Database Develop

Why signal bars defunct on custom roms?

So, I know many of the ROMs out there have non-functional signal bars. I'm just curious as to why?

Updated to 4.3 Firmware and have less signal bars? Read This!

I've seen some people post regarding less/lower signal bars when updating to the new radios which come with 4.3 and you have LTE.
At first I said "WTF" but then I realized... the bars are now sort-of working as intended...
Let me explain,
If you're connected to LTE, the bars are now based off your LTE signal strength. I noticed even at roughly -110 to -100 I only get one bar. I believe the bars start going up dramatically once you have a signal strength greater than -100 (for example, -95db, -85db) And we all know -130db is the cutoff before we lose LTE.
I figured this out once I turned the phone to "CDMA only" to test. Once on "CDMA only" I had almost full bars, (-70-75db for 3G/1x)
To conclude, if you're on LTE and only have 1 bar, you most likely/probably have great cell phone coverage as that 1 bar is determining signal strength for only LTE. When connected to LTE, you're also still connected to 1xRTT which is used for voice. LTE is only used for Data at the moment.
If you really want to test your cell phone coverage, you can get one of those programs to tell you both your 1x signal and 4G signal simultaneously.
Edit: I forgot to mention, Considering the LTE radio and 1x/3g radio are seperate, you're going to get mixed results depending on signal penetration through walls, trees, etc. From what I've seen so far, as of right now 1x/3g penetrates a bit better than LTE. But, really depends on your surroundings

Thanks for the info. Someone else tipped me off about this, and a few SpeedTest checks confirmed it. In fact, 1 bar with the 4.3 ROM produced slightly better results than the 4.1 ROM with 5 bars.

ED2O9 said:
Thanks for the info. Someone else tipped me off about this, and a few SpeedTest checks confirmed it. In fact, 1 bar with the 4.3 ROM produced slightly better results than the 4.1 ROM with 5 bars.
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Yup, which makes sense because when connected to LTE on 4.1 the 5 bars are based off your voice coverage, not LTE strength.

Still seems kind of dumb. I'd rather know what signal I have to make a phone call rather than what kind of data I can expect.

Thanks for info !
Sometimes just 1 bar but internet working well, but 4-5 bars it is not working/slower !

How is HTC calculating signal bars?

One thing I notice about the One is that on LTE, the signal bars are VERY conservative and they don't seem to directly reflect the LTE signal in dBm at a times.
I saw 2 bars at -87dBm, and then saw 3 bars at -89dBm. I'm very curious as to what kind of algorithm HTC is using to calculate bars. This is something I've only noticed on Sense ROMs. I'm looking at -72dBm on LTE right now and am only seeing 4 bars. The only time I saw 5 bars is when I had better than -60dBm! This is not the case on HSPA+ or GSM/EDGE

i think this:
5 bars for EDGE >> here starts 3G with 1 bar and ascending to 5 >>> here starts HSPA with 1 bar and ascendig to 5 >>> here starts LTE
this i what i think only

Any way to replace signal bars with signal strength in dbm?

Like the title says, I'm looking for a solution on the Nexus 6 to get rid of the useless signal bars and have signal strength in dbm. Sadly I can't seem to find any solutions for this.
AOKP stopped developing and they are the only mainstream rom that ever had signal strength in dbm and displayed the signal type as well.
Cyanogenmod had dbm in the past but it never displayed 2g, 3g, or LTE/4g so you never knew what you were on, and they dropped that in Lollipop anyway.
Xblast Tools had this feature, but it never seemed to work on any KitKat roms right, I know I had it on some roms working at some point, but whenever dbm went weaker than -115 dbm it would display 0 or some weird number depending on the rom, so it didn't really work so well.
If anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestions, at this point I think editing the systemui.apk might be my only option since no one seems to have anything developed, but I wouldn't even know where to begin there.
I don't suppose anyone is working on this as a feature for an xposed module? It's the one thing I've felt gravity box was really missing.

I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure cataclysm rom has it
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

You can install the SignalCheck Pro app. It shows dBm as well as cellular band in a small icon in the notifications bar.

Kroniq said:
I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure cataclysm rom has it
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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Unfortunately Cataclysm on 6.0 on the Nexus 6 doesn't seem to. I checked a video that goes through settings and their thread and I think when I had a nexus 6 a bit over a month ago, I tried that one and it didn't have that feature. Thanks for the suggestion though.

boomerbubba said:
You can install the SignalCheck Pro app. It shows dBm as well as cellular band in a small icon in the notifications bar.
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I know but then I always have a notification, it displays this squished text, and I still have signal bars, plus I have no way of knowing if the app is draining battery running all the time checking the current signal strength. I really just want to replace the signal bars the way I was able to do in every version of android until kitkat/lollipop when the feature started to disappear.

Maybe I'm wrong but I thought pure nexus had something like that. It's listed as network traffic meter options on the OP thread

Have you tried this? Quick glance at the thread looks like mixed results, but some Nexus devices and someone said it works on MM. But perhaps it works?

Ditto
Started looking for the same today as the cell and wifi icons are terrible. I'd even be happy without the signal strength text and to just have some bars and get rid of that triangle. I came from a note 3 and it at least had bars in the triangle instead of a solid block with like 3 levels of fill for the strength.

Phone shows -70dmb in signal but always 1 signal bar?

hi guys. I have an annoying isssue while using AOSP or CM-based roms. I have a m7vzw. The signal is good when i use sense or GPE rom, but with aosp and cm, my signal bar always show 1 bar, sometime it even drops to 0. I checked phone status *#*#4636#*#* and network type is global, signal strength is -70dmb, ASU 255 (or 225,i dont remember). In battery history chart, the color of signal on is orange-red (while GPE and sense shows green,which mean good signal) and has little spaces like they were dropped to no signal
i dont have screenshots right now because i restored my backup, but i can re-install if needed
Is there anyway to fix it? i switched to GSM in preferred network but it doesnt help. Also i still have H+ data (my country doesnt have LTE yet)