Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength • Hacker News Board

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#181

Post by tatersolid » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

jrmg wrote: post #147

metadat wrote: post #2

You know, I don't recall ever seeing 1 bar of signal strength on a smartphone. And once it's down to 2 bars, it barely works, if at all. Human brains: wow, what a bunch of suckers. Damn. By the way, is it legal to be deceptive in this way?

Our house is in kind of a hollow despite being in a city, and I (and guests - all networks seem just as bad) get one bar basically all the time at home. Phone calls are hit-and miss without WiFi calling switched on.

My house is also like this. No signal on any carrier, and same with one of my neighbors but not neighbor on the opposite side.

Looking at satellite view it is clear that the local municipal water tower is between a huge cell tower near the highway and my house. All carriers seem to lease that same tower only in my area.

It wasn’t like this when I moved in but I guess the carriers consolidated on that big tower near the highway about two years ago.

Radio shadows are a thing I guess.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#182

Post by hombre_fatal » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

Yizahi wrote: post #165

hombre_fatal wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way you earnestly recommend the hot steaming pile of ad-ridden caca I just installed on my phone. That might be the worst app I’ve used on my iPhone in a year. Better off vibe coding an app to give you signal strength.

Well, there is a paid version (which I didn't try), presumably without ads. As for the Lite version, I don't know exactly why, but ads in this particular app never load on my phone. I see only a black space at the bottom where they supposedly should be visible, but they never load for some reason, without any action from my side. And I think the same happened on my previous phone too, need to check later.

Sorry, I came off too strong since you were just making a recommendation. But man is it bad on iOS.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#183

Post by yencabulator » Tue, Nov 11, 2025, 10:14 PM UTC

vultour wrote: post #146

waterhouse wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be sure, is it possible that, on each subsequent iPhone release, the hardware got better at handling weak signals, and thus a mediocre signal for iPhone N was decent for iPhone N+2 and would give great throughput on iPhone N+4?

The comment you’re replying to is incredibly concerning. Is he saying people at Google are purposefully misrepresenting signal strength so they can “compete” with Apple?

It's saying that Apple made that kind of lying the new industry standard.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#184

Post by vultour » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

yencabulator wrote: post #183

vultour wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you’re replying to is incredibly concerning. Is he saying people at Google are purposefully misrepresenting signal strength so they can “compete” with Apple?

It's saying that Apple made that kind of lying the new industry standard.

Except you have no idea why Apple is changing the signal display. They could be lying, or they could have a standardised test in which newer hardware performs better. This guy, on the other hand, is clearly saying that Google has no such thing and they're blindly copying Apple regardless of the performance of their hardware.