Database Users

WiFi dissapointing

Went into college today for the first time with my new HD. Two of the folks in my class have iPhones.
Anyway, from the start of the day, the colleges wifi was coming and going on my phone, the signal strength was barely registering and I could not browse at all. I went into WiFi advanced settings and set power to full, this made little difference.
Both my friends with iPhones were able to browse happily.
I'm now home and deciding to check out performance here. I've just gone back into WiFi - Advanced, made sure power was at "Best Performance". My battery is at about 70%. All I'm getting is 3 bars of signal strength, varying from about 50-60% signal.
Here's the problem, I'm only sitting literally 6 feet from the router. I'd call that f'n lousy.
My laptop shows a connection signal strength of 100% / Full Bars / 100%.
So WiFi signal strength is lousy at College and lousy here at home. Is there anything i can do ?

I experience exactly the same reception quality with my HD. But for what its worth, this is exactly the same performance I got with my Touch Pro and my TyTn II before that.

.....mmmm yes I had a tytn and it was bad compared to my great xda2i...
I wonder if it is something a radio update could solve? i'm getting my HD thursday!!

If you plug in your headphone, does the signal strength improve?

exe said:
If you plug in your headphone, does the signal strength improve?
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No, and I even tried connecting to external power. made no difference. I also notice that if I tilt the HD a bit this way and that the signal drops even further. I have had it here at 15-20% while sitting 6 feet from the Router.
This to me is a deal breaker, I dont think I can live with this. Its bloody awful, and I hate the way it kept dropping the wifi connection in college.

Hmm not sure of the problem, my Wifi signal strength is pretty much equal to my PCs, im 20 feet away and get 80%.

I've never been able to get reliable wifi on my Tytn. Sad to hear the problem persists in a handset I was considering moving up to.

I'm satisfied with the signal strength. Yes, it is weaker than on my netbook or my notebook, but I use the "Best Battery" mode and I get around 80% signal strength 15 feet away from my router.

Ugh say it ain't so.

I use the WiFi to listen to internet radio around the house.
I've not experienced any problems even when upstairs at the furthest distance from my cheap-n'-cheerful Netgear router. At this range, the signal will have to pass through several brick walls.
Having discovered the signal strength readout in the settings, I notice that it does not read very high, but this doesn't seem to adversely affect the performance.
As far as I am concerned, the WiFi is "fit for purpose" and doesn't seem to differ much from my laptop.

Maybe your wifi is defective... Mine works fine with walls between me and the router, my TyTN II also has no problems, my old TyTN used to drop the connection as soon as it connected, was useless for wifi.

Hmm
I'm sorry to say that my wifi on the HD works fantastic. It even picks up wifi networks my netbook deosn't. I use it all day long at home then connect when at work.
I don't care what the signal strength is in various rooms I just get on with it. Having said that its 3 or 4 bars in all the rooms so all good here.
What sort of Routers are you having problems with?
H

Hmm
I'm sorry to say that my wifi on the HD works fantastic. It even picks up wifi networks my netbook doesn't. I use it all day long at home then connect when at work.
I don't care what the signal strength is in various rooms I just get on with it. Having said that its 3 or 4 bars in all the rooms so all good here.
What sort of Routers are you having problems with?
H

I'd like to hear from ppl who have tested the device within a weak WiFi zone such as my room in college.
My experience was that it drops the network. Literally would drop it as soon as it had connected. I was nearly crying. In the same place, my laptop and my mates iPhones work grand. So maybe some of you could test it in weak zones.
To those of you defending it and saying its fit for purpose, please dont forget how much we paid for this thing. I would have expected decent WiFi. It clearly isnt! Another thing that dissapoints.
Regarding what kind or routers I'm usin, DLINK, Netgear and I aint got a clue what they run in college. But thats not the point, the point is that in my place of work, the only device that does not work at all is my VERY EXPENSIVE Touch HD. Everything else (laptops, iphones, other phones) works. That makes me kinda sick

I've had very good signal at home and at work where its a big building. I think something might be wrong with yours try to have it exchanged.

I don't have the device, but on my Artemis I can select how good the wifi works, either auto, battery optimized or full power. Whenever I select full power it gets a better signal. Maybe you have such an option on your device too?

