Cell Phone Bars
What Do Cell Phone Bars Actually Mean?
Sometimes you get one bar, sometimes you get four. Obviously four is better than one but what do they actually mean? The real, hard to believe answer is, “not much”. Signal strength is measured in decibels, abbreviated as dBm. They are expressed as negative integers and a lower value such as -100dBm (negative one hundred decibels) is much worse than -65dBm (negative sixty five decibels). Somewhere in between the two values is the average I’ve seen around town. Here’s the thing though: The bars shown on your cell phone do not represent a specific range of decibels. They never have. Cell phone manufacturers get to decide how much signal strength equals how many bars. There is no standard, published or otherwise.
What’s even worse is that bars don’t even correlate across brands or even different generations of phone. To further complicate things, 2 bars on 5G can sometimes give you better service than 4 bars on 4G. Why? Because it’s a different antenna, using a different frequency, with different infrastructure connected. Maybe you have 4 bars but you’re calling someone with only 1 bar. Even the number of connected users to a local tower can affect service, sometimes more than signal strength will.
If you’re suffering from poor cellular service in your home or business, give us a call at 310-641-4700. We can discuss different options from Wi-Fi calling to cellular amplifiers inside your home. We’re experts on this technology stuff.
More information
A couple years ago Izzy Jack wrote an article on cell phone bars. Click on the link below to read it. It gives a lot more detailed information.
https://www.weboost.com/blog/what-do-the-bars-on-your-phone-mean
How to see dBm on an iPhone
iPhone users can enter field test mode by disabling Wi-Fi and typing the following numbers & symbols directly in the Phone app, exactly as written. This will give users an actual dBm reading at their location.
*3001#12345#*
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