Fluctuations in reception "Bars"...anyone else?

[rotobadger]

Posted this in another forum as well but wanted to get as much feedback as possible...

Lately I've been noticing very strange fluctuations in my "bars" (reception indicator). Last week I was working at a client's office late into the evening. I was there the whole week and I would set my phone down on a desk next to me. I noticed, at intervals of about 5 minutes, I would go from 4 bars to none to "No Service"...without moving my phone. After about two minutes of "No Service" it would flip back over to 4 bars again. Then five minutes later...same thing. Now I've been noticing the same thing at home. What could be causing this? A bad cell phone radio? I can understand if I was walking or driving in a car but the phone was not moved at all while this was occuring!
Any thoughts? Anyone else have this issue?

 

[pemarsh]

interesting you say this...i had the same thing happen to me two days ago for the first time since the iPhone came out.

 

[latinnftl]

Posted this in another forum as well but wanted to get as much feedback as possible...

Lately I've been noticing very strange fluctuations in my "bars" (reception indicator). Last week I was working at a client's office late into the evening. I was there the whole week and I would set my phone down on a desk next to me. I noticed, at intervals of about 5 minutes, I would go from 4 bars to none to "No Service"...without moving my phone. After about two minutes of "No Service" it would flip back over to 4 bars again. Then five minutes later...same thing. Now I've been noticing the same thing at home. What could be causing this? A bad cell phone radio? I can understand if I was walking or driving in a car but the phone was not moved at all while this was occuring!
Any thoughts? Anyone else have this issue?

Yes, I noticed it about 3 weeks ago. It happens even in my own house. If you watch it, it almost appears like a cycle. Bars will drop to none, Edge network disappears, then all of a sudden the bars will reappear and then the network. I also noticed that if you're in the middle of a download and this happens the bars won't come back, you need to stop all activity and let it go through whatever cycle it's doing.

 

[patrickj]

I've only had the iPhone 5 days now, and I've seen this pretty consistently on it, mostly in my own house (where I always get excellent UMTS signal on an 8525) ...

 

[redhawk44p]

Mine does it too. It can be very annoying.

 

[iphoneyouphone]

This started happening to me about 2 weeks ago. Before then i had a constant few bars always. It also seems that if it says i have no service and i try to make a call it instantly jumps up to the amount of bars i should have in the area and the call goes through, so i clearly have service it is just not showing it. This makes me believe it is a software issue somewhere between AT&T and Apple. who knows...

 

[greenjbhsd]

Been happening to me since day one. I will keep the phone on my desk next to me at work. Nothing around the phone changes (other then my being there or not), however, when it is just sitting there I can watch it go from 5 bars to no service and back to 5 bars rather frequently. I also see it sitting at one bar then the phone rings and it goes to 5 bars.

Honestly I have always assumed this is some silly manner to conserve the battery life, it does something like lowering the amount of power diverted to the antenna until a call hits it then it ramps back up. Whatever it is it is really really annoying!

 

[tfg]

I have noticed this as well. Only never down to no service. While sitting around I'll notice it swing from full to down to 3 or 4 and then back up. I really notice it while I'm on a call. I'll start at full bars and then down to one or even none, and then jump back up. I'm still yet to drop a call with this phone. My old motorola 551 would drop calls literally every 5 minutes even if I was at full bars. There something about this phone that when it senses that it's down to one or no bars, it then jumps back up.

 

[patrickj]

Well, I guess if it (always ?) still works when the bars are showing low / no service, then I can live with just the annoying factor - I'm going to check that out a bit on mine - see if it is always capable of handling calls when bars might indicate otherwise ...

 

[SmartAlx]

What, this only just started happening to you guys? This has been normal behavior for me since I bought my phone on iDay. Only thing the bars aren't lying. I really do have no service during that cycling time.

And you wonder why I complain so much about the darn thing.