I have connected to about 4 different WIFI routers without problems.
The furthest was about 50 meters away with solid walls... Perhaps there is a fault with your HD? Consider returning for a replacement and see if it's any better.

objective opinion
theoretically, Touch HD's (and most of the HTC's phones) should have weaker wifi performance than iphone. Performance = throughput and/or ability to lock onto signals and/or range.
reason: touch hd uses TI (Texas Instrument)'s wifi chip, lab testings shows about 12 mbps
iphone uses Marvel wifi chip, lab testing shows 18 mbps.
TI chip is much cheaper in price than marvels, that's the reason why HTC chose them.
that being said, i have seen weak wifi signals in my house, where it would see the AP, but can't associate (at certain spots). but for me, once it associates , it will lock on pretty well. wifi through put is definitely weaker than iphone, despite the CPU advantage -> 528 MHz, vs. iphone's downclocked 400 Mhz (from 667MHz)
also, your school would uses enterprise AP, so it's either cisco or aruba. but it should not make a difference. the immediate remedy for your HOME, is to go into the router's console and change the channel away from the default 1, 6 or 11. those three channels have the most interference, because most ppl don't bother change them, so your neighbor would be on those channel too.

Mine seems to work 'ok'...
I live in a 100+ year old house, so the walls are pretty thick!
If I'm in the bedroom furthest from my router, my laptop gets a weak signal - and my HD does too (just about enough to watch YouTube with only a very occasional break)
So it certainly seems no worse - and considering that HD have squeezed a laptop into the size of a flattened fag packet, I'm happy enough with that

gt112 said:
I'd like to hear from ppl who have tested the device within a weak WiFi zone such as my room in college.
My experience was that it drops the network. Literally would drop it as soon as it had connected. I was nearly crying. In the same place, my laptop and my mates iPhones work grand. So maybe some of you could test it in weak zones.
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I don't exactly have that situation but:
- I use a US Robotics access point
- When sitting 6ft away from it, I get near ~100% signal strength, as you would expect
- Through some walls I get only a very slight decrease in signal strength
- My phone often picks up access points that my laptop (macbook pro, has quite reliable wireless) in other homes which are separated by thick concrete walls and easily 30 to 60 feet away
- At the office I can use my wireless outside, if I'm at least close to the building
- So basically it works as efficient as the wireless on any decent notebook I've used, which usually have stronger and better powered receivers than phones
gt112 said:
To those of you defending it and saying its fit for purpose, please dont forget how much we paid for this thing. I would have expected decent WiFi. It clearly isnt! Another thing that dissapoints.
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True, you must expect nothing less than good performance, and as stated by many people, you can also expect the HD to offer that performance, it is simply there (well on the average HD). Something must not be working right, either the radio version, glitchy software, or in the worst case, the hardware is faulty, it happens on the best devices. If your wireless receiver has a hardware fault causing it to conflict you will see these drops as the device randomly disables en reenables all the time.
I'd suggest making use of your warranty while you still can.

A cross-country trip, the Froyo Radio and what it might mean to you!

So I just recently took a trip from northern California to Tennessee and had some interesting results with the Froyo radio. For reference I own the ATT-version Nexus One and have data roaming enabled.
When I used the phone before Froyo radio I had many problems with the 3G switching to Edge and back when needed which caused random data dropouts. Even turning the phone off and back wouldn't force the phone to switch connections to Edge when needed which would make me very frustrated in times of need.
On my trip I found something very interesting, not only did 3G and Edge switch almost perfectly, but Edge performed MUCH faster than before. While it isn't as important now in a world of 3G coverage, when I was on the "edge" of civilization I still got surfing speeds that were not far behind that of 3G speeds. My browsing, and most importantly Google Maps usage rarely suffered a performance hit despite where I was or what type of connection was available to my phone.
There was a difference between performance; 3G would act like Comcast and Edge would be a little behind, but in terms of actually surfing the Internet the extra 2-5 seconds it took to load up a desktop webpage didn't make a difference.
Technically the bandwidth speeds were much different. 3G performed from 1 to a max of 2 megabits down and .3-1 megabits up, while Edge showed speeds of 300-500 kbps down and 100-200 up.
One thing I did notice throughout the trip is the Nexus One's signal meter did not report correctly, there were times where it showed no signal and I had super fast connection, and also times when it would show full or near-full bars and there was no connection.
Hope someone finds this info useful!!! I'm very happy with the coverage my Nexus One gets with the Froyo radio now!

I have always found that my nexus holds calls and has fast data showing zero bars. One reason I've always loved the nexus

Just a point of clarification, EDGE has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 473.6 kbits/s for 8 timeslots.
In real world conditions EDGE should have throughput of 236.8kbit/s with 4 timeslots(which is what most carriers employ).
Dan

Wonder if there's and app/mod to replace the signal bar with the actual signal #s?

