On Sat, 01 Mar 2014 14:20:34 -0500, nospam wrote:

which you'll never get for the base station. you may not even know
anything about the base station at all, other than it exists in the
building somewhere.

This is a good point.
At home, we can get that information for our access point.
But not on the road at a public hotspot.

However, my Android phone, my Linux laptop, and my Windows PC
all will easily show me the receive strength of the access point.

For example, with InSSIDer freeware on the PC, or with Wigle
wardriving freeware on Android, I can easily export a csv
spreadsheet of all the access points found on any war drive.

I'm sure wardriving freeware exists on the iPad (although
Wigle doesn't seem to be there), so, I would think I could
put the iPad and Android device on the passenger seat of
the vehicle ... go for a drive ... and then easily compare
the received signal strength of hundreds of WiFi access
points.

Since I can easily log hundreds of access points in a drive
through a populated area, I would think that a look at the
data would show whether the Apple devices or Android devices
were habitually stronger or weaker.

Come to think of it, I think this would be a nice test since
I just googled and found WiFi-Where is apparently an equivalent
to the Wigle Android wardriving freeware...

http://www.threejacks.com/wifiwhere