• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

(Verizon) Why the Verizon Nexus signal "sucks"

Wait, I'm not sure i understand. Is thus saying that the signal strength is the same? Because I've never been able to steam hd on a nexus where with a RAZR i could......
 
Yes, this is a very curious article. It seems to be suggesting that the signal reception is exactly the same: but that ICS calculates signal strength differently and therefore displays a different signal level. It DOES explain why, when we were at my parents' house in the middle of nowhere, I got zero bars and the wife's OG Droid had 2 bars.

What it FAILS to explain to me, however, is why she could connect and make calls / surf 3G from anywhere in the house... while I had to go out on the front porch, face a certain direction with one hand held up holding a wad of aluminum foil just to connect and then DON'T MOVE :rolleyes:

Thanks for sharing!
 
I'll tell you what , I am about to pick up my 4th nexus in a couple hrs after missing it for awhile now since going back to the 4s. None of e previous 4 had any signal issues at all. They all read lower than my iPhone 4s but it will always keep a signal in those dead areas of the building I work in, which is about 400,000sqft. The difference with the Nexus is that in those dead areas it will show just a completely grey signal bar with no actual bars. Everything seems to work though. They should at least make is 1 bar like my 4s is and maybe
People would stop whining about it.
 
I appreciate the link and the effort the author put into the explanation. But at the most basic level, you have to consider the user experience. For me, if my data connection would hold on 4G, I wouldn't care what my bars and dbm measurements displayed. Although this is very thorough, it doesn't do much to explain why I get disconnected from the network constantly.
 
kool kat2 said:
Wait, I'm not sure i understand. Is thus saying that the signal strength is the same? Because I've never been able to steam hd on a nexus where with a RAZR i could......
Click to expand...

I am in a weak extended 4G area and was able to stream HD youtube videos last night. I am always on wifi, but decided to try it when I read your post. I wasn't hopeful, but I was able to stream HD youtube just fine, as well as netflix. I ran a speed test and get 4.5 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up. Not too shabby for a definite fringe 4G area. Wish others in fringe areas had that kind of performance :(
 
red66charger said:
I appreciate the link and the effort the author put into the explanation. But at the most basic level, you have to consider the user experience. For me, if my data connection would hold on 4G, I wouldn't care what my bars and dbm measurements displayed. Although this is very thorough, it doesn't do much to explain why I get disconnected from the network constantly.
Click to expand...

When you say disconnected constantly, are you losing all data and voice? Or just dropping 4G to 3G?
 
I think this might explain why 3G/phone signal drops out often in fringe areas for some. If minimum dbm threshold for connection cutoff is set to -130 for example, ICS phone will hit that level far more likely than GB phone. This is just my theory, but seems plausible.

Has anyone seen other LTE phone with ICS? I wonder how 3G/4G signal will be displayed on them.
 
Sandroidfan said:
I think this might explain why 3G/phone signal drops out often in fringe areas for some. If minimum dbm threshold for connection cutoff is set to -130 for example, ICS phone will hit that level far more likely than GB phone. This is just my theory, but seems plausible.

Has anyone seen other LTE phone with ICS? I wonder how 3G/4G signal will be displayed on them.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's my theory, too. If I knew enough about building ROMs, I'd revert the code and see if it "stayed on 4G" better.
 
jkc120 said:
When you say disconnected constantly, are you losing all data and voice? Or just dropping 4G to 3G?
Click to expand...

Data primarily... 4G/3G data connection. I've never dropped a phone call. I have had callers not hear me and I've also seen that I've missed calls even though I never heard the phone ring or had the dialer app open.

And this is primarily indoors, 4G specifically. I don't recall my location during the few phone call incidents. It is definitely far less symptomatic than my data issues.

Just as many GNex devotees can live with minor bugs, the phone stuff I can live with. Not being able to connect to data is what bugs me. And I'm not talking about dbm or bars as much as I am "data connection error".
 
red66charger said:
Data primarily... 4G/3G data connection. I've never dropped a phone call. I have had callers not hear me and I've also seen that I've missed calls even though I never heard the phone ring or had the dialer app open.

