Why does the 6185/6188 Signal Strength Meter Make no Sense?
There are essentially two things that we can display on a signal strength meter. The first is RSSI, which is short for Received Signal Strength Indicator (or something like that). This is a simple measurement of the signal strength with no consideration given to noise or other problems that may plague the signal. For non-CDMA systems this is probably the best measurement, even though noise does play a roll in diminishing the performance of the receiver. In CDMA however, signal strength alone does not necessarily tell us how good the call will be. How many of you have had poor audio using a Qualcomm 2700 or the Telus Sony phone when it shows a 2 or 3 bar signal? In this case the strong signal did not translate into good audio. Qualcomm chose to display the more traditional RSSI on their phones. The second thing we can measure is the Carrier-to-Interference Ratio (or Ec/Io). This measurement essentially ignores the overall strength of the signal and instead concentrates on how much bette
