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Dropping calls with 4 bars on VZ?

S

Schlotkins

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 24, 2008
49
76
My wife and I moved over to Verizon yesterday after 2 years with AT&T. We are both having a strange issue where our phones are dropping calls around our house even though we have 3 or 4 bars of 3G. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? It hasn't happened once or twice but is a consistent problem. It doesn't happen all the time with 3 or 4 bars but it particularly bad around our house.

We are also experiencing unstable reception levels in general. For example, sometimes the phone will have 5 bars and then 1 bar in the exact same location. This is not a death grip issue, but rather sitting on a table.

Finally, the area in our house is in the 'best' coverage zone and even in an LTE zone so I'm not sure what to think.

Thanks,
Chris
 
Bars tend not to mean much,

Dial: *3001#12345#* in your phone app, then press "Call", that will then take you into Field Test Mode, the farther away from -51 the worst your Signal Strength is. Why do I saw that bars tend not to mean much, because sometimes when I am on WiFi, I will be on my front porch (far from my router), and it will still display 1-2 bars, but when I try to use it, I get nothing.

img0201c.png
img0200n.png


iPhoneSignal_both.jpg
 
diegoesk said:
what zip code are you in? Or one thats close to you...
Click to expand...

I'm in 92617. If you put that into VZ's coverage map, I'll just say that I'm pretty darn close to where the pin is. In fact, I dropped a call essentially right on that pin.

Thanks,
Chris
 
Schlotkins said:
I'm in 92617. If you put that into VZ's coverage map, I'll just say that I'm pretty darn close to where the pin is. In fact, I dropped a call essentially right on that pin.

Thanks,
Chris
Click to expand...

I was just in Irvine for dinner and i couldn't get any 3G signal at all at the restaurant. It's spotty around here for VZW.
 
patp said:
I was just in Irvine for dinner and i couldn't get any 3G signal at all at the restaurant. It's spotty around here for VZW.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info.

I guess I understand Irvine has crappy cell phone coverage (AT&T was also bad), but I am talking about dropping calls with 4 bars. If I drop a call with 1 bar, fine I understand. But 4 bars? 5 bars? 3 bars and can't make a call (call failed)? Argh.

Chris
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Are you left handed? This isn't death grip related I'm assuming. I haven't been dropping calls at all. If it's happening on both phones it also can't be faulty hardware. There's an update number you can dial for Verizon. I think it is *228 and then send.
 
Unless they're doing something fancy utilizing the current call's error rate, most often the bars are simply the signal strength at the phone of the tower's pilot channel.

That reception strength is fairly meaningless with CDMA (whether it's Verizon CDMA2000 or ATT WCDMA-3G) radios.

With CDMA, all phones talk at once, which raises the cell noise floor, which causes people on the edge of the cell (or with less powerful phones) to drop because they can no longer get through to the tower over everyone else.

So you could have one signal bar, but with few cell users, and have a great connection. Conversely, you could have a lot of bars meaning you can hear the tower really well, but it cannot hear you because of hundreds of other users at that moment. Of course, in theory your phone should at that point be talking to another cell(s) and never drop. But if something is going on in the whole neighborhood like a football game, all the cells could be loaded down.

Or perhaps your roaming list is old. Dial *228 and pick the update option (2).
 
mightygitis said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Are you left handed? This isn't death grip related I'm assuming. I haven't been dropping calls at all. If it's happening on both phones it also can't be faulty hardware. There's an update number you can dial for Verizon. I think it is *228 and then send.
Click to expand...

I was dropping with the phone on my passanger seat using a bluetooth headset. My wife was holding hers but we have bumpers.

I'm assuming at this point either the bars are overstating what the true reception is or there is just something weird with the tower near us. I actually did the *228 this morning for a number port so I should be hitting all of the towers.

Oh well, I was hoping for decent cell phone service but it looks like a no go. We'll probably move back to AT&T then - save $40 a month and at least we know where it drops already.

Thanks,
Chris
 
kdarling said:
Unless they're doing something fancy utilizing the current call's error rate, most often the bars are simply the signal strength at the phone of the tower's pilot channel.

That reception strength is fairly meaningless with CDMA (whether it's Verizon CDMA2000 or ATT WCDMA-3G) radios.

With CDMA, all phones talk at once, which raises the cell noise floor, which causes people on the edge of the cell (or with less powerful phones) to drop because they can no longer get through to the tower over everyone else.

So you could have one signal bar, but with few cell users, and have a great connection. Conversely, you could have a lot of bars meaning you can hear the tower really well, but it cannot hear you because of hundreds of other users at that moment. Of course, in theory your phone should at that point be talking to another cell(s) and never drop. But if something is going on in the whole neighborhood like a football game, all the cells could be loaded down.

Or perhaps your roaming list is old. Dial *228 and pick the update option (2).
Click to expand...

Thanks for that information - makes sense I guess. There wasn't anything special going on... it was pretty quiet in the neighborhood actually and it's happened a few different times.

I'm guessing the signal is actually fairly weak here based on the unstable bars. I had a similar problem when I was on the border of getting HDTV reception many years ago.

