TidBITS:
The folks over at Tech Insider have produced a video that will help you see what your signal strength is numerically, for troubleshooting purposes. But for some reason, they didn’t also write up the instructions for those who prefer reading. So if you fall in that camp, here’s how to see your iPhone’s precise signal strength.
Great little tip to help troubleshoot signal strength issues.
But it’s not your iPhone’s signal strength, it’s the strength of the signal you’re getting from the nearest tower. Which while a factor in call quality and network access quality, isn’t the only one. You can have your phone jammed up next to the tower and not be able to make a call if the tower’s overloaded, or the local backhaul is.
Signal strength may convince your cellular provider to put a new tower in, but that’s dependent on many factors as well.
In any event, your iPhone’s signal is always the same. It’s the cell tower signal this is measuring.
As a programmer, I find the little diagnostic tool fascinating. It’s clearly been rebuilt but otherwise not touched (or not touched much) since iOS 6. It’s likely you can make it misbehave or crash; indeed, some of the text metrics seem off.
If you’ve ever wondered what an app recompiled for the latest iOS without getting the usual fixes looks like, this is it. You probably won’t otherwise see it, since Apple expects those little fixes to be applied to pass app review.
(I’m not knocking Apple; the tool is in good enough shape for what it does.)
Thanks! Those are some useful details.
Also, for the name used: “You are technically correct — the best kind of correct!” 🙂
LOL. True, but I think that the OMG SIGNAL STRENGTH thing has been pushed at people in a really ignorant way, and leads them into some frustrating situations. “I HAVE ALL THE BARS/DOTS, WHY CAN’T I GET EMAIL!”
I try to explain it like this: the signal strength is your phone and the tower talking to each other. That’s it. That doesn’t mean the tower is able to get you a good internet connection or a clear phone call. That ONLY tells you how good that signal between you and the tower is.
It’s like a water pipe. The only thing seeing the pipe does is tell you “yup, that’s a pipe, and it’s about so wide” Doesn’t mean the inside of the pipe is clean and clear of blockages, or that there’s water in it at all. Just means there’s a pipe and it’s not obviously broken.
It’s nice to know the signal strength, because it is an important part of things, but it’s not magical.