Help #Gnexweaksignal (Twitter campaign for a real fix)

[jkc120]

Nobody knows what the engineers are actually working on.

You all arguing about it before then is a waste of my time. How many of you have reported your experiences to VZW and worked with tier 2 tech support? If you haven't, you should.

The verizon press statement said there were no signal issues. They said something to the effect that they were going to "fix the accuracy of the bars". That's a software bandaid to a real signal issue. People keep getting hung up on the problematic reports as just looking too much into the # of bars, but people are dropping from a decent 4G signal to barely a 3G signal inside buildings, while the rezound is capable of holding onto a bar or 2 of 4G.

So either the rezound radio is the best thing since sliced bread and the nexus is average and we should see the drops on other non-magical phones, or the rezound and other 4G phones work properly and the nexus does not.

I am going to hopefully 2 different VZW store locations today, and I'm going to bring a pad of paper and record the speedtest.net app's results for the razr, rezound, and nexus in the store as well as my own nexus (and the dBm/asu for the nexus and whether it's in lte or 3g). I will share the results here (probably in a new thread) and then maybe people will realize there is a legitimate problem and stop trying to tell us there isn't.

 

[syntrix]

press statement does not equal what engineers are working on.

Mind your time, and pass final judgement when an update is released.

 

[syntrix]

Good call on the tests!

I could only get amax of 12M out of the charge, usually about 9M.

SGN gets this:

 

[socarwolverine]

Verizon said the dBm are correct. They are updating the bars' interpretation of the dBm. So that's a load of you know what.

I said it before, if the software bases when to drop from 4G to 3G based on how many bars are displayed and not the actual dBm/asu, then whoever wrote that code should be fired, pronto.

The GNex's threshold for switching from 4G to 3G is defferent than the Rezound. It's not that the phone is broken, they just have the tolerance set too high, an easy software fix.

 

[jkc120]

press statement does not equal what engineers are working on.

Mind your time, and pass final judgement when an update is released.

Well duh. I'm going on the information that verizon volunteered. We can both speculate, but all we know is they said it's not a signal problem and it's being worked on. Typical of them, they were very vague and not very forthcoming, so I'm sorry if I don't share you optimism.

I will just wait until 1/14 I guess. I have a feeling if they don't fix the real problem and people stop dropping from 4G to 3G in structures, then there are going to be a crapload of returned nexuses on 1/14.

 

[jkc120]

The GNex's threshold for switching from 4G to 3G is defferent than the Rezound. It's not that the phone is broken, they just have the tolerance set too high, an easy software fix.

How do you know that? Have you figured out a way to show the LTE dBm/asu on a Rezound and carried them around?

 

[Sandroidfan]

The GNex's threshold for switching from 4G to 3G is defferent than the Rezound. It's not that the phone is broken, they just have the tolerance set too high, an easy software fix.

Not sure if that's true. But it seems definitely possible.
Even if both phone is set at the same threshold for 4G to 3G, chance of Gnex dropping to 3G would be higher than Rezound as it is always closer to that due to reading correct LTE signal. If that's the case, it seems like easy software fix. But it baffles me why verizon didn't figure this out before releasing it.

 

[jkc120]

I took my Nexus to a local mall (Viewmont Mall near Scranton, PA). I took a screen shot of the dBm/asu just prior to each speed test I took. Below are the results. I also tested my nexus and the rezound and razr they had in the mall. The results of those comparisons are at the end.

Short summary: after this trip, I am definitely inclined to believe two things. 1) the nexus performs well even with a "bad" signal, but 2) seems to drop to 3G more easily than the other phones (based on conversations with the CSRs. they wouldn't let me take a rezound to walk around the mall to test lol).

9659/678 3:36 pm -141 dBm / 0 asu
6279/935 3:40 pm -113 dBm / 27 asu
8878/1390 3:43 pm -105 dBm / 35 asu
6181/531 3:54 pm -110 dBm / 30 asu
5149/1616 4:01 pm -112 dBm / 28 asu
11078/4327 4:05 pm -103 dBm / 37 asu
9965/1270 4:07 pm -109 dBm / 31 asu
9391/7487 4:09 pm -92 dBm / 48 asu
31105/9594 4:10 pm -77 dBm / 63 asu
34779/9544 4:13 pm -83 dBm / 57 asu
22538/8754 4:18 pm -85 dBm / 55 asu
7068/734 4:30 pm -105 dBm / 35 asu

I was particularly impressed that in even the worst case scenario (inside the middle of Macy's with a -141 dBm/0asu signal, I still pulled nearly 10 mbps down and 678 kbps up. The only time I dropped to 3G walking throughout the mall was when I walked into the middle of the Old Navy store. Even inside Sears, I was holding a signal ~-105:-113, but still getting at least 6 Mbps there.

Also, just an observation. It seems the low signal affects the upstream much more than the downstream. At least on speed tests.