Hey Sellitus, what else did you find working/not working on that trip?
I am considering a longer drive (SF to NY) and want to know about battery life, apps that were really handy, and which weren't.

SiNJiN76 said:
Wonder if there's and app/mod to replace the signal bar with the actual signal #s?
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hey that would be nice. just like how cyanogen puts the battery percentage, it would be nice to have the dBm level of signal overtop of the signal meter.

RogerPodacter said:
hey that would be nice. just like how cyanogen puts the battery percentage, it would be nice to have the dBm level of signal overtop of the signal meter.
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The dBm and signal bar IMO opinion are rather pointless in regards to data. Having a very poor 3G signal will always be faster than a full GPRS signal.

Also, a signal meter in terms of DB would jump around quite a bit...

sprinkles said:
Hey Sellitus, what else did you find working/not working on that trip?
I am considering a longer drive (SF to NY) and want to know about battery life, apps that were really handy, and which weren't.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well for ATT I hit data roaming quite a few times, and although it worked on edge pretty quickly during those times it would randomly drop when the R was showing randomly. I think what happened a lot on the trip is when I was out in the middle of nowhere bouncing between towers would cause random dropouts, but they were usually no more than a few seconds.
I don't remember which apps specifically though a few also did not like the trip, but most would hang and resume in a few seconds after data was reconnected even if the signal strength showed it was connected the entire time with signal. Sometimes Google Maps hung, though it was rare and I noticed it more because I used it near constantly on the trip.
If I were to give advice to anyone looking at a cross country trip, buy a map or get offline GPS maps to help. We bought a map and it proved valuable at times, though we rarely needed it.

I wonder if the "enable data while roaming" setting had anything to do with that. Maybe an internal bug.

torchedlh said:
Also, a signal meter in terms of DB would jump around quite a bit...
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I don't know how a number jumping around would be any different than a graphical signal meter jumping around. The iPhone has had this hack for a long time where you can replace the signal meter with the dBm reading. Though I've never owned the iPhone, but seen it on friend's iPhone before.
I know I'm often going into the android settings to look at my dBm reading, didn't jump around too much for me to see.

I've been having some reception issue lately with AT&T around my hometown (usually its quite good),so I did some googling, and found plenty of info on radio signal, and how to interpret -dBm, but I'm still baffled by the ASU. I really couldn't find much, just some random post on a random forum that left me with some questions:
In a 3G network your cell phone tries to open three channels to three radios so they can locate you and hand you off properly.
Those three channels make up you ACTIVE SET.
ASU is ACTIVE SET UPDATES or the rate at which your phone is able to update its location to the towers/radios.
This rate is affected by signal strength, load, and probably a lot of other factors that I haven't puzzled out yet.
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Can anyone shed some more light on this? Usually at home I have 2 bars of HSDPA, somehwere in the -90s dBm, and anywhere from 4-8 asu.

signal strength vibrant vs. g1

the more i look around the more i wonder if its hardware not software....
s/n ratio on this thing sux. sitting on my front porch line of sight to the closest tower is .5 miles. with the vibrant im getting 0-1 bar 3g with speeds 0f 512kbp on average. my g1 getting next to it shows full bars, and averages 4.5mbp have seen almost 7mbp in the same spot with the g1. the vibrant picks up 7-9 satellites with aan average s/n of 15-18 db, and might lock on to 1 or 2 after about 10 min. the g1 in the same location hits 12 satellites with a minimum of 35db and locks on to 5+ within seconds on wifi, the vibrant shuld have a clear advantage being able to use wireless-n, but on the front porch im seeing about a 30-35db signal, the g1 in the same spot, but on wireless-g see's 50+ db, the g1 stays connected all the way to my mail box, the vib drops less than 1/4 of the way there. so, hopefully a software update cures this, otherwise it sounds like its hardware related.... ( im pretty sure that i didnt buy an i phone)
after 5 days of checking, im averaging 60-75% of the time with out service according to the phone.
any one else care to share actual figures comparing to another device in same location, not just how many bars etc...
i purposely did all my measurements outdoors/close to a tower within line of sight to ensure a good solid stable measurement. my porch is within 20 feet of my router , line of sight thru an open door for the wifi tests.

