Re:AT&T will put a fake 5G logo on its 4G LTE phones
by wongarsu on Saturday December 22, 2018 @03:58PM
(#18742418)
>They also require that the strength bars display the highest reception of any type of service it can receive
To be fair, for the original purpose of the signal strength bar (indicate ability to receive and make phone calls) this is the better metric. If I am on a 1 bar LTE connection but as soon as I loose it the phone falls back to a 4 bar GSM connection, I effectively do have a 4 bar connection to the phone network, not a shaky 1 bar connection where I should avoid moving the phone too much.
Of course now mobile internet is increasingly the thing people are more woried about, but signal bars were never a good approximation of mobile internet speed because contention is a much bigger problem than with phone service.
To be fair, for the original purpose of the signal strength bar (indicate ability to receive and make phone calls) this is the better metric. If I am on a 1 bar LTE connection but as soon as I loose it the phone falls back to a 4 bar GSM connection, I effectively do have a 4 bar connection to the phone network, not a shaky 1 bar connection where I should avoid moving the phone too much.
Of course now mobile internet is increasingly the thing people are more woried about, but signal bars were never a good approximation of mobile internet speed because contention is a much bigger problem than with phone service.