yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
You could have a point there OneStepAhead. I Google'd "Droid incredible signal strength" and found many people commenting that the bars seem to have next to nothing to do with actual performance, eg making calls and sending data with virtually no bars worked fine. That's been my experience so far as well so I am going to ignore the bars for a while and just see if it hangs in there. Given this very common issue with the first version of this phone and the excellent reputation it had despite it, it'll probably be OK.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] brian85:
Even though the bars seem to jump around more and seem to not be as strong as my previous phone, I'm actually getting faster data speeds on it when I do a speed test.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] b0gman:
Don't look at the bars in the status bar go into the setting menu and goto about phone and look at signal strength there that is accurate not the bars at the top for example my dinc 2 is one bar right now at -80db and my coworkers Droid x is four bars at -83db so technically I am getting better signal
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
Thanks for the comments. It's true, the bars jump around like crazy but don't have much to do with the signal strength readings in the system. In fact, sometimes the bars go up and signal strength goes down. Seems I'm pretty much always between -70 & -80. Your input makes me feel a lot better about this phone because it was the only thing making me nervous.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] bik2101:
the less negative the better the reception, correct?
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] Astromech:
The Elixir app has a little widget that shows the "percent" of cell signal you're getting. So it's not a db measurement, but perhaps something they calculate from that measurement. That'd be an easy way to see the number of bars and a percentage measurement at the same time. Sounds like of like what Apple said back during Apple's antennagate, where the bar algorithm was supposedly off.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] OneStepAhead:
right, that is why I suggested the theory of the bar algorithm being off as its apparently happened before. Let's hope that's the case!
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] OneStepAhead:
Im not positive on that, i assume there is a sweet spot somewhere. Im guessing once the number gets low enough the signal strength is no longer good. Im just basing that on cable modem technology which should be between -15 and +10 if i remember correctly. too far on one side is not good. Surely some XDA member can shed some light on this?
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] voiceofid:
I have a Dinc2 as personal phone and OG Droid as the work phone, just sat it next to each other they are both at -70dbm and speedtest gave approx same speeds
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] bik2101:
hmm so from my observastions, i'm getting at abotu -90 to -100 pretty much wherever i am. this is not a good thing right?
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
I was at a friend's house last night. My phone had almost no signal (and therefore barely worked) but neither did a friend's blackberry on at&t and another bb on tmobile. I was at about -97 or so. Typically I'm between -70&-80 pretty much independent of number of bars showing. Last night I guess we were all basically in a dead spot.

That aside, just tried wifi on this phone last night and was blown away by the speed. It doesn't even come close to comparing to my ogDroid which took forever to ping. I never used wifi on that phone cuz it was actually slower than using 3g!
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] b0gman:
Apples antennagate actually effected call quality I owned an original incredible and the reception and call quality seem to be a bit better on the incredible 2
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] Astromech:
And what I'm saying is that if the Elixir measurement or that of another app says you have, say 60% signal, but you only have 1 bar, at the least you'd be able to ignore your bars as irrelevant and rely on your percentage figure until such time as they release a fix for the superficial bar issue. Annoying, but a workaround.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
Good tip on Elixir. Its %s seem to coincide for the most part with the bars. I made a call from Costco today with zero bars and it sounded fine. So I think i'll ignore all the bar stuff and just make sure it keeps working fine. My guess at this point is it will be perfectly OK.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] petem97149:
I recently upgraded to a Dinc 2 with misgivings due to reports of weak signal. Last week I drove from Salem (Oregon) through the coast range to Tillamook, down US101 to Lincoln City and then back through the coast range to Salem. Carried and compared a Blackberry Bold 9650 and Dinc 2 (Verizon).

Whenever I stopped and compared the dBm on the two handsets, the readings were within 2-4 dBm, despite the Dinc 2 signal bar showing half or less bars than the BB.

It makes me agree with abqslim's post that the signal bars on the Dinc 2 have little to do with signal strength.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] Astromech:
Hmm, if that's the case, maybe Elixir isn't so smart after all. Could be it relies on the same output as the bar thing. I was thinking maybe Elixir made an end run around whatever the bars were doing wrong but maybe not. I still like the % thing just because I don't really know what the bars are supposed to mean. Is one bar 20%? 25%? 40%? Who knows? And you'd think zero bars means no signal, but while using the Bolt I noticed I might have zero bars but still have 16% signal or something like that. Maybe that's not good enough for a call but it's certainly higher than zero.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
Good observations. Very helpful knowing about the comparison with the bb while on the road!
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
Good point Atromech. I'm getting more and more convinced that the ui bars mean very little and Elixir might be using those for the most part. Just going on the phone info about signal strength has been most helpful and points fairly large discrepancies with the bars. Most telling is that sometimes the bars go down but strength goes up or viceversa. Think I'll ignore bars and use the phone now :-)
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
Of course one other possibility is that the reading we're getting on bars is accurate and other phones (like my ogDroid) were "exaggerating" the signal strength :-)
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] kiriuskris:
I've had problems with my Inc2's signal at work. Where my Inc1 seemed to get at least a little signal and data at my desk, my Inc2 is always shows no bars or no signal. I have trouble connecting to WiFi too as well.

