I got a new 4G phone (a Droid Maxx) last week. I was liking it but concerned because while it seemed to work fine, I would never see more than two or three bars of signal. One time it got four but that was just for a second and it has never been full, that I have noticed. To be on the safe side I brought it into a Verizon store and they basically told me that is normal for 4G in my area. The 3G signal my old phone had was strong, that is why I was used to almost always having full bars, but, they said, 4G is different. They blamed Superstorm Sandy for making it even worse but said the network even before then wouldn’t have given me a full signal.
That sounded strange to me so when I got home I called Verizon’s tech support and the person I got there told me the same thing. Basically right now you would only get a full signal in a city or something like that.
Since the phone seems fine otherwise and to my knowledge has not dropped a call or text, I decided to accept that answer. So I am curious, if you have a 4G phone, how is your signal strength? Especially if you are in the Northeast suburbs but anyone is welcome to comment.
When I was using Sprint WiMAX, it was terrible, but moving to Sprint LTE in the Chicago suburbs, it’s reliably good except for some few locations where it’s blocked by buildings. Speed-wise, it’s good enough. Given that all I do is web browsing and email, it’s practically indistinguishable from WiFi.
The cell phone signal bars are somewhat arbitrary, so if you’re not actually having any connectivity problems I wouldn’t be too worried about it.
It does seem to me that when I’m in areas with spotty signal, I’ll often have the phone jumping from poor signal 4G to good signal 3G or even 1X. I’m not sure if that means the phone is changing how it represents the bar scale due to needing a clearer signal to maintain the 4G speeds, or if the phone is simply switching to a different tower with better reception but no 4G.
I fully expect a phone that shows it changing form 4G to 3G to 1X is actually switching protocols and networks. It could be for either of the reasons you mentioned - the tower could support them all but be crowded. Or the tower or your phone could determine that you’re better off on a different tower for a variety of reasons, and that tower may not be able to support you on 4G.
One thing that can happen is that you camp on 4G, but are switched to 3G when you make a phone call. Until voice over IP on 4G becomes common, your phone calls are typically going to be on the 3G side of the world. So the only thing that happens if you stay camped on 4G is that you are taking up a slot for someone else. If you started a data connection instead, you’d keep your 4G service.
I’m in a big city and the number of bars on my 4G change constantly, from all of them to just one or two. It doesn’t make a difference in my use experience. For instance, if the bar display were to disappear, I wouldn’t notice the phone working any differently. I don’t pay attention to it unless the phone does slow down or web pages stop loading - when that happens I’m usually in a large building and service gets cut off. Then, I get a circle with a line through it.