Possible bug in Fascinate's signal strength

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I believe there is a bug in the signal strength indication on the Fascinate, the one that shows the signal strength in -dBm.

You can see the signal strength of the cell signal on the Menu, Settings, About, Status screen. Or you can place a widget on your Home screen. There are several widgets available, I'm using Mobile Signal Widget.

I have a network extender, which basically creates a cell tower right in your home. With my Motorola Droid, I used to get signal strengths down to about -50 something and 60's in indicated signal strength. I can hold both of our Fascinates right next to the network extender's antenna and they will read no better than -86 dBm. So far I've seen signal strengths from -86 dBm to -106 dBm (terrible).

I believe there is a bug in the software (Baseband) on the Fascinate. Previously, I thought the hardware (antenna/radio) wasn't very good, but now it may be software related.

Has anyone seen a signal strength stronger than -86 dBm on the Fascinate?

That's a good point. Mine has never gone below -86dbm either. It fluctuates between -86 at it's best and -106 at it's worst.

Ill keep an eye on this with my phone

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

I have no experience with cell phone radios so take this with the appropriate helping of salt.

Most radios have input protection that attenuates any signals greater than a set maximum level to prevent damage to the radio. I'm guessing the Fascinate reports it's receive signal level post input protection. It appears you just discovered this threshold for the Fascinate. Honestly, -86 dBm is plenty of signal, anything more is just for show

Again, I'm only speculating here.

Martian21

Interesting theory. I have emailed Verizon support as well. Hopefully, I will get a technical response and not a canned response from them.

With mine, it only fluctuates in -5dBm increments lol. I thought it was a litle wierd. I've seen -86, -91, -96, -101, and -106 lol.

As far as what the OP is talking about, my BB Tour (alltel) is the same way. It won't ever display anything lower than a -80.

Anyone else have a consistently high TWS(Time Without Signal) percentage? Mine almost never goes below 50%, and I've seen it up in the 80s. I think my battery life is really suffering from this. You can see yours in Settings > About Phone > Battery Use > Cell Standby. I've tried a few "fixes" that I've found through researching the issue on other android phones in general, but haven't seen any results.

Originally Posted by shazbonk

Anyone else have a consistently high TWS(Time Without Signal) percentage? Mine almost never goes below 50%, and I've seen it up in the 80s. I think my battery life is really suffering from this. You can see yours in Settings > About Phone > Battery Use > Cell Standby. I've tried a few "fixes" that I've found through researching the issue on other android phones in general, but haven't seen any results.

I was thinking about this the other day. Is it possible "time without signal" is simply a poor translation? The reason I ask this is when taking my phone off the charger overnight, I went directly to this setting to see what it reported. The phone reported having been unplugged for 2 minutes and already showed 5% TWS. I had been looking at the phone the whole time and didn't see it drop at all. What I did see is it going from 3G w/ arrows to 3Gd. So maybe this percentage isn't time without signal but rather time not active (i.e. 3G d).

I agree w/ the 3g d, I did not update to DI01 yet and it said I have 20% TWS throughout the day, but the phone didnt make a no service sound.

On my drive home everday I pass a Verizon owned tower.

I've stopped at a liquor store about 200 yards away from it and they maximum signal my Fascinate would pull down was -86dBm (4 bars as well).

My Cell Standby is usually around 11%.
Battery life of my Fascinate is very good.