Apparatus, system and methods for evaluating link quality within a cellular system. A user equipment (“UE”) is connected to a network, wherein the UE communicates data to the network on an uplink (“UL”) link. The UE determines a requested buffer size for a UL communication, determines a transport block size for the UL communication based on a primary set of allocation parameters, and compares the requested buffer size to the transport block size to determine if a data rate for the UL communication satisfies a threshold. When the data rate satisfies the threshold, the UE identifies the UL link as a good quality link and sends acceptable link quality feedback to the network. When the data rate does not satisfy the threshold, the UE performs a further action to test a quality of the UL link.