[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S6] jntdroid:
Honestly I think we're all grasping at straws here b/c we want this to *not* be a problem so badly :eek:. Mine's the opposite of yours [MENTION=2623863]lilsalmon[/MENTION] ...lol... Mine will start off with a strong signal for 5-10 seconds then drop back down to "normal". I'm anxious to hear how things went at your gym/office today. Here's what I've found between my home and office tests...

TLDR - Because of this seeming so similar to early LTE problems, which were incredibly problematic, I likely hit the panic button a bit. I'm not saying there aren't issues, but I don't think they are so bad to make them a deal killer for this device.

I can't speak to my problem of driving home and switching to 3G (and dropping a VoLTE call) b/c it's too difficult / dangerous to test that out. However, at my house and at my office (the weaker of the two), I've tested on two different sim cards and two different Galaxy S6's and also an iPhone 6. The results? Almost identical no matter what phone or what sim card was being used. The only real difference is it was a bit harder to weaken the signal on the iPhone 6 with my hands - but I was able to do it.

At Home: with all three phones and two different sim cards at my house, signal strength was almost identical, ranging from 99dBm to 110dBm. I was unable to get any of them to drop LTE altogether at home. Speedtests varied - but they varied in a similar fashion no matter which device or sim was being used. My house is simply in a mid-strength area evidently.

Office - walking/pocket: At my office, the real problem area, things were the same. Both S6's would drop to 3G pretty consistently if I placed them in my pocket and walked around my office. The iPhone 6 didn't drop to 3G in that test, but did drop down to one dot and the dBm's were around 120 when it happened... so 3G might've been better than that signal to be honest (more on that in the conclusion). The iPhone might've still made the shift to 3G, but I could only walk around aimlessly for so long. :)

Office - desk: When it comes to just sitting at my desk and dropping to 3G, they all behaved very similar. The dBm range was consistently 106 to 112+ on all three phones with both sims, with occasional spikes to 115-117 - and that's without touching the phone. [The iPhone did seem to maintain a consistent dBm for a longer period of time - however that could simply be due to the iPhone's method of viewing dBm's, which doesn't refresh unless you close out and reopen it, so take that with a grain of salt.] I could easily force both S6's with both sim's to 3G by gripping the phone on the top and bottom with both hands. Within 30 seconds the dBm's spiked to 130+ and dropped down to 3G. The iPhone 6 took about a minute to get it to drop to 3G, and took some more "handwork", but it did happen. None of these grips represent practical risks, but do show possible differences in sensitivity to attenuation.

Takeaways: I think there are two issues with the S6 switching to 3G/1x... Attenuation and Software. It seems pretty clear that attenuation can be pretty easily created on the S6. But as with other devices that have had this over the years, it's only really a problem if your signal is already on the weaker end of things. A non-metal case should help mitigate this to a certain extent as well. With regard to software, I think the S6's radio is currently configured to switch to 3G sooner than some other devices, as opposed to holding onto a weak or useless LTE signal. I can see an argument on both sides of this. However, with Verizon forcing users to be fully dependent on VoLTE for full device functionality, I think they need to make it work with LTE as much as possible and tweak the radios a bit. The other thing that could be concluded is that my geographical area is simply going through some updates or changes right now on Verizon's network. We've seen this in the past, especially with a large new device release. So in a few weeks this might be a non-issue altogether.