It all has to do with how the phone bars are defined. What does 1 bar mean on an iPhone or any phone? The best signal a phone could ever receive is -51 dB. The worst signal before you lose all reception is -113 dB. The iPhone defines it's bars as such
0 bar <=-113 dB
1 bar -107 to -113 dB
2 bar -103 to -107 dB
3 bar -101 to -103 dB
4 bar -91 to -101 dB
5 bar -51 to -91 dB
Note the large band for 5 bars. You can probably see where I'm going with this. Shimpi found the worst case drop in touching the phone in a particular way was 24 dB. Look at the chart below. It's a schematic of the actual size of the bars in the -113 to -51 dB spectrum (the white boxes). Below that are 4 examples of a 24 dB signal drop (yellow boxes). You start at the right of the yellow boxes, touch the iPhone inappropriately, and end up at the left side of the yellow boxes . A 24 dB drop can translate into all manner of bar drops depending on what kind of signal you are initially receiving. Are you very close to a cell tower? Then you'll probably see no drop in bars. Have a weak signal? Then you'll see multiple bar drops. Great stuff.
Effect on phone 'Bars" due to a 24 dB drop in signal
No comments:
Post a Comment