Interesting Research (Engineers clarify please)

[fiores]

So I am a long time AT&T iPhone (Edge 'LOL') customer who just had a enough. I am in about the 47th hour of my HTC DInc and found something interesting that I was hoping someone can clarify.
I returned one DInc already do to massive flux in my dbm. I know the bars are really useless, but I noticed some craziness with them that mirrored the dbm flux I was having. I recently downloaded 'Real Signal' and noticed it asked for me to config 'Main' and 'EvDo'. Doing so I found the default SSI is only really representing the EvDo and not the standard CDMA signaling.
From my understanding, EvDo is the 3G enhancement to the standard CDMA signaling, and even though my phone is representing 91dbm this is truly representing the quality of 3G signal and on the 1x CDMA signaling used for calls.
Using 'Real Signal' and the 'AntennaWidget', I was really consistent in holding 81 dbm (no jumping, truly solid (No Flux)).
So I guess I need clarity around whether or not the frequencies' readings are being blended and overall cellular traffic is not truly accurate in the phone's dbm readings? It seems like EvDo (data), and CDMA (cellular) are not well spelled out; that is if my above statement is correct.

 

[Stupifier]

Well, I'm an Optical Engineer and wireless communications is a part of what we do.....but it is hard for me to really comment on this.

Communication companies (like AT&T and Verizon) love to create their own terminology and attempt to advertise it to their customers as the real deal. The reasons behind doing it are incredibly shady...commonly, they do this (in part) to sell you something that you believe will give you XYZ speeds/quality....when really you are getting far less.

This is likely why all the Cell companies have their own 'name' for 4G and they try extremely hard to associate their version of 4G with the real speeds estimated.

I guess all I'm saying here is....as an Engineer, I doubt anyone here can help answer your question.

Reason: Advertising/Marketing industries skew and warp any shred of scientific terminology. The more you attempt to dive into this stuff with a scientific mindset...the more F'ed up it gets. They'll spin the shit out of anything....believe me

 

[rdlm]

CDMA and EVDO are both industry standards. and both Sprint and Verizon use the same technologies under the same names. CDMA supports both voice and [low speed] data. EVDO is high speed [3g] data.

EVDO runs off of a different radio channel than CDMA does, and is optional. ie: when EVDO rolled out, Verizon went from tower to tower installing new antennas to support EVDO. If you don't have an EVDO signal, you still get data access, but it's painfully slow...

Given that EVDO is a separate radio channel, it makes sense that any radio signal strength measurements would be separate. I've always assumed that the bars displayed are for the CDMA radio, since that's all that is needed for phone calls and data (at least slow data), but that's an assumption. As for what these other apps show, I'm afraid I can't help.