Wifi strength, keeps dropping bars when in landscape?

A theory - you probably don't remember the days of waving a set-top TV aerial around the room for a decent picture: perhaps it is just a case of changing the position of the phone between portrait and landscape is changing the orientation of the antenna, and that is slightly affecting the efficiency of the antenna?

... prolly because the software update correctly shows the signal strength, whereas before they overestimated it (just like the service bars).


actually, i have no idea if that's true or not, but regardless, if it's a drop from 5 bars to 4 bars, prolly not much of a difference in terms of wifi..

Message was edited by: bdawg04

For What It's Worth: As a Navy techincian I learned that radio signals are somewhat polarized. Rotating an antenna from vertical to horizontal can be expected to change the reception. Most likely, the transmitting antennas on the cell towers are vertically oriented.

Dick

xalexinchainsx wrote:
i would hope apples technology in the iphone 4 is better than the 50 year old technology of rabbit ears for television sets...

Antennas are antennas. I don't think there is much you can do to improve a simple piece of metal. :P

The mention of polarity above is probably a very good point. Mismatched polarity can cause all types of issues as I learned during my Army days of line-of-sight radio.

Dave

DixPix wrote:
For What It's Worth: As a Navy techincian I learned that radio signals are somewhat polarized. Rotating an antenna from vertical to horizontal can be expected to change the reception. Most likely, the transmitting antennas on the cell towers are vertically oriented.

They are, but the OP was reporting regarding WiFi, not cellular data. However, most WiFi routers have vertical antennas, so turning the phone to landscape puts the phone's antenna at right angles to the router's antenna, which will reduce the capture ratio and thus signal strength. This is easy to test; turn the phone to landscape, then, if the signal drops, move the router antenna to horizontal and see if the signal picks up.

While it would be nice to blame Apple for everything, even Steve Jobs cannot change the laws of nature.

You probably want to leave your wireless router antenna at a 90 degree angle to the floor. The signal radiates out in a donut shape so by moving the antenna to a horizontal position you're really gimping the range of your AP.

Dave

The drawback to leaving the antenna horizontal is that when it is pointed at your phone, the signal will be at its weakest. Vertical will give the best allround reception unless you are upstairs and it's downstairs.

Dick

Well, I dont know what kind of case you may have, but what I do know is that if you cover up the black line by the earphone jack it has an effect similar to the "Death Grip" only with wifi though.

i would hope apples technology in the iphone 4 is better than the 50 year old technology of rabbit ears for television sets...

For normal use, yes, but this was to see if it was polarization that was reducing signal strength when holding the phone horizontally.

Lawrence Finch wrote:
For normal use, yes, but this was to see if it was polarization that was reducing signal strength when holding the phone horizontally.

Fair enough. 🙂

Dave