Maybe it's because I was running CM7 on the Inc1. But it's frustrating because I don't get my texts or voicemail alerts until after I step near the outside or upstairs of the building.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
Just to note.. The droid x has the bar issue a well and I thought is was a motorola only issue. Confronted them on it and they seem not to care too much. This might be Verizon doing to mislead some people.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] abqslim:
Yeah, I've just stopped looking at the bars completely. Sometimes when I do look and see them at 4 I think wow! great! But then it just jumps around as usual. Fortunately I've only had one instance where I had no reception, but neither did my friends on at&t or t-mobile so no biggy. Phones been working great!
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
There's a few things to remember about CDMA reception.

First, the bars are calculated based on what the handset maker thinks it should display based on signal strength. These bars can give you an idea of relative signal strength but only within the device itself in various areas. If at one bar you start noticing problems, but 2 it's fine, then you can safely assume that anywhere you have 2 or more bars that your device has a good enough signal to function properly.

Second there are different frequency bands being used for different technologies. You only have one signal meter in the status bar, yet your device is maintaining data and voice connections separately. I believe on the signal strength being displayed is for the type of connection being displayed. For example, if you have a 3G connection, it's showing the strength of your 3G connection and not your 1x or voice connection. You can have terrible 3G coverage and excellent voice coverage.

Lastly each device has different radio signal filtering technologies being employed. Some devices can work great with weaker signals and others may not. I've noticed my I2 has been much better at handling weaker signals than my Eris ever was.

I wouldn't put too much stock in signal strength. What's more important is signal quality. I can be in an area with 2 bars signal and get 2mbit throughput, while an area with 4 bars signal will not only be under 1mbit, but will have frequent retransmit requests (those times you see throughput stall it likely is having trouble with data integrity and is requesting retransmits). All the signal meter really tells you is that you're connected. I'd honestly rather just have the connection type indicator without the bars.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] xgunther:
Most definitely just a bug in the software that calculates the reception. Most likely fixable with an update.

Perhaps it's a Verizon conspiracy to make sure that your next phone is 4G LTE. :eek:

LOL
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
Sorry to say, but your only 50% right..tell that to the iPhone which shows accurate bars against dBms..

Here's how to prove your theory wrong. When I go right next to a tower, my dBm is around -46 or so.. and my bars are at 2-3 out of 4. When I make a call, strangely on 1x, the bars are full and accurate.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] tyvallely:
The Inc 2's antenna is at the bottom where your hand is. Maybe it was like the at&t iPhone were you had to put a case on it or hold it a certain way. Hopefully gingerbread fixes this for us.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
What, exactly, are you attempting to disprove? I never mentioned towers. In fact, being too close to a tower can result in signal quality problems due to stronger signal echoes.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
I'm not.. Just saying from my tests your 50% right..
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
I still don't understand what you are disproving based on your tests because my information is based on industry knowledge, not anecdotal references.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
I'm talking the 3G bars... I don't see why the Verizon iPhone, Blackberries, HP phones give an accurate bar count with dBm. My DX on the other hand shows FULL BARS at -94dBm which is poor signal. I just don't get why it's not telling the truth. On 1x, the signal to dBm is on point, when it hits a certain range, the bars match it. Now with 3G, the bars basically go all over. Most times when I enable wifi the bars are go down to 1 or 0 after a while but if I disable it and start streaming some audio, bars jump up to full in a poor signal area.

I don't know maybe I'm crazy.. Here is some pictures:

Anyway..I'm sure it not as diverse on the DI 2 as it is on my DX. I just find it weird. Another isssue is the 3G to 1x dropping constantly in a good signal area( around -70dBm). Thats another topic, not sure if you guys also have this issue.

Sorry for the long post..
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
Maybe I'm just a simple redneck, but you still have me confused.

I'm not trying to be cute. I'm completely serious. I'm confused because I'm failing to see how any of that makes any of what I wrote wrong.

But this is a digression.

The differences come from the way the software is written to display the bars and it will vary between devices (hence the device maker determines what the bars mean). Remember the patch Apple released for the iPhone that changed the calibration on the bar display, but didn't actually fix signal quality problems? I pretty much never count on the bars to tell me anything useful. If I feel I need to know the quality of the signal, I bust out a real world test, like speed test, or make a phone call to voicemail or something.

