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Verizon GS3 signal reception thread

data issues related to dbm #'s?

  • high dbm, data works fine

    Votes: 53 68.8%

  • high dbm, data does not work

    Votes: 17 22.1%

  • other: explain in comments

    Votes: 7 9.1%
  • Total voters
    77
Along those same lines, here is something i HAVE tried and it works flawlessly every time.

Now mind you this is going to sound as ridiculous as i look when im doing it ....

In a parking lot trying to find out where you parked your car, you hit the "Horn" button on your key fab so you can here it and walk to your car. When you are out of reach of the typical key fab, hold the fab pressing firmly on your chin while pushing the button. It doubles the distance of the reach of the key fab (estimated) by using your skull as an extension to the antenna, i think. Either way, it does work.

I wonder if this logic is what is making "laying it on the table" work? If so, can the same people hold various parts of the phone firmly on your chin and see if you can tell a difference in reception?

I know this is ridiculous lol, but the key fab does actually work. Worth a shot to find out i guess.
 
rsarno said:
Along those same lines, here is something i HAVE tried and it works flawlessly every time.

Now mind you this is going to sound as ridiculous as i look when im doing it ....

In a parking lot trying to find out where you parked your car, you hit the "Horn" button on your key fab so you can here it and walk to your car. When you are out of reach of the typical key fab, hold the fab pressing firmly on your chin while pushing the button. It doubles the distance of the reach of the key fab (estimated) by using your skull as an extension to the antenna, i think. Either way, it does work.
Click to expand...

Nonononono.

Place your key fob just below your chin, it's using the curved surface from your chin, back to your neck, and then out as your neck reaches your upper chest, as a parabolic reflector - like a little satellite dish. Find the focal point of that geometry and you can open a car from over 50 yards, easily.

As I've said often here before, if anyone thinks that their skull is acting as an antenna, I strongly recommend a tin foil hat. ;) :)

As for a table acting as a ground plane to assist in RF - depends entirely upon the table composition and the local fields.
 
Well the claim was that samsung put the transreceiver in the middle of the device and yea it was sort of like the apple in that your hand was blocking the signal; but rather than phrase it tahat way I chose to phrase it the way it was presented. Actually it might bve slightly different in that the i think in the apple case direct contact with the outer band, while having the same impact as blocking the signal, was a bit different from a technical perspective. Anyways that was his claim, naturally I don't have a sg3 so can't comment first hand :)


EarlyMon said:
Nonononono.

Place your key fob just below your chin, it's using the curved surface from your chin, back to your neck, and then out as your neck reaches your upper chest, as a parabolic reflector - like a little satellite dish. Find the focal point of that geometry and you can open a car from over 50 yards, easily.

As I've said often here before, if anyone thinks that their skull is acting as an antenna, I strongly recommend a tin foil hat. ;) :)

As for a table acting as a ground plane to assist in RF - depends entirely upon the table composition and the local fields.
Click to expand...
 
you2 said:
Well the claim was that samsung put the transreceiver in the middle of the device and yea it was sort of like the apple in that your hand was blocking the signal; but rather than phrase it tahat way I chose to phrase it the way it was presented. Actually it might bve slightly different in that the i think in the apple case direct contact with the outer band, while having the same impact as blocking the signal, was a bit different from a technical perspective. Anyways that was his claim, naturally I don't have a sg3 so can't comment first hand :)
Click to expand...

In the case of the Apple, there were two antennas on the outside band, separated by little cuts. If you touched both, it caused a short that dropped the signal entirely.

Apple shot back with full denial at first, along with a "demonstration" that Android phones suffered a worse death-grip problem that survives as a meme to this day. After being laughed at for that by half of the blogosphere and praised by the Apple-loving remainder, they issued free band covers that they called bumpers and continued to defend, build and market that dumb antenna arrangement. The iPhone 5 is going to feature internal antennas and the feature will no doubt be marketed as revolutionary.





snilloconator said:
Can a "porte" # cause bad reception?
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with that term. :confused:
 
I don't care about numbers, dbms, or how many bars I get.
So don't ask me if what my dbm level is on tower 6 on 32nd and main and what the triangulation level is during peak data hours or anything like that.