And this is primarily indoors, 4G specifically. I don't recall my location during the few phone call incidents. It is definitely far less symptomatic than my data issues.

Just as many GNex devotees can live with minor bugs, the phone stuff I can live with. Not being able to connect to data is what bugs me. And I'm not talking about dbm or bars as much as I am "data connection error".
Click to expand...

Very strange indeed. If it's not dropping everything (gray triangle of death, the hardware bug) then it sounds like you're just in an unfortunate signal area that the Nexus isn't able to deal with. Not sure why other phones are ok there, though.

Do you have any friends nearby with a Nexus that could come over for comparison?
 
red66charger said:
I appreciate the link and the effort the author put into the explanation. But at the most basic level, you have to consider the user experience. For me, if my data connection would hold on 4G, I wouldn't care what my bars and dbm measurements displayed. Although this is very thorough, it doesn't do much to explain why I get disconnected from the network constantly.
Click to expand...

EXACTLY! I could care less what the signal bars say. If I can use my phone to make calls and surf the web, it could say no signal and I would be fine with that. For most people, this isn't about how the phone displays signal, it's about the phone not being able to place a call or access data regardless of what the signal meter says. I'm so tired of people being told to relax because it's just the phone displaying the signal differently. haha If your phone doesn't work for anything other than playing Angry Birds In Space and listening to some tunes, it isn't a phone. It's, at best, a really fancy media player!
 
jkc120 said:
I am in a weak extended 4G area and was able to stream HD youtube videos last night. I am always on wifi, but decided to try it when I read your post. I wasn't hopeful, but I was able to stream HD youtube just fine, as well as netflix. I ran a speed test and get 4.5 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up. Not too shabby for a definite fringe 4G area. Wish others in fringe areas had that kind of performance :(
Click to expand...

You may be in a "fringe" area, but the kind of fringe area that we're talking about aren't "official" fringe areas. When I say fringe area, I mean an area that some verizon phones can access voice and data in but other phones on Verizon can not. I'm not talking about looking at the Verizon coverage map and stating that an area is a "fringe" area. Maybe fringe area isn't the best term for a place like most of us are talking about. Let's call it a weak coverage area. Places where some phones of my family members can't get signal, but other phones on the same network CAN. My house is a perfect example. My GNex couldn't get a signal in or outside of my house, my mom's Thunderbolt could not connect to 3G or make calls in my house last night, but I could use my Razr Maxx and both connect to full 3G and make calls. If you can connect to 4G in a "Verizon official fringe area" on a coverage map, that's different than being able to connect to 4G with one bar in a weak coverage area where every other phone can't connect but you can. I'm talking about hardware radio strength. Understand what I'm saying?

Not trying to be confrontational, but a lot of us are experiencing the same problem and we are all very tech savvy people. This isn't something that's merely in our heads or we're reading a signal meter incorrectly.
 
jkc120 said:
Very strange indeed. If it's not dropping everything (gray triangle of death, the hardware bug) then it sounds like you're just in an unfortunate signal area that the Nexus isn't able to deal with. Not sure why other phones are ok there, though.

Do you have any friends nearby with a Nexus that could come over for comparison?
Click to expand...

If the Nexus can't connect there and other phones can, and then the software update doesn't fix or even help the problem...then what must the problem be? That the hardware radio on the GNex isn't quite as good as other devices on Verizon's network? Because the fact that two different Galaxy Nexus' wouldn't work at my house but my Droid Incredible would and my Razr Maxx does, then that's the only thing I can figure is the problem. A hardware problem, though it doesn't effect people who live in better coverage areas. See what I'm saying?
 
