Cell Phone Reception Bars

The reception bars on your handset show EC/I0 values, (pronounced “ee-see-over-eye-naught”) and it refers to the amount of the signal which is usable. The bars that are actually present on your cellphone don’t show the true value of EC/I0 because it isn’t stable. It could go from zero to four bars and back to zero again in just a few seconds and would terrify users, so they display the signal strength, which at least has the virtue of being stable, though it doesn’t really mean much.