BTW, -94 dBm might sound terrible, but with proper hardware signal filtering, it's fine. That's about what my I2 is at in my home and I'm getting 1.5mbit speed. Mobile radios have come a long way over the years, allowing them to work at lower power and weaker signals, and to do more with it.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
True. I understand. I guess I was a little too impulsive. Either way works fine though. I do find my DX switching between 1x and 3G alot.. Mostly around -90dBm and higher. Does the Inc 2 do that around the same signal strength? Or what is your experience on the switching so far? Also I find it happens alot on motorola phones, especially outside with near perfect signal my phone at times tend to switch randomly.. What's your take on the ic 2 so far?

Sent from my DROIDX
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
I live in a very large metropolitan area so it's very well covered, so keep this in mind.

I have, personally, never seen my I2 switch to 1x. Even inside my office building. The only times I've seen the signal drop altogether was in my office's parking garage...but that's expected as it's partially underground and I park on the bottom level. I just have never seen it hit 1x, it's either been connected or not.

My Eris, on the other hand, would occasionally switch, but rarely, and it varied depending on what radio firmware I ran. If it switched at all, it was generally while at my office, when it would sometimes struggle to lock the 3G radio after leaving the parking garage.

Just a little bit of trivia on signal strength:

Early mobile phones (bag phones, car phones, bricks, etc) worked in the watt range, not the milliwatt range. Some of them would transmit upwards to 3 watts. 1dBm is about 1 milliwatt, 1 watt would be 1000 times that, so signal strength in dBm would be a high positive number! Sometimes dipping below a watt would be problematic. And they say modern mobile phones have a high risk to cause brain cancer...pshaw.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
That pretty damn good. What about in poor signal areas around -95 to 105? Is it still on 3g and getting 3G speeds?

Sent from my DROIDX
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
Like I said, I'm sitting at about -94 dBm. I've seen it dip below -100 dBm. I've seen it go as high as -83 dBm in the same room. All the while, it's pulling 1.5 mbits, pushing .7 mbits, and I never drop a call. My Eris was about as strong, but throughput was a little lower (I blame the speed of the device, it rarely cracked over 1mbit while the I2 breaks 2mbit pretty regularly).
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
Damn.. Sounds like the antenna in the I2 is great if its pulling that much in the low signal area. Amazing.

Looks like the 1x switching is a Moto problem then. I'm sitting at around -90dBm right now and I just ran a speed test an get 600 kbps down.. Shortly after the test my phone switch to 1x with two bars.. Tell me something isn't wrong :(.. I'm in New York City so i know the area is good. Looks like I might be picking up a Inc if anything. My DX makes using 3G indoors unreliable and annoying. What you think?

Sent from my DROIDX
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
I'd say test it in a store that has live devices.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] ram130:
I did but no way test in average signal areas and every day use.. Oh well.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] dco717:
I go back and forth from 3g to 1x on my incredible 2

sent from my droid incredible 2
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
I'm not gonna say this is impossible. As I prefaced my statement, I live in a large metropolitan area with really good coverage.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] kateschindler:
Signal in my apartment

I just got the Inc 2 (my first smartphone) and voice does not seem to work in my apartment. Elixir says I have about 10% Verizon signal, which seems (anecdotally) to be enough to text, but not to make or receive calls. I'm still in the 14-day return period and would rather not shell out for a signal booster.

Any thoughts on how I could make the situation better? My boyfriend's Droid X works fine (although that's a bigger piece of equipment than I'd really like) - is there any way to guess which might be better without shuttling back and forth from the store activating all the phones one at a time? (assuming they'd even let me do that from a store - I ordered my phone online)

If a signal booster is the answer, can you recommend a good budget-friendly one? My apartment's only 382 sq ft, and I can make the occasional call next to the door already. It would also only be for me.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] mattwood2000:
Guys nimdae is right - there are a couple of things at work here. First, with digital signals and high frequency ones, your signal strength does not directly correlate to signal quality. You can have a great -40 dBm signal but a really crappy link quality resulting in low data rates due to retries, etc. Link quality gets worse, or I should say harder to achieve at higher frequencies due to things like multipath signals (same signal arriving at the receiver from different paths, i.e directly and also reflected from a metal building).

Also, the higher you go in frequency, the less theoretical range you can get while maintaining a given data rate, so if you switch to a higher frequency but maintain the same link budget, then your datarate will fall off for the same distance traveled.

