I have always assumed that the reception bars I see are not indicative of the current signal strength of my mobile data, but just of my general cell reception. However, while making a call at work, I noticed that it went from 1 bar on 4G, to 3 bars of 3G. Does this mean that my phone will drop to a slower data form if it thinks that will allow it to have a clearer call, and that the number of bars will change accordingly? I thought only LTE or 4G were involved in VoLTE, and 3G or lower were just the plain old protocols?
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iPhone goes from low bars 4G to higher bars 3G when I make a call.
- Thread starter humpbacktwale
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I am going to take a leap of faith here. This is probably more to do with environmental factors. Since the 4G is only 1 bar, that is pretty low on signal quality. The phone is probably able to connect to the 3G band, which sounds to be more reliable to where you are located. Have you tried restarting the phone?
As far as the bars themselves, they are broad but are an overall indication of the signal quality. Most equate this to voice data because it is more prone to outside interference but the bars actually indicate signal strength for data as well. Most phones will try to use an older frequency band if the older band is more ideal.
One thing you can do is go into settings, then cellular, then Cellular Data Options. See if anything is listed as "Auto." The reason I say this is that maybe you have a setting that will only use 4G when ideal, then drop back to 3G as needed. My phone does this with LTE and 5G currently.
So the bars do indicate reception to current data, as opposed to just general reception, which is why it can go up once it changes?
As far as I can see, the only options are 2G, 3G and 4G. No LTE option or auto.
Okay, the phone is probably automatically dropping to 3G when ideal then, could be a phone thing, could be a carrier thing. It is not really common to see the phone change from 3G to 4G like that but the bars themselves do fluctuate. Have you tried asking your carrier about it? Have you noticed the same behavior if you are physically in a different location?
In that case it is probably just environmental to your office location. Like I said, the phone is probably automatically dropping to 3G to get better call quality, especially since you are only seeing 1 bar on the 4G side.