What I can tell you is that about a week into owning the GS3, phone calls have been flawless. Data is very good. There are times where a webpage will not load up. But I'm not sure if it's the connection or something else as a simple click of the reload button will fix it. I do flip flop between 4g and 3g, but it's not every 5 minutes or anything like that- more like 2-3x per day.

So it works as advertised and I'm happy.
 
sergey said:
I don't care about numbers, dbms, or how many bars I get.
So don't ask me if what my dbm level is on tower 6 on 32nd and main and what the triangulation level is during peak data hours or anything like that.

What I can tell you is that about a week into owning the GS3, phone calls have been flawless. Data is very good. There are times where a webpage will not load up. But I'm not sure if it's the connection or something else as a simple click of the reload button will fix it. I do flip flop between 4g and 3g, but it's not every 5 minutes or anything like that- more like 2-3x per day.

So it works as advertised and I'm happy.
Click to expand...

I'm w/ ya. Details are overrated !! Can you hear me now..........yes.
 
sergey sums it up pretty good.

The GS3 has good 3g, great 4g and great call range. Add that with everything else the device has and it is a sweet device.
 
EarlyMon said:
In the case of the Apple, there were two antennas on the outside band, separated by little cuts. If you touched both, it caused a short that dropped the signal entirely.

Apple shot back with full denial at first, along with a "demonstration" that Android phones suffered a worse death-grip problem that survives as a meme to this day. After being laughed at for that by half of the blogosphere and praised by the Apple-loving remainder, they issued free band covers that they called bumpers and continued to defend, build and market that dumb antenna arrangement. The iPhone 5 is going to feature internal antennas and the feature will no doubt be marketed as revolutionary.







I'm not familiar with that term. :confused:
Click to expand...

Sorry I meant "ported" number. Basically taking my old AT&T number and having it moved to Verizon. I initially started a new contract with Verizon because I was having issues with AT&T in my area while Verizon users were not. So I made the move to Verizon but had the option of 14 days to try them out and if at any time I didn't think they lived up to my expectations I could drop them and only pay a restock fee of $35. Well a week and half went buy so i decided to keep them because the coverage was so good.

After they ported my # (which was a hassle) the Verizon store gave me a new sim card. Then I started noticing my signal was not as strong and would just sporadically bounce from 4G to 3G... So after reading thread after thread here I came to the consensus that it may be the sim card they replaced for me. I took a trip to the local Verizon store (very rude btw) and had it replaced and will test it today. However the salesman who helped me stated that it in no way shape or form could it be the sim card and rather that it was probably my old number that is the root of the problem?

Can anyone here clarify that an old number being ported cause a signal issue?
 
You learn something new every day I suppose, but - your number is a simple matter of programming on their end and a data value in your phone.

I'd bet real money that the sales rep knew as much about numbers as he did about sim card failures. Iow, zip.
 
EarlyMon said:
You learn something new every day I suppose, but - your number is a simple matter of programming on their end and a data value in your phone.

I'd bet real money that the sales rep knew as much about numbers as he did about sim card failures. Iow, zip.
Click to expand...

I was pretty disappointed at the service I received at the store. Over the phone the service from Verizon has been great.

BTW sim card did not make a difference. May just be that the phone needs an update?
 
Ken7 said:
One thing I noticed when in really bad signal areas, the S3 still does run hot. I probably didn't notice it before because some of the areas I'd been in with the S3 were areas where the GNex would get very hot and suffer from shortened battery life. However many of these areas didn't have the same effect on the S3.

But when you do run in to places like that where the S3 struggles, it too will get pretty hot.

All in all I'm still very impressed with the phone. It's a keeper.
Click to expand...


I've found that while the S3 does get warm in weak signal areas mine doesn't get as hot as my Razr Maxx. You could fry an egg on that phone.
 