The bars are just a gross approximation of what the signal should be given frequency, modulation, etc. Thats why you will get more bars for 1X vs less for 3G.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
I've been in a few areas like this and it really is a bummer. There's not much you can do short of your shuttling of devices to find one that works best or just getting a booster or femtocell device.

The booster may be the way to go in the long run but as I recall, they are not cheap. A quick search seems to indicate they are $300+

Verizon offers femtocell devices. They don't advertise them, you have to ask for them They are devices that provide a small cell site connected to your home internet connection, essentially making your phone a voip phone. The crappy thing about them is Verizon still charges you minutes and data over the femtocell for some reason even though it's using the data connection you are also paying for. I don't know if Verizon started offering 3G femtocell devices yet. Femtocell devices are only a little cheaper than a booster.

You can read more about the differences between the two setups here:

http://www.verizonfemtocell.com/
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] mattwood2000:
Perhaps Verizon will release new Radio firmware soon...thats what I'm hoping for. That might help somewhat.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] knipp21:
What are the 4 prongs that make a square under our battery? Looks like some sort of extra antenna could be put there...I hate that our case is our antenna
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
The only way Verizon can fix a signal valley is to deploy a new tower. The funny thing about this is there are many areas with weak signals that providers want to deploy a tower, but towers are ugly structures and people don't want them in their areas. Providers try their best to work around this.
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] nimdae:
I suspect it's something for engineering purposes.

Also, since the antenna is in the back cover, it could be possible for a back cover with a better engineered antenna to be used, but this may be a difficult thing to do (that is, do better than HTC).
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] Stam2000:
There's one in the gb update
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] tennessee_titan:
There are 2 sets of antenna connections in the cover. Does anyone know which is which? I assume one is for the GPS and one for the phone??? Bluetooth in there too somewhere...
[Verizon Droid Incredible 2] sacnotsack:
Look for the post labled "signal boosting experiment " someone from there would know

Sent from my DINC2 in Yuma, AZ
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] scottcwhite:
Obviously possible but I am trying to root my buddies CAptivate and NOTHING is working. What am I missing. TRied z4, cant us 3rd party installs, tried superone click and does nothing, tried the othert one click and it sits on the little blue screen saying my phone should be rebooting but my phone just sits there ?

can someone please HELP!!!
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mcord11758:
This should be moved to q&a before they eat you.

the first two methods you mentioned should work if you followed instructions correctly
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] oblivianz:
It might be due to the computer not recognizing the phone properly?
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ou812bkewl:
You will probably have to end up replacing 3e recovery if your friend is already at 2.2. I always just 1Click back to stock and install a custom ROM from there. The only other ways I have seen involve replacing the stock kernel with a rooted kernel using Odin (the non-1click version), which can quickly ruin your friendship if any problems are encountered. Nothing else that I have seen will work with 3e.

Here is the 1Click: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=731989
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Markolic:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=884364 look at step 2, worked perfectly for me.

If you want to take fun way, forget rooting, just use http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=944418 and install custom rom that comes with root(all of them)

Either way, happy hunting :P
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Xtracter:
if you follow this it should work no problem.. http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=731989
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] whitesox311:
reason super one click isnt working is probably because your phone is not in USB debugging mode
[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pinoyplaya:
And you shouldn't double post the same question clogs up the thread
[XPERIA X10 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Carlo_WPG:
Hi there,

Please don't freak out on me for not perusing the posts. I have and unfortunately I couldn't find the post I was originally looking for (I saw it there a few months ago, book marked it, but lost it after an HDD crash - I now know the value of Xmark sync).

A few months ago I flashed my phone to a simple generic 2.1 firmware. Nothing fancy. Since doing so I've had some weird issues where some apps fail to work now, even the Weather Network's widget fails to launch. Weird, frequent random FCCs, etc.

My phone is an X10a, and was upgraded to:

Firmware: 2.1-update1

Baseband: 2.1.54

Kernel Version: 2.6.29

Build Number: 2.1.A.0.435

The issue i have is that after the upgrade, it changed my language from English to spanish I think, and it purged all the info regarding the Mobile Network Settings (APN's, Voicemail settings, etc).

Because of these issues, I would like to re-flash my phone with SEUS but to the ENGLISH Generic. If I can't do that I would like to flash it back to the Rogers firmware if possible.

Is there a way for me to do so easily?

I remember that there was a guide on the forum that talked about editing a few files using a program from the Market in order, with root access, in order to change the country code information that the phone is currently using, so that using SEUS will force the phone to download a different firmware. But I have come up empty on my search. Or maybe it was a really weird dream lol
[XPERIA X10 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] robotfoodisgood:
Have you tried the SEUS to get back the original Rogers firmware image? I messed up my phone a few times and the SEUS was always able to restore the default Rogers image.