How to increase phone signal strength by lying about it

[Borg]

Did you ever wonder about why your phone didn't seem to have as good a signal as it indicated? This could be the reason.
Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

Poking around in Android the other day I found this nugget in Carrier Config manager; a flag (KEY_INFLATE_SIGNAL_STRENGTH_BOOL) to always report the signal strength to the user as one bar higher than it really is.

It’s not documented in the Android docs, but it’s there in the source available for any operator to use.

Notably both AT&T and Verizon have this flag enabled on their networks...

 

[sbrothy]

I don't quite get it. Reporting it as one bar higher doesn't actually increase the strength does it?

 

[Borg]

I don't quite get it. Reporting it as one bar higher doesn't actually increase the strength does it?

Hence the lying part. The method causes the phone to show one bar higher than it actually is.

 

[sbrothy]

And this is the part I don't get. What do you get out of it? Apart from it looking like your connection is better than it is?

 

[Ibix]

And this is the part I don't get. What do you get out of it? Apart from it looking like your connection is better than it is?

"Mate, your signal strength is always better than mine. What network are you with?"

 

[Borg]

And this is the part I don't get. What do you get out of it? Apart from it looking like your connection is better than it is?

From the article, there is a lot of competition between the carriers to 'prove' that their network is better than the competitions' network. If you can get one bar even when you don't have a tower available, you can say that you have nationwide coverage with at least one bar everywhere.

 

[jedishrfu]

Hey you can either round down and be a negative nellie or you can round up and be a positive pauline.

There was a story told many decades ago about a programmer implementing a new feature for executives on a timesharing service. Being a wise and emotionally intelligent programmer, he inserted a sizable delay in returning answers.

As he monitored usage, he would reduce the delay as more people accessed the system until one day usage had peaked and he saw things were working well that he could relax knowing he had gotten ahead of the expectation curve — people complaining because the service was too slow.

His boss was really impressed by the programmers work since the programmers progress reflected favorably on him. However, he being the boss that he is, thought to push the programmer to even greater heights and asked for further improvement.

The programmer, miffed that his boss was still on his case, relented but ever so carefully he took his time removing the remaining delay, careful not to remove it completely but shave a few seconds off to manage his boss’s expectations.

The boss was elated and gave him a big raise. Of course this would never happen now — more likely the boss would lay the programmer off, hire some newbie to take over the project and get promoted himself into the executive ranks before the sh*t hit the fan.

The End

 

[jack action]

In the defense of the carriers, if only one is setting up the flag, it is easier to follow than trying to explain to your clients that the others are not being truthful.

It's equivalent to a vanity sizing (with a size 0!) in women's wear.

 

[jedishrfu]

On an unrelated note, Volkswagen manipulated test results when emissions tests were conducted on their diesel vehicles. The code turned on full emission controls during the test showing they were polluting within EPA limits.

However, for normal driving they disabled the controls to improve responsiveness of the vehicle at the expense of dumping 40x the allowed pollutants into the air. They paid a $30 Billion penalty for their deception.

Other car manufacturers were put on notice as well although none paid such a hefty fine.

https://www.epa.gov/vw/learn-about-volkswagen-violations

Deceptions run in every industry. I can recall the database wars pitting Oracle against DB/2 and the shady numbers in benchmarks.

Some vendors would optimize to the benchmark to stay ahead of the pack.

 

[Hornbein]

Corporate accounting, same.

 

[WWGD]

Did you ever wonder about why your phone didn't seem to have as good a signal as it indicated? This could be the reason.
Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

Did you have to root your phone to access that?

 

[Borg]

Did you have to root your phone to access that?

No, I just read the article.

 

[Borg]

Deceptions run in every industry. I can recall the database wars pitting Oracle against DB/2 and the shady numbers in benchmarks.

Some vendors would optimize to the benchmark to stay ahead of the pack.

I was in charge of a project where I was reporting the status of databases in our development environment to the customer. The contractor that was in charge of this had a developer who decided to "fix it" by always reporting zero records returned if the database didn't exist yet. When they made that delivery, I very quickly became suspicious and found out that I could get results even when I unplugged the LAN cable.