Agreed on the GS3 getting hot sometimes. It does not get nowhere as hot as the Razr, but close enough in spikes. My GS3 seems to have a split personality sometimes. Fast download speed in places sometimes with medium or low signal and then sometimes other places with better signal (dBm) I get slower download speed. THAT is when the device gets fairly hot.

It seems that whenever the signal shows strong dBm and the actual download speed is slow, the device gets hot. If the dBm is weaker, and the results correlate with slow downloads, it does not... Summary of heat status:

1. If the performance basically matches the signal or outperforms, the device stays cool- even with 4G (unlike the toasty Razr).

2. If the signal shows strong dBm, but download speeds are weak, the device gets fairly hot and battery life suffers.

This contradiction did not seem to happen with the Razr. With 4G the Razr was always hot and 3G was too if weak signal, but the downlload speed always tended to correlate with the dBm signal (weak dBm = slow download, strong dBm = fast download).

These events are not normal, but do happen. The event seems to happen always with 3G, as far as the GS3 getting hot. If dBm shows strong signal, but results are slow download speeds- toasty. The average trend is still a much cooler running device than the Razr, but the GS3 does get hot in this contradicting example. I would expect if the dBm signal is weak and so is the download speed, it would get hot, but not the case. The GS3 does get warm with low signal (as expected), but the HOT results happen in the example underlined.

Added: The same thing happened with the white 32 version and had a June 16 kernel. Current kernel is dated July 4 with blue 32. This has happened enough now to suggest not a one-off event.
 
Interesting observations Rush, I'll have to take more careful note of that when my S3 gets toasty. It's very possible since my casual observations show my S3 is not getting hot in the same areas that my GNex and Razr Max did.
 
nooaah said:
IS there any way to display dBm in the status bar? I prefer this to the signal bars.
Click to expand...
OpenSignalMaps has a widget that displays on the homescreen - not a status bar, but better than loading an app. I believe it requires one tap to update, two taps to load.
 
With more time under my belt with the S3 and more time for 4G/3G observations, I've come away with another thought on the reception qualities of the S3.

It seems that I might have gotten 4G just a bit more in some of the weaker areas with my GNex than my S3. However the more important point is that I seem to get far fewer of the 'no data connectivity' issues than I did with my GNex.

Although at times it seems the S3 should switch over to 4G quicker from 3G than it does, at least it maintains a fast 3G connection as opposed to a period of 'no data connectivity'. At times it almost seems as if the speed is '4G like' despite the 3G prompt in the info bar.

The signal always suffers a bit in my pocket and it seems the S3 needs to 'air out' a bit before regaining the full signal strength...not that that's so unusual with any phone.
 
Early, the only disparity in that post and what I've understood about the S3's construction, is the modem. It's always been my impression the S3 went to the Qualcom modem and no longer uses the Viacom chipset. That might explain the overall better experience that 'most' users are having with the S3...even if performance is sometimes a bit perplexing.
 
You may be right, I will have to go find a data sheet on that beastie.

I would presume that it's similar to the Qualcomm QSC6085, that an MCP with both modem and radio transceivers, because the authors of the originating article (copied by all) refer to the Via Telecom as a modem connected to an antenna structure (yeah, no).

Anyway, I thought some might find our member's speculation interesting.
 
EarlyMon said:
You may be right, I will have to go find a data sheet on that beastie.

I would presume that it's similar to the Qualcomm QSC6085, that an MCP with both modem and radio transceivers, because the authors of the originating article (copied by all) refer to the Via Telecom as a modem connected to an antenna structure (yeah, no).

Anyway, I thought some might find our member's speculation interesting.
Click to expand...

Yes, it was interesting. If my memory serves me, the modem chipset being used in the S3 is the same one being used in the upcoming Razr HD. Again, I could be wrong.
 
I am 100% comfortable now with the following:

3G = Droid3 > Razr > GS3 (Droid 3 is significantly better than both, Razr is a little better than the GS3)
4G = GS3 > Razr
Call range = all equal
 
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