The Official: I am having reception issues thread

[Mujibar]

Plus i heard that they are making an update. That the signal is fine. Its just that the indicator is different. Like 2 bars on GN is 3-4 bars on a diffrent phone.

That's what they want us to think. The purpose of monitoring and reporting things like your signal strength, and especially dropped calls, is to get Verizon to pay attention to something they want to sweep under the rug. It's no secret they don't like this phone, because they can't monetize off the crapware that isn't installed. They'll try their hardest to make us all go away. Let's not allow that.

[JG_in_SB]

I am on my second GN handset. I returned the first because it would not connect via BT, and my current one seems to work fine. Both got excellent reception, even at my house, which is a challenging location sort of in a canyon.

However, I think it is more than just my perception that the signal on my current handset is slightly better at my resdience than the signal for the previous one....and both have the same ICS build (i.e. no possibility of "bar enhancing" software). I guess if I had to characterize it, the reception on the first GN was good, and on my current one, it is "better".

Also, FWIW both handests showed 3G most of the time at my residence, but flip over to 4G when I am upstairs. At my office downtown, both handsets always showed four solid bars of 4G coverage.

Finally, my AT&T phone (HTC Inspire 4G) that I had just prior to the GN always showed around 2 bars of 3G at my house, and would drop calls. The GN's, even when showing only 2 bars of 3G, don't drop any calls.

[JG_in_SB]

Interesting experience in Santa Barbara today....Verizon experienced some sort of system-wide outage, with 3G gone most of the day, and 4G gone all day. Even with that situation, which resulted in bad enough connections that data apps were sometimes not even able to connect over the network, voice worked all day and I did not have any dropped calls.

[Mujibar]

It wasn't just Santa Barbara.

Tapatalk'd

[1nF3rn0]

That's what they want us to think.

I totally second you on that. What problem this phone is having is definitely a hardware issue and therefore it cannot be fixed by updating the software.
I have been using the DX at the same location for more than a year and always have had very good reception. Had the Razr for 11 days and had superb 4g connection all the time. And now I have GN from the day after it was officially released in vzw and I never had good signal from my room (the same location I experienced superb connection with DX and Razr) as of now. Its always bad to so so, never good. I know for a fact motorola phones usually catches good signal. Only reason the Razr went back is because of its poor battery life and its irreplaceable battery.
GN maybe a great phone in terms of use, but its not good enough for the price. I paid that anyway and I love this phone...just hating this network problem.

[JG_in_SB]

It wasn't just Santa Barbara.

Tapatalk'd

Yeah, so I heard....most of the USA. Looks like it's back up now though....I have three bars of 4G downstairs at my house....where reception usually sucks.

[cooperhawk]

According to the Verizon tier 2 tech I spoke with it's an antenna issue with the phone. My Charge had good connection where the Gnex struggles. I'm traveling next week and will get some out of town experience.

[JG_in_SB]

Read this article:

AnandTech - Investigating the Galaxy Nexus LTE Signal Issue

It is the best article I have seen on the subject of Gnex reception to date. I found it when I was looking around for something else today. It includes this image, which on its own explains alot:

EVDOvsLTE_575px.jpg

It appears that the Gnex accurately reports true LTE signal strength, whereas many of the handsets that people are comparing it with are actually reporting EVDO signal strength even though those handsets are 4G handsets. Here's a quote from the article which quickly summarizes the fundamental concept: "now that there are multiple air interfaces on handsets, we have to be explicit about what numbers we’re actually comparing."

So I guess it is an "antenna" issue, but the fact that the signal is lower dB doesn't neccessarily mean it is "worse" than the Motorola, HTC etc. sets to which people are comparing it with in their anecdotal tests.

I'm not saying that this means those who believe they are getting poor reception are catagorically incorrect. However, I think it is critical to understand exactly what data is actually being reported by respective handsets if you are going to go about comparing them. What it looks like, is that people have been comparing disimilar types of data because they do not realize they are comparing different types of data. Unfortunately, "side by side" comparisons of different data are effectively meaningless.

I'm going to conclude this post with an excerpt from the conclusion of the article: "Verizon confirming though a tweet that there’s some sort of signal issue affecting the Galaxy Nexus confuses me, since from my perspective there isn’t any issue at all. The only real issue that exists is that the Galaxy Nexus (and really just the stock Android 4.0 signal strength to bars mapping) doesn’t line up with what Verizon has shipped on other devices, thus leading people to make apples to oranges comparisons and imagine an issue."

[realred2]

I've had some issues the last few days where when I am not in 4g i can't get email, or other data, is there a setting somewhere that I might be missing to allow data on 3g or non 3g? My other phones never had a problem getting signal.

[TSCline]

The only problem I was having on my Galaxy Nexus and my wife's was connecting to data coming off of wifi up until last night. Now both phones no longer have that issue so I'm assuming it was at Verizon's end. As far as 3g and 4g signals, both phones have excellant reception and strong signals.

I am having this same issue. I get great speeds and connectivity except for the first few minutes after losing my wifi. (like leaving my work) It usually comes back after a few minutes but sometimes it takes a while I having really tried toggling wifi off manually but it seems like a weird problem.