Thanks again,
Chris
 
I just ported all my lines back to AT&T from Verizon, so I have no phones to check what I am about to tell you. On the iphone and droid x the signal bars represented the strength of the 3G signal (if you are in 3G service). On verizon data is over 3G, but not voice. Voice is over 1xrtt which is not shown in the signal bars. So the bars you are looking at are not your voice signal strength.

Schlotkins said:
Thanks for the info.

I guess I understand Irvine has crappy cell phone coverage (AT&T was also bad), but I am talking about dropping calls with 4 bars. If I drop a call with 1 bar, fine I understand. But 4 bars? 5 bars? 3 bars and can't make a call (call failed)? Argh.

Chris
Click to expand...
 
JustLeft said:
I just ported all my lines back to AT&T from Verizon, so I have no phones to check what I am about to tell you. On the iphone and droid x the signal bars represented the strength of the 3G signal (if you are in 3G service). On verizon data is over 3G, but not voice. Voice is over 1xrtt which is not shown in the signal bars. So the bars you are looking at are not your voice signal strength.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense!
 
martiansoldier said:
It has been less than 10 days since Verizon started selling the iPhone and they have issues already?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't read too much into my situation... I'm just trying to figure out what's going on so I can make a call on whether to return these for AT&T iPhones or stick with Verizon. Highly likely I am going to AT&T on Sunday.
 
martiansoldier said:
It has been less than 10 days since Verizon started selling the iPhone and they have issues already?
Click to expand...

They have sold hundreds of thousands of iphones in the past week. At least some of them are bound to have issues and they will post about it.
 
xraydoc said:
A) all phones/service have issues.
B) only people with trouble are posting for the most part. So, there's some major population bias.
Click to expand...
A) If all phones/services have issues, I'm sure most of us would be smart enough to not use them.
B) Agree, that is the case on every message board.

Schlotkins said:
I wouldn't read too much into my situation... I'm just trying to figure out what's going on so I can make a call on whether to return these for AT&T iPhones or stick with Verizon. Highly likely I am going to AT&T on Sunday.
Click to expand...
What is going on is...the nations most reliable network ain't so reliable for you!

gvillager said:
They have sold hundreds of thousands of iphones in the past week. At least some of them are bound to have issues and they will post about it.
Click to expand...
The OP bought 2 phones. If only one had the problem, sure blame the phone. It is highly unlikely that the same household received two bad phones that would keep dropping calls. I'm willing to bet that those phones would work flawlessly at another location where Verizon really rules the air!
 
martiansoldier said:
The OP bought 2 phones. If only one had the problem, sure blame the phone. It is highly unlikely that the same household received two bad phones that would keep dropping calls. I'm willing to bet that those phones would work flawlessly at another location where Verizon really rules the air!
Click to expand...

Agreed, obviously the phones aren't defective. The OP just lives in an area that has sucky VZW service which I'm sure existed before the iPhone launch.

Rule the Air?!? They need to fire the person who thought of that marketing campaign!
 
martiansoldier said:
It has been less than 10 days since Verizon started selling the iPhone and they have issues already?
Click to expand...

Alway putting the blame on the carrier maybe it's apples fault they made a phone with signal problems...





Ps. Steve don't send in a wet team to kill me I'm just saying
 
I've had my verizon iphone since Tuesday and I've used it all around my city and surrounding area and have not dropped a call yet. I vary between 3-5 bars depending where I am in the city (Reno, NV area). I don't have LTE coverage in my area but 98% of the time I have 3g coverage. Anyway just wanted to share my experience so far.
 
Remmnever said:
I've had my verizon iphone since Tuesday and I've used it all around my city and surrounding area and have not dropped a call yet. I vary between 3-5 bars depending where I am in the city (Reno, NV area). I don't have LTE coverage in my area but 98% of the time I have 3g coverage. Anyway just wanted to share my experience so far.
Click to expand...

Sounds good. How's the speed of the Internet? I assume you might have tried a iphone4 on AT&T in the past.
 
Did I screw this up?

Having terrible AT&T reception I decided to try this test with both of my 3Gs iPhones. Although I got the test results and saw the number (-90 to -72 at different times) I never got the screen which the poster has shots of. ALSO, after ending the calls one of my phones is stuck on the number representation as opposed to the bars representation. Rebooting the phone does not seem to help. It probably makes no difference if a bar or a number tells me I have lousy reception, but I'd rather have the phone display bars as intended. Did I do something wrong? How can I get back to the bars representation?

In the not too distant future I'll be eating the cost of my contracts and buying new phones with Verizon. When I put these up on EBAY I want to make sure the phones are in great condition . . . even if the service they are designed to work with rots.

saving107 said:
Bars tend not to mean much,

Dial: *3001#12345#* in your phone app, then press "Call", that will then take you into Field Test Mode, the farther away from -51 the worst your Signal Strength is. Why do I saw that bars tend not to mean much, because sometimes when I am on WiFi, I will be on my front porch (far from my router), and it will still display 1-2 bars, but when I try to use it, I get nothing.

img0201c.png
img0200n.png


iPhoneSignal_both.jpg
Click to expand...
 
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