Wireless symbol as numbers?

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Hey all,

My first iPhone (3G 16GB) used to sometimes display the wireless symbol as numbers. The numbers are prefixed with a -, and my guess is that it's something to with signal strength as the numbers do vary. I took it into the Apple store and the guy said he'd never seen that before, and had no idea why it was doing it. My independent Mac guy said the same.

I put it down to a glitch in that phone, and when I replaced it with a 3GS 32GB, I expected to not see it again, but I did! It's not just my wireless network at home, but any network (even the one in the Apple store)

Does anyone out there have any ideas?


Oh and while I'm here, I'm having other issues with the new 3GS 32GB. I seem to have a much more variable signal strength with it - for example, I can be sat in the same place playing a game or something, but the signal will go from nothing to two bars within a few seconds. Also, the other day I had a good signal but no call I tried to make would connect (I tried about ten different numbers just to be sure it wasn't them being out of signal) I turned the phone on and off and then it worked. I bought the phone privately, and it was a warranty replacement phone from Apple, that hadn't been used by the owner. There's been other things, like texts taking hours to come through, and coming through in batches of two or three. For example the time stamps in messages were 17:21 and 18:48 - but they came through at 20:15 within seconds of each other?
 
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Has the iphone been jailbroken?

- Simon
 
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Hi Simon,

Nope, I like to keep things as they're meant to be! It's on O2 and I'm running 4.2.1 - The old one was jailbroken when I got it, but I restored it to the factory settings.

Another odd thing happened earlier too, I was chatting away, everything was fine and the signal was ok, but for a few minutes halfway through the call, I kept hearing myself as an echo? It went as quickly as it came and was fine after that, it's never happened before though?

Is there some way of checking for faults? Maybe they sent out a duff reconditioned unit that hadn't been fixed properly? I had a similar issue with an old Nokia on Orange....
 
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my bet is the phone is bad, you should not be having that many problems with it.
 
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I think you're right James, I've just tried to make a call, and despite having a 2-3 bar signal, it kept dropping the call? Texts seem to be working OK though.

It also seems to be running a little on the 'clunky' side, I guess I didn't notice it at first as my last one was a 3G which I updated to OS4. (I'm still annoyed by the fact that A) Apple let that scenario happen, but even worse B) They didn't provide a way back to OS3.) I did find some very complicated looking and unofficial instructions to do it, but like I said earlier, I like to keep things the way they're meant to be! Anyway, I'm rambling.....

I'll make a Genius Bar appointment and post the outcome on here.
 
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Its an option you can set in SBSettings, so the phone has the capability, but that's weird
 
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Try to hard reset you phone, hold down power and home button and ignore the slide to power off, after this you will see Apple logo you can release the buttons. It will take a little bit to boot up, don't worry this is normal.
 
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Weiser, I'm not sure what SBSettings are, or where to find them! Is that a typo?!

And roflitskyle, I did try that thanks, but it didn't make any difference.....

I made a Genius appointment today and it managed to baffle at least three members of staff! Taking their advice, I've restored the phone to it's factory settings and I'm yet to see any numbers where they shouldn't be! The signal seems to be a bit up and down still, but like she said, that might well be down to a dodgy SIM card. It wouldn't be the first time I had a duff card.

The theory is, that there's something lurking in my back up which is causing this numbers / wireless and maybe the other issues too. That would explain why it was on my old phone, as well as the new one.


In other news:

I'm a very happy MacFanDan, they replaced the battery in my MacBook for free as it had a fault on it that I didn't even know about - it was doing this weird thing where it jumped out of sleep if you used the alt, apple, eject shortcut. (But fine if you went to the Apple logo in the top left) So I asked them to run a diagnostic check on it, they're also replacing the battery connector switch. Total cost to me: £5.88! Service like this is what sets Apple apart.....


I'm doing that rambling thing again, sorry, I'll let you know the outcome of the iPhone scenario......!
 
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Weiser, I'm not sure what SBSettings are, or where to find them! Is that a typo?!
!

SBSettings is a jailbreak app.

You can enable battery percentage, show a date on the status bar, show signal and WiFi strength as numbers etc...

I know yours isn't jailbroken, but what I was saying is that since those are just toggles in SBSettings, then the phone must have the ability to display them hidden somewhere deep in the system folders.
 
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Hmmmm, maybe Weiser, I haven't found them yet though, so I guess it's just a jailbreak thing....?

I am getting nearer to getting this sorted though, I restored my phone and went for a clean install. No numbers, just the Wireless symbol as it should be. But, when I backed it up to my old settings, symbol went, and the numbers returned! They came back as soon as I started to put my backed up files back on it. So the Genius's guess would seem to be spot on, next step is to find out where this corrupt file is, and get it removed. The texting seemed to be better on the clean settings, but seeing as I forgot to write some numbers down, it was difficult to say for sure - I could only remember one number! I did make some calls (to o2 to see if my SIM was faulty) and despite having a three or four bar signal, it did still drop the call a few times before connecting. The response from o2 was as usual, pathetic! No apology, no attempt to resolve it, so I thought up yours and asked for a PAC code - I'll take my SIM free, privately bought iPhone elsewhere thank you!
 
