Based on the little I know about signal strength for digital phones, the number of bars really doesn't matter, The bars could just be replaced with an indicator letting you know whether or not you have strong enough signal to make a call. And from that perspective, the stats discussed today that there is less than one additional dropped call per 100 calls make this whole thing seem like a non-issue.
However, what I haven't heard discussed and would like to hear about from someone who knows what their talking about is whether or not signal strength affects data transfer rates. I use data a lot more than voice on my phone and if it's significantly easier to reduce the signal quality on the iPhone 4, I don't think I would get one.
Without getting into details about digital modulations, yes, parameters such as signal strength, network congestion, user speeds, etc. do affect transfer rates.
The speeds quoted by phone providers are always the maximum transfer rates allowed by the communication standard used by the network.
To give an example with WiFi networks. Even though a router might support 802.11n and have a maximum speed of 144Mbit/s, if you're far from it, your transfer speed could only be 11Mbit/sec.
I've run some 3G speed tests on my iPhone 4, and even when I death-grip it and the bars drop, the most dramatic result I've gotten is increased ping (10x as much ping). Throughput doesn't seem to suffer.
Comments
Based on the little I know about signal strength for digital phones, the number of bars really doesn't matter, The bars could just be replaced with an indicator letting you know whether or not you have strong enough signal to make a call. And from that perspective, the stats discussed today that there is less than one additional dropped call per 100 calls make this whole thing seem like a non-issue.
However, what I haven't heard discussed and would like to hear about from someone who knows what their talking about is whether or not signal strength affects data transfer rates. I use data a lot more than voice on my phone and if it's significantly easier to reduce the signal quality on the iPhone 4, I don't think I would get one.
Without getting into details about digital modulations, yes, parameters such as signal strength, network congestion, user speeds, etc. do affect transfer rates.
The speeds quoted by phone providers are always the maximum transfer rates allowed by the communication standard used by the network.
To give an example with WiFi networks. Even though a router might support 802.11n and have a maximum speed of 144Mbit/s, if you're far from it, your transfer speed could only be 11Mbit/sec.
Thanks for the explanation.
I've run some 3G speed tests on my iPhone 4, and even when I death-grip it and the bars drop, the most dramatic result I've gotten is increased ping (10x as much ping). Throughput doesn't seem to suffer.