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Signal bars or dots?

  • Signal bars

  • Dots


Results are only viewable after voting.

FSMBP

macrumors 68030
Jan 22, 2009
2,712
2,633
Dots looked awful & take up space. Also, bars seemed like a uniform standard for cell signal. Glad Apple decided to go back.
 
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macduke

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,142
19,682
Wasn't it five bars back in the day? By going to four bars, it's 24pts wide on the iPhone 7, vs. 34pts wide with the dots, or 20px narrower for those who prefer real units.

Now if only we could get an option to disable the carrier at the top. "T-Mobile Wi-Fi" takes up way too much space and kicks the activity spinner to the right side of the display! It's ridiculous. I know what carrier I'm connected to. I only change carriers about every five years. All it needs is [bars][speed (GPRS/E/3G/4G/LTE)] and that's it.
 

zorinlynx

macrumors G3
May 31, 2007
8,170
17,694
Florida, USA
I like the space savings and the more classic look, honestly. Also the fact that it's four bars instead of five dots makes more sense; I can never use cel data successfully when I have one dot anyway. That first dot may as well not exist!

I remember being annoyed when they switched from bars to dots. The dots just looked weird! I'm used to them now and they no longer annoy me, but it's nice to go back to the bars.

One thing I wish they'd do (which they haven't yet even in 11) is to get rid of the extra "Personal Hotspot: 1 Connection" status bar you get when using personal hotspot, and just put the tiny hotspot icon with the number of users next to it in the blue status bar, which is what you see before you unlock your phone.

It gets to the point where I get annoyed turning on hotspot for people because that extra status bar pushes everything else down and makes the interface wonky in some apps.
 

s2mike

macrumors 68020
Sep 14, 2015
2,184
3,228
Now if only we could get an option to disable the carrier at the top. "T-Mobile Wi-Fi" takes up way too much space and kicks the activity spinner to the right side of the display!

Because they’ve switched to bars, the activity spinner is back on the left side...even in the case of “T-Mobile Wi-Fi.”
 
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CaTOAGU

macrumors 6502a
Jul 15, 2008
758
835
Manchester, UK
Wasn't it five bars back in the day? By going to four bars, it's 24pts wide on the iPhone 7, vs. 34pts wide with the dots, or 20px narrower for those who prefer real units.

Now if only we could get an option to disable the carrier at the top. "T-Mobile Wi-Fi" takes up way too much space and kicks the activity spinner to the right side of the display! It's ridiculous. I know what carrier I'm connected to. I only change carriers about every five years. All it needs is [bars][speed (GPRS/E/3G/4G/LTE)] and that's it.

Some people live in areas where they could accidentally roam onto another network e.g. Some travel a lot and find it useful to know which network they're currently connected to.
 
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