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SBSettings is a jailbreak app.

You can enable battery percentage, show a date on the status bar, show signal and WiFi strength as numbers etc...

I know yours isn't jailbroken, but what I was saying is that since those are just toggles in SBSettings, then the phone must have the ability to display them hidden somewhere deep in the system folders.
Yeah...this is what I came here to say. I was playing with my SBSettings this morning and saw the option to have both battery life and wifi strength displayed as numbers. I immediately thought of this thread.

I kinda like the number display for wifi. If you have the typical display then strength can only be displayed on a scale of 4 or 5. With the numbers it appears to be on a scale of 0 to 100...giving you a much better idea of how strong the signal is.
 
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Yeah...this is what I came here to say. I was playing with my SBSettings this morning and saw the option to have both battery life and wifi strength displayed as numbers. I immediately thought of this thread.

I kinda like the number display for wifi. If you have the typical display then strength can only be displayed on a scale of 4 or 5. With the numbers it appears to be on a scale of 0 to 100...giving you a much better idea of how strong the signal is.


I'm guessing this problem stems from my old jailbroken 3G, despite me restoring it back to the factory settings - I can only assume this little bit has got stuck in there somehow?!

If I put the phone right next to the router, it goes as low as -2 and up to -90 the further away I go.

But I agree with AUZambo, it is a more accurate method. And seeing as I live in a basement flat surrounded by tall buildings, it would be nice to know where my best mobile signal spot is!

It'll be interesting to see what Apple say, so far they've been stumped, but they won't have any knowledge (or if they do they won't let on!) about anything that isn't officially Apple. Actually, one of the guys did say he thought he might know what it was and started to Google it, but then changed his mind and said he must of been thinking about something else! I've just Googled 'iPhone wireless symbol as numbers' and the only relevant things I could find, was a link to this thread direct, and indirectly via dogizmo.com.

Well anyway, I'm just waiting for a call to take the MacBook back in, and then I can hopefully get some sort of answer and cure....
 
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I'm guessing this problem stems from my old jailbroken 3G, despite me restoring it back to the factory settings - I can only assume this little bit has got stuck in there somehow?!
.

BINGO! We have a winner.
That's exactly what's causing it.

For instance, I have statusbar date turned on and MakeItMine personalized. When I backed up my 3G and then restored my iPhone 4 from that backup, it had the statusbar date and custom MakeItMine label without being jailbroken (of course, i then jailbroke it 10 minutes later ;D

Anyway, that's where your issue is, I'm sure of it
 
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BINGO! We have a winner.
That's exactly what's causing it.

For instance, I have statusbar date turned on and MakeItMine personalized. When I backed up my 3G and then restored my iPhone 4 from that backup, it had the statusbar date and custom MakeItMine label without being jailbroken (of course, i then jailbroke it 10 minutes later ;D

Anyway, that's where your issue is, I'm sure of it

Exact same thing happened to me when I upgraded my phone from 4.0.1 to 4.1. Completely forgot about that!

There must be some way to completely reformat the phone and do a clean install of iOS.
 
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MacFanDan
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Exact same thing happened to me when I upgraded my phone from 4.0.1 to 4.1. Completely forgot about that!

There must be some way to completely reformat the phone and do a clean install of iOS.


Hopefully, that's what Apple can tell me! I'm just waiting for them to call me about my MacBook parts coming into stock....
 
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Well, you could jailbreak the new iPhone, install SBSettings and undo the changes, then do a backup, then restore the phone fresh.

What I'd worry about is that an Apple employee might figure out that a jailbreak caused it and accuse you of jailbreaking the new phone even though you didn't, thus voiding your warranty.
Probably a stretch, but I like to think of things from all angels
 
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Although it's basically a new phone, the 3GS is an Apple warranty replacement I bought privately, the warranty of that ran out a couple of months ago though, so actually, that's not a problem. The bug is from a back up of my previous 3G that I got given, even though I restored that one to factory settings, it has moved across to my new phone. As a sidenote, I'd imagine they can tell if it's been Jailbroken or not? But I don't know for sure - can they?

As I said earlier on, I'd rather keep it as it should be anyway! That way, warranty or not they're more likely to help me.
 
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As a sidenote, I'd imagine they can tell if it's been Jailbroken or not? But I don't know for sure - can they?
.

The only way I can see that they'd know (at a store level) is to look for obvious signs.
I've restored a few phones that were then repaired or replaced by Apple and they never said anything about a jailbreak.

I'm sure there's a techie in a lab in Cupertino who can delve into the system and tell if the files have ever been altered, but it seems to be a non issue if there's a legitimate problem with the phone
 

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