Phone bars dropping to zero???

[busterbrit]

I had a blackberry tour but just switched to the fascinate. The blackberry in my office always had 3-4 bars (5 total) and the fascinate fluctuates all over the place. Usually its 2 (4 total) but a lot of the times it shows none.

Does this mean my blackberry has a better signal? Is there a program I can put on both to test this?

*note that my blackberry will not make calls now since it is off contract but it does have a signal (note sure if this will effect the test now).

 

[Discover]

Ive Noticed this alot with my Fascinate actually.. most the time when i check on the phone its in 1x with 1 or 2 bars. but if i do anything like browse the web its in full 3G... im starting to think that SAMSUNG may have made a power profile that disables 3G until its needed...?

if i recall correctly i had a few ROMS on my DROID1 that allowed 3G to be turned off to save battery... this may have something to do with it.

 

[busterbrit]

Ive Noticed this alot with my Fascinate actually.. most the time when i check on the phone its in 1x with 1 or 2 bars. but if i do anything like browse the web its in full 3G... im starting to think that SAMSUNG may have made a power profile that disables 3G until its needed...?

if i recall correctly i had a few ROMS on my DROID1 that allowed 3G to be turned off to save battery... this may have something to do with it.

That would be great if that is what it is doing. Is there anyway to know for sure? How about an app that tells you the actual signal strength...

I have a printing business and its really important for clients to get a hold of me so if I'm gonna get less coverage than my blackberry that could be a problem. Do you think this would get less than the blackberry tour?

 

[Discover]

You can check the strength of your signal if you go to settings/about phone/status scroll down and you see signal strength. At full bars in 3G I'm at -86 dbm

this is a new phone that's on multiple carriers so maybe a few things need to be ironed out in the baseband, supposedly we are supposed to be getting a 2.2 update soon which usually comes with an updated baseband.

The only thing I can think of is the tour being an international phone its possible that it might have a stronger antenna.