[Touch Diamond, MDA Compact IV ROM Development] jasonkruys:
Exactly. Better values reported with fieldtest doesn't necessarily mean a better quality signal in practice, each radio could report differently. If I showed two people a length of rope, and asked both to estimate the length, they would probably say different (but similiar) lengths - it is still the same length rope, just perceived differently! This is what could be the case with radios.

The hardware stays the same, the antenna position, length, so the only thing that the radio rom can potentially vary to alter the signal is the gain of the signal amplifiers. To increase the gain of an amplifier, you increase the amount of power it consumes. It would probably be fair to say that you might expect the roms with the best battery performance to have the lower performance, as the gain on the amplifiers would be lower. The trick is to get a good compromise, a gain that gives acceptable performance, but does not diminish battery life too much. This could very well be a personal preference - one man may like excellent signal reception, but charge every day, another man that lives under a mast may put up with slightly poorer reception for better battery life.

Either way, varying the gain of the signal amplifier is probably not going to make MASSIVE variation to the actual quality of the signal. It is also fair to say that it is very unlikely that a radio rom that does improve battery life, will also improve the actual signal quality (whilst, as said, it may report higher values) - it just goes against everything I have suggested, and the basic laws of electronics.

So, in summary, you have two unknown variables, which make it virtually impossible to sensibly measure the 'signal' performance of a radio:

1. The unknown variation in reporting (how a radio perceives or reports the same signal level)

2. The fact that even if you place a device in exactly the same place, within seconds, the actual signal level is going to vary. A mobile phone signal is travelling a long way from the antenna, and is affected by trees, cars, buildings, rain etc. There is not just 'one ray' of signal that comes from the antenna to your phone, it is a multi-path signal, and lots and lots and lots of different 'rays' are bouncing off of cars, buildings, trees, birds and all coming to your device at once - something which is varying constantly.

As such, measuring the signal level between radios as we are doing, is pretty pointless, and will not tell you a lot. Similiar things can be said about battery life also, which the level of signal will also affect, as well as even slightly different usage patterns, but at least with battery life, you can see differences that are bigger.

Radio ROMs are probably like OS ROMs in that the only way to find the 'best' one, is to try them all, and see which one YOU 'like' best, although that will probably change on a day to day basis.

It would be interesting to do a blind test, rename all the radios so you didn't know which one you had, and see if you got the same favourite - I suspect many people would not.

I hope I have made what I have said easy to understand, as it is quite difficult to explain something you know a lot about without making assumptions about what people know, or will understand, or without using specialist terminology