Techniques for scaling symbols to account for large abrupt changes in received power at a user equipment (UE) are described. The UE performs AGC on received samples to obtain input samples. The UE processes (e.g., CDMA demodulates) the input samples to obtain first symbols. The UE determines the power of the input samples and derives a symbol gain based on (e.g., inversely related to) the power of the input samples. The UE scales the first symbols with the symbol gain to obtain detected data symbols having approximately constant amplitude, even with large abrupt changes in the power of the input samples. The UE estimates signal amplitude and noise variance based on the detected data symbols, computes LLRs for code bits of the detected data symbols based on the signal amplitude and noise variance, and decodes the LLRs to obtain decoded data.