30 Jun 2010

Signal problems on the Nexus One might be as bad as iPhone 4; Pope is still Catholic too

 
This Anandtech article is perhaps one of the better attempts to get to the bottom of the iPhone 4 signal problem (though an honorable mention should go to Richard Gaywood's piece on fscked.co.uk). I like how the Anandtech article addresses the point about how the number of bars you see on the phone's display is not the primary metric that you should care about. The number of bars is an arbitrary reflection of signal strength. I would go one step further and say that ultimately this should really only be an issue about call quality and/or download speed. If you are losing signal strength but can still make a good quality call or surf the web at a reasonable speed, does it even matter how many bars you have?
 
Brian Klug and Anand Lai Shimpi from Anandtech managed to find a way of getting the signal information out of the iPhone 4 so they could compare signal strength to the number of bars that you see. And this is what they found:
 
 
The strongest signal that you can get on any phone (or so I'm led to believe) is -51 dB. Once this signal drops below -113 dB you essentially have no signal at all. The decision as to what signal strength corresponds to what number of bars seems to be up to each cell phone manufacturer. As the above image shows, on the iPhone 4 you see five bars when the signal strength is between -91 and -51 dB. As many others have indicated, the reduction in signal when holding a phone is not limited to the new iPhone. I imagine that all cell phones suffer a drop in signal when being held. I guess the issue is whether the iPhone is significantly worse than other phones.
 
I own a Nexus One which seems to suffer from exactly the same issue as the iPhone 4. You might not have heard about this because the Nexus One is. well you know, it's not made by Apple and so maybe it attracts a tad less attention. But if you take a read of this post on the Nexus One forums, you will see people getting equally enraged by the lack of information from Google about this issue (I wouldn't bother reading all 76 pages of comments though). Actually, until the whole iPhone 4 signal problem story broke, I have to admit that I hadn't heard about the Nexus One problem at all. I guess that as I wasn't suffering from dropped calls or any issues with voice quality or download speed, I hadn't really noticed.
 
Android makes it very easy to see your phone's signal strength (just go to Settings -> About phone -> Status). With that display up on your phone you can easily see how your preferred hand grip affects the signal (or doesn't affect as the case may be). Android phones only have four signal bars not five like the iPhone. I decided to see how the signal strength corresponds to the number of bars that you see. This makes for a nice comparison with the above graph by Anandtech:
 

 So the highest signal (four bars) on a Nexus One covers more signal range (-81 to -51) than five bars on an iPhone 4. The levels for one bar seem exactly the same though. As soon as I pick up my phone I see an instant drop in signal, usually -10 dB or so even if I just hold the phone by its edges. This short video demonstrates what I mean: 

(download)

At my home, I usually get about three to four bars of signal and if the phone is laying on a table, the signal strength is in the range of -73 to -79 dB. As the video shows, picking up the phone lowers the signal to -83 dB and as I rest the phone on my hand the signal continues to drop. When I then use my other hand to cover the phone I can almost abolish the signal altogether (I did block the signal altogether on other occasions, but didn't capture it on video...it depends on how tightly you cover/grip the phone).

 
So the Nexus One has comparable reception problems to the iPhone 4. But you know what, I don't really care too much because it works when I need it to. Maybe Apple and Android should just make their signals display one or zero bars. I.e. reception or no reception. After all, I imagine that's all that matters to most people.