Despite the signal dropping from 4G to 3G going into my in-laws' house, that seems to be a combination of a fairly weak signal and an old house with aluminum siding acting as a faraday cage.

As for the comparison at the mall VZW, I tested their 3 phones and the nexus was getting about 27 Mbps/12 Mbps. The rezound was barely able to get to 6-7 Mbps down and was about 9-10 Mbps up. The razr completely crapped itself and lost 4G /and/ 3G signal. I toggled airplane mode and then re-tested and it got about 22 Mbps down and 13 Mbps up. So it seems to perform closer to the nexus. The rezound semes to be slow in comparison. Who knows what kind of signal it had, but just based on raw speed tests, it is getting spanked by the nexus.

This brief experiment at the mall has renewed my faith in the nexus and I hope the 4G -> 3G drop off can be fixed in software by adjusting the threshold that it senses.

Also something I observed in comparing their nexus to mine. Their screen has a lot of yellow tinting. I couldn't see the same tinting in the upper left corner of the keyboard in portrait mode like I see on mine, but that was because the majority of their screen had the yellow tint/hue.

I pulled up a fullscreen gray image on both mine and theirs. Mine had more banding that I could see, but it's still subtle on mine. Their gray had a slight yellow hue, while mine had a slight yellow/blue hue.

I have a feeling AMOLED screens just have some variance. I was told on irc last night it's normal for AMOLED and they will kind of "settle in". Hopefully that happens by 1/15

Anyway, figured I would pass along my real-world experience with the nexus in what appears to be a strong 4G area (outside the mall, I get full bars and -75 to -83 dBm on LTE).

 

[rushmore]

Mods please close the thread I was an idiot for trying to help

Not an idiot at all, but complacency is idiotic. Assuming a company will fix something that they are already saying is not a problem is good for everybody- but the customer.

Added: Then again, maybe the radio reception simply happens to be weaker than devices users replaced it for.

If so, there really is not a problem to fix.

 

[BlueBiker]

My personal opinion is it's a hardware thing (crappy radio) and that will simply never get fixed. They'll sweep it under the rug and just hope the phones sell anyway. Look at the charge and bionic.

Short summary: after this trip, I am definitely inclined to believe two things. 1) the nexus performs well even with a "bad" signal, but 2) seems to drop to 3G more easily than the other phones (based on conversations with the CSRs. they wouldn't let me take a rezound to walk around the mall to test lol).

9659/678 3:36 pm -141 dBm / 0 asu

It would seem the earlier comment is now inoperative.

Astounding the thing could swing almost 10Mb/s download with such a horrible LTE dBm.

I'm not sure what to think of your results -- whether your earlier problems and later vindication would be shared by most owners -- but you must be really psyched to have such a strong connecting phone!

 

[schimm]

Well duh. I'm going on the information that verizon volunteered. We can both speculate, but all we know is they said it's not a signal problem and it's being worked on. Typical of them, they were very vague and not very forthcoming, so I'm sorry if I don't share you optimism.

I will just wait until 1/14 I guess. I have a feeling if they don't fix the real problem and people stop dropping from 4G to 3G in structures, then there are going to be a crapload of returned nexuses on 1/14.

Just to give you a sense of what I have to deal with, I just completed my own test and it just took a few minutes. Took my phone off wi-fi and began surfing the internet in CDMA mode. I started with the phone at 24% battery. Eight minutes later I got the notification on my phone that my battery was low. 14%. So my battery drop 10% in eight minutes of surfing. In CDMA mode. My signal was bad. Fluctuating from -120 to -93 (I moved to a 'better location' in my house for the better signal but I could still see the countdown on the battery move rapidly.) Interesting that though my signal was bad, I was able to download newspaper content fairly quickly. BTW, screen was at about 30% brightness.

 

[jkc120]

Just to give you a sense of what I have to deal with, I just completed my own test and it just took a few minutes. Took my phone off wi-fi and began surfing the internet in CDMA mode. I started with the phone at 24% battery. Eight minutes later I got the notification on my phone that my battery was low. 14%. So my battery drop 10% in eight minutes of surfing. In CDMA mode. My signal was bad. Fluctuating from -120 to -93 (I moved to a 'better location' in my house for the better signal but I could still see the countdown on the battery move rapidly.) Interesting that though my signal was bad, I was able to download newspaper content fairly quickly. BTW, screen was at about 30% brightness.

Ok so I am back at my parents' house, which has crappy 3G coverage (and zero 4G coverage). My nexus is lucky to get 1 bar. I've seen it at 2, but briefly.

I am looking at my dinc and nexus side by side now and:

dinc: -96 dBm / -97 dBm
nexus: -93 dBm (2 bars), drops mostly to -100 dBm (1 bar)

So slightly worse, but not night and day worse. Neither one gets a strong signal here.