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Dear Android:

I know I'm not on wifi. I get it. Sometimes data coverage isn't amazing or the network is congested. It's cool. You can just flash "no service" and I just won't try. or even "3G" and I'll have some patience. I rember how slow 3G was. It's okay, I'll wait.

But fucking stop showing 4G LTE if you can't make a fucking GET request for a 2kb text file in less than 5 minutes! Fucking really? Don't fucking lie to me with your false hope bullshit, just tell me the truth and I'll probably sigh and say shit and put my phone away.

But fuck you and your progress bar externally stuck in the middle. As if to say you're making progress! Wasting my time!

If you can't download a kilobyte in a 5min period, why even say I have data at all? What good does that do me?

Comments
  • 4
    ERR_TIMED_OUT
  • 17
    It'll just show you what kind of network you're connected to. The signal strength is something completely different, thus you're getting it displayed right besides the network type. The network type itself has to be seen as a maximum speed indication, not the average link quality. If an radio pole has an 3G and an 4G sector antenna and you're very far away from that pole, the 3G network will actually be faster than the 4G network as it has a longer effective range.
  • 4
    @systemctl I get that. I do. But what good does it do me to know what network type I'm on? I don't think most people would care. What actually matters is what speeds am I getting right now? Cause I don't wanna waste time trying to download things that won't finish. That symbol should answer the question "before I start downloading things: would it finish ever?"

    Because even if I'm on a 17G network with maximum speeds of 108 Tbps, if I'm getting 56K speeds right this second, a 3G symbol is more informative. Even if it's not strictly more correct.
  • 9
    @deadPix3l I guess that's the point of speed indicators...
  • 2
    @systemctl well that's pretty awesome! Idk if it's just Samsung doesn't support it, or it's my network, or I'm just an idiot and can't find the setting but I don't have anything like that. Damn.
  • 0
    @systemctl Is that an app? Or pre-built?
  • 1
    @Konsole @M1sf3t
    Inbuilt in lineage (and maybe plain Android).

    I find relevant the settings in System -> Status Bar.
  • 0
    WiFi has the same problem. In my living room, everything is fine, stable connection, gigabit speeds, I can stream 4K porn while downloading a database. Two floors up, and I have to choose between 2.4ghz "N" speed at 40% signal and 5ghz "AC" speed at 10% signal -- which are both best described as "Hey, Netflix has a new buffering icon".

    The problem with wireless is that if you go faster, the signal becomes less stable, at which point faster becomes slower due to dropped packages.
  • 0
    Yeah it's a default setting you can enable in LineageOS.
  • 0
    Ideally, as you said, the whole trade off should be transparently handled by the phone. A user shouldn't even have to know what "3G" and 4G" are, it should just switch to 3G if it's better at that moment -- and display a true speed/stability indicator instead of protocol branding.
  • 2
    @systemctl Cool, I like how your Android version is bilingual. Nice use of red text. Google should work on their text alignment though, it's a bit off.
  • 1
    You can also have full signal but no data coming through because there is too much traffic in your area
  • 0
    @bittersweet How will you determine the 'true speed'?
    The only possible way would be to permanently download stuff...
  • 0
    The signal strength indicator only I indicates the strength and (signal-)quality from cell tower to phone, not phone to tower. Both directions can have completely different properties...

    When the uplink to the tower has a very high latency and loss, TCP-ACKs may be sent in time, leading to unnecessary retransmission and no new data over sent from the tower.
  • 0
    Luckily I don't have any of these problems :\
  • 0
    that's why i have the realtime speed indicator turned on

    also i have WiGLE installed so i don't have to dig through Settings to get the current signal strength int.
  • 0
    @sbiewald I propose continuously streaming porn 🤷‍♀
  • 0
    iOS does this too, it’ll report 4G and a seemingly strong signal (even though signal bars are bullshit and subjective to each manufacturer), but then it’ll completely fail to get anything.

    I think it’s something related to the tech you know, and without the OS actually trying to see what the response time is like (and burn through your data in the process), it just doesn’t know that switching to 3G would be a better idea.

    It is crazy annoying though, so I always try and turn off 4G just in case to see if that solves my issue.
  • 0
    @M1sf3t just search the play store for internet speed meter. Plenty of those are available.
  • 0
    Fuking sad
  • 0
    4G is the most useless piece of shit they ever rolled out. For two years I visited a fuck tonne of countries and every one of them was varying degrees of shitty... throw in a VPN and you’ll be melting your brain in rage.
    unless you have => 3+ solid bars just turn it off and run 3G to save your sanity.
  • 0
    @badcopnodonuts which shitty countries did you visit? 4G was a huge improvement over 3G.
  • 0
    @electrineer even in Aus it’s fucked. iPhones hang all the time if it doesn’t switch properly. The UK occasionally but most noticeable in Phillipines and Indonesia for example. China was ok but I wasn’t there long enough to see.. Colombia and Peru were slightly better than Asia. But yeah, it’s puss
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