What’s happening when your phone is showing four bars but in actuality the data is not working?
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The handset has a clear connection to the cell tower, but for whatever reason it cannot use that to talk to the internet. Maybe the cell tower itself is offline, maybe there’s a misconfiguration on your handset or cellular account, maybe there’s a genuine account issue like a data cap or an unpaid bill.
The tower is likely congested. The signal is good, but there’s not enough capacity to service all the phones trying to use it. This can cause very low data transfer speeds, to the point where apps or web sites give up before they get enough data to show anything useful.
network congestion (think like too many cars on the road, you have gridlock where nothing moves), interference, or the pages you are accessing are down.
The bars on your phone really mean… nothing of usefulness. Android and iOS use totally different things for the metrics used to get this information, so you can’t even compare them. Even then, it depends on stuff like the GSM/GPRS/HDPE/4G/5G/6G chip your device has as to how well it deals with the signal.
Your best indicator is running a speed test or using the little network speed indicator on android.
Also, tip. Next time you are in a 5G or 4G area with “full bars” but nothing is working, try setting your mobile settings to make it not use 5G/4G/whatever is being used and let it drop down to an older band like 3G (if you still have coverage for it; in the UK we still have 3G everywhere mostly, in addition to 4G in most places and 5G increasingly in built up places… I know the US has began decomissioning 3G masts though). You’ll often find you get faster speeds on a lower band because fewer people are using it so there is less congestion. I regularly do this in London when stuff loads slowly. 75% of cases, I get a faster speed on 3G vs 4G or 4G vs 5G.
Easiest to try is to put your phone in airplane mode for a few seconds, then turn it off. Sometimes the phone gets stuck between cell and wifi. Hitting airplane mode gives it a chance for a fresh connection to the strongest signal.
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