be false hope.”
- zmmmmm 8y agoPlaying devil's advocate: it's purpose could be to help them not lie. Imagine if there are circumstances where you have good signal strength but still poor quality; a carrier could adjust the bars displayed to be more realistic.
- berbec 8y agoAt least you admit you're advocating for the Devil! We could hope a cell phone company would be so honest as to make sure their signal indicators show possibly lower values.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoThey could, sure. They could also give you a free pony with every phone.
- mc32 8y agoThis echoes of the "Antennagate" problems where apparently Apple's algorithm miscalculated signal, there was a big bruhaha and Papermaster was thrown under the bus.
- deytempo 8y ago$$$$$$$$
- murderfs 8y agoBecause the alternative is for every single OEM to reimplement this on their own, probably in a worse way. Everyone (including Apple, who have far more leverage over carriers) is basically forced to comply with the carriers here, so there's really no other option.
- kop316 8y agoThat actually helps explain an issue I had with my Galaxy Nexus. I worked in an area with spotty coverage, and it was extremely common that it would say I have full service coverage, only to have it drop to almost or no signal as soon as I used it to call. That issue was infuriating.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoI noticed this about phones, if you're using GPS and get a call and answer, guess what, no more GPS. So my guess is the phone cuts off the mobile data, and yeah then you'd see the real coverage.
- ajdhsjakafjt 8y agoMobile networks are two-way systems. If you have perfect reception of the mobile network - let's say full bars! - then that doesn't mean the mobile network also has reception of your mobile device. Most of the time, your phone is in RX-only mode to save battery. It listenes for incoming data every millisecond or two, but no more. But as soon as you actively use the network, things change. The basestation must receive your signals as well. This may suddenly and dramatically change the perception of "signal quality". Before it's RX quality only, then it's RX+TX quality. With incoming or outgoing calls, your phone may switch to another technology. While it may be idling in 4G, large parts of the world rely on 2G for voice calls. As soon as the call starts, the phone switched to 2G and naturally shows 2G reception.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoInteresting, yeah I don't know a whole lot about the underlying tech. I figure Google Maps uses my mobile data which explains why it sorta appears to have lost it's own darn mind.
- gsich 8y agoGPS is receive only, no mobile data is used there.
- geofft 8y agoBecause that's what customers want. Sure, they'll say they want accurate data, but at the end of the day they're paying the provider with the most bars and not doing even the most basic of independent testing, so clearly that's what customers want. In a free market, you measure what people want by what they choose to pay for.
- wvenable 8y agoNo, the customers don't want faked information. You don't expect to people to independently test the contents of every item of food just in case the ingredients on the package on faked. They simply don't know they're being lied to. In most other areas of commerce, that would be illegal.
- alasdair_ 8y agoA remarkably large number of US consumers definitely want fake information: as two brief examples, consider the way weather data in the US is reported (customers get angry if it rains on a “90 percent chance if clear skies” day and customers get angry if their car runs out if fuel when the guage hits “empty” Interestingly, German consumers want to inow the exact level of petroleum spirits in a tank and will get irritated if they are lied to.
- perl4ever 8y agoWhen I owned a German car, the speedometer read somewhat too high, compared to Japanese cars that were quite accurate. Also, on German cars I've driven, when they were stopped, the MPG gauge went to the maximum, rather than zero as would be correct. So I infer that German consumers want to be lied to about some things, just perhaps different things.
- adrianN 8y agoAre you sure they displayed mpg and not l/100km?
- dirkgently 8y agoReally? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple/apple-says-iphones-overstate-signal-strength-idUSTRE6612ND20100702 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple/apple-says-iphones-... It wasn't Android. Apple did this deliberately, and only apologized when they got caught. It's a ritual to bash Android and Google on HN, and Apple gets a pass every time.
- izacus 8y agoApple also released a patch which showed "4G" symbol in status bar for AT&T when on HSxPA signal. In europe and everywhere else, the phone kept showing 3G as other phones.
- thatfrenchguy 8y agoIt’s a per-SIM carrier configuration, when you’re abroad with a US SIM you’ll also see 4G/LTE.
- izacus 8y agoAhh, good to know.