Sounds like we're starting to beat a dead horse....again. I don't think the OP was intended to defend or offend whether or not people have signal issues. Clearly people have issues with the signal with the GN for one reason or another. Signal issues abound with every phone. This is an informative post/article about the tech inside, that is all. :)
 
Nashdroid said:
EXACTLY! I could care less what the signal bars say. If I can use my phone to make calls and surf the web, it could say no signal and I would be fine with that. For most people, this isn't about how the phone displays signal, it's about the phone not being able to place a call or access data regardless of what the signal meter says. I'm so tired of people being told to relax because it's just the phone displaying the signal differently. haha If your phone doesn't work for anything other than playing Angry Birds In Space and listening to some tunes, it isn't a phone. It's, at best, a really fancy media player!
Click to expand...

No one is arguing that if you can't make a phone call or receive/send data that it's a "display issue". There are, however, plenty of people who see "less bars" and think they have an issue when they in fact do not. Also, this article explains why the Nexus drops 4G more often - it was intended, and probably also saves battery. So people would rather it struggle to hold onto 4G so hard that it nukes the battery? If they "fixed" that, then we'd have people complaining that leaving 4G on was killing their battery 2x faster.

Again, it sucks that you and some others are in areas where the Nexus can't hold a voice or data signal, but I believe you're in the minority. :(
 
Nashdroid said:
Not trying to be confrontational, but a lot of us are experiencing the same problem and we are all very tech savvy people. This isn't something that's merely in our heads or we're reading a signal meter incorrectly.
Click to expand...

And there are also plenty of people without issues in weak areas, too. *shrug*
 
jbdan said:
Sounds like we're starting to beat a dead horse....again. I don't think the OP was intended to defend or offend whether or not people have signal issues. Clearly people have issues with the signal with the GN for one reason or another. Signal issues abound with every phone. This is an informative post/article about the tech inside, that is all. :)
Click to expand...

I agree. I suspect, though, that some are taking that blog post as: "So there! Booya! Samsung Galaxy Nexus doesn't have a reception problem!"

All I was pointing out is that, no matter the technical explanation (and that's a helluva explanation), it doesn't change anything about the user experience. Which I guess is obvious. At least it is to those of us with issues. :)
 
red66charger said:
I agree. I suspect, though, that some are taking that blog post as: "So there! Booya! Samsung Galaxy Nexus doesn't have a reception problem!"

All I was pointing out is that, no matter the technical explanation (and that's a helluva explanation), it doesn't change anything about the user experience. Which I guess is obvious. At least it is to those of us with issues. :)
Click to expand...

This is true for people who have that sort of issue. However, there are A TON of people looking at the bars or even the dBm and concluding "the nexus radio sucks" erroneously. This article is for those people, not for people who have drops or are in weak areas where the radio can't handle it. The OP of that thread even said so in the first post.
 
jkc120 said:
This is true for people who have that sort of issue. However, there are A TON of people looking at the bars or even the dBm and concluding "the nexus radio sucks" erroneously. This article is for those people, not for people who have drops or are in weak areas where the radio can't handle it. The OP of that thread even said so in the first post.
Click to expand...

I would have LOVED for my only problem with the Nexus to have been that it wasn't showing enough signal bars to suit me. haha I would have loved to have had a problem like that! Great thread, by the way. I love these kinds of discussions with you guys. Always makes my day at work fly by much faster. Thank you, everyone who is participating and making this so interesting. :)
 
Nashdroid said:
I would have LOVED for my only problem with the Nexus to have been that it wasn't showing enough signal bars to suit me. haha I would have loved to have had a problem like that! Great thread, by the way. I love these kinds of discussions with you guys. Always makes my day at work fly by much faster. Thank you, everyone who is participating and making this so interesting. :)
Click to expand...

Absolutely, love this kind of discussion! :thumb:

So in your case, the t-bolt and nexus both struggle but the razr doesn't? What kind of speeds do you get with the razr where the nexus gets no signal, out of curiosity? Does going outside help you at all? Or going upstairs? I noticed in my house for example if I'm in the downstairs kitchen/tv area, the signal is much weaker than if I'm upstairs in my son's or daughter's rooms, possibly because the tower is in that direction and it's less walls to go through, not sure. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom