Wondering if Steve Jobs was telling the truth about your SCH-i920?

[Guest tedkord]

Bars are meaningless - Steve even said so. But I was a little outraged when he dragged other phones (and specifically mine) into his design flaw, so I've been trying to replicate the signal loss on my i920.

The problem is, the bars don't mean much (especially if you're Apple, and you put fake bars on your device so folks will think it's getting a better signal than it is). So I've been trying to figure out how to display the actual signal strength in dBm. I couldn't find any files on the device labeled Field Test or Diagnostic Mode. None of the .exe's I tried with test in their title worked.

Today I happened upon the answer. From the dialpad (in phone mode), dial **33284 and the Security Code 000000 (six zeroes). Choose MONITOR. The receive signal strength displays as R- on the screen. (I'm assuming the signal is in dBm, though no units are shown)

What did I find? Well, outside my house, I get about -85 holding the phone between two fingers at the top. When I grip it like an actual phone, it drops to around -94 - a loss of 9dBm. Nowhere near the iPhone's 20-24dBm loss.

I intuitively already knew this. The iPhone4's issues is detuning due to the user's skin jumpering the two different antennas, not signal attenuation due to your hand's proximity. All phones do suffer attenuation. The iPhone4 is unique in suffering detuning due to the exposed antennas.

Edited July 28, 2010 by tedkord

[Guest jaycarl]

That is very interesting. Thanks for helping better understand why Apple got so much crap about that antenna issue.

Makes me like my i920 even more.

[Guest T DAWGv12]

I'd probably use smoke signals before any iphone so I was a bit amused when the old jobbers came out with these cute little videos. I was glad he let me know I was having reception troubles because I certainly didn't notice.

Seriously though was anybody able to get all their bars to drop? I had the usual 3 bars in my office at work, I took my phone out of its case and even after cupping both hands tightly over the phone with just enough opening to see the signal bars I couldn't get it to drop all the bars. I tried several times and never could get the last bar to drop. Interesting.

[Guest Mr.DunnDunn]

well im no apple fan but i wont lie. i tried it, i tried it a few ways and noticed it dropped a few times but NOTHING dramatic. I cant say i believe him either but im just wondering why would they go after the Omnia 2? I mean its months older then the crapphone 4. I wouldve thought they wouldve went after the more popular phones that are out. I guess they feel the O2 is competition to them and wanted to attack it.

[Guest ScreamingFalcon]

The reason they went after the Omnia 2 is because it is one of the most popular WinMo phones in the US. So why wouldn't Jobs take a crack at their biggest rival in the PC market by showing one of their biggest phones "behaving badly"? I think he should be grateful to Microsoft for bailing out Apple right after Jobs took over as CEO and begged Bill Gates for the money to keep Apple afloat.