None of these numbers make any sense, furthermore is the G1 on the same CID as the Vibrant? Have you done tethering and not a speedtest on the phone?

heygrl said:
None of these numbers make any sense, furthermore is the G1 on the same CID as the Vibrant? Have you done tethering and not a speedtest on the phone?
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lol.... they dont make sense? they are actual signal level readings @ a hardware level. that wey we arnt trying to compare any of the falce readings that the software covers up..... like gee, why does my batt icon still show almost full when in actuality it is at 25% remaining.
and yes, i have teathered to it. it still does not change the fact that compareing actual signal strengths of a brand new top of the line device are crushed by a antique first gen device.
i have spoken with samsung, i recomend any one woth poor radio performance to contact them and start a help ticket. at 1-877-EZ2GALAXY (1-877-392-4252)

t1h5ta3 said:
lol.... they dont make sense? they are actual signal level readings @ a hardware level. that wey we arnt trying to compare any of the falce readings that the software covers up..... like gee, why does my batt icon still show almost full when in actuality it is at 25% remaining.
and yes, i have teathered to it. it still does not change the fact that compareing actual signal strengths of a brand new top of the line device are crushed by a antique first gen device.
i have spoken with samsung, i recomend any one woth poor radio performance to contact them and start a help ticket. at 1-877-EZ2GALAXY (1-877-392-4252)
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Click to collapse
I've never seen signal strength of 55db on WiFi. Same for the rest of them, they don't make sense.
Run your speedtests while tethered and not on the phones themselves.
Use Service Mode for RSSI readings on the Vibrant
The battery meter doesn't show full with 25% remaining

my bad, i was trying to do it all from memory not looking @ my notes.... signal on the g1 was -30dbm the vib was -55dbm on the porch
gps signal strength ( *#*#1472365#*#* gps test) data was in dBHz
just did it again, got my best TTFF/TTF of 148 seconds and im seeing my best ever accuracy bouncing between 15-20 meters
sad that these readings are the best performance ive seen...

i have this growing suspicion that there was a reason samsung installed an optional GPS antenna socket on the phone (next to the sim card, by the beveled corner)
are there other phones out there with a socket for an optional gps antenna?

wifi - very poor - one Bar only 5 meters away from router

not feeling wifi on this phone at all compared to my old hd2, not getting any bars at all showing and connection is poor, anyone else seeing this?

stoolzo said:
not feeling wifi on this phone at all compared to my old hd2, not getting any bars at all showing and connection is poor, anyone else seeing this?
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So far no. Full bar for me. Weird..

This is why I hate when new devices get released.
Using the phone outside my 2 story townhouse(router upstairs) with 3bars. Vibrant and hd2 was either 0-1 bars.

Yes, I'm finding it really weak as well, in fact it just dropped back to 3G as I typed this.

I noticed it shows as weak, yea....

Mine seems to have a weaker signal strength on my top floor compared with my desire. Also when running speed tests it struggles to hit 3Mbps downstream on a 38Mbps BT infinity line.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App

Stronger signal for me .
jje

definitely a weaker signal for me compared to my desire.
i'm getting 2 bars out of 4 despite being in the very next room to my router. it's 4 bars on my desire.
:-(

Might I suggest that the difference may be in the amount of interference your Wifi is experiencing? Try switching to a different "channel" on the router or even from 2.4 to 5GHz band (not sure if the phone supports this but worth a shot). I used to have a problem with this when i first got my SGS1 and when i swapped my wifi router to a new channel the problem disappeared.
Good luck

huh, to me the signal is the same if not better than the hd2.

the same here european version! 5 meters away it shows 1 bar only.

I'm currently 20m away from my router and behind a couple of walls and I get 2/4 bars on the Wifi and on the Speedtest app I get
Ping: 25ms
Download: 5946kbps
Upload: 3882kbps
In my opinion that qualifies as decent signal strength and quite a bit better than what I got with my N1.
edit:
And just to clarify, if I'm in the same room as the router I get full bars on Wifi.

I'm having no problems with WiFi. I get full signal in my living room (the same room as the router), and in my kitchen (which is about 10m away and has 2 stud partition walls and one masonry wall between it and my living room) I get 2 bars. So its as good as I'd expect, however I haven't tried checking my connection just outside my flat, but I live in an old school house with 2ft external walls, so I'm guessing I wont get much of a signal.
My laptops' WiFi behaves the very same. If your WiFi is worse than your previous phone....something wrong!

Wifi is fine on mine. I'm 2 floors away from the router and can get a two bar signal no problem.

Low also although it seems to perform ok.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App

for me
2.4ghz band is stronger than my sgs 1
and 5ghz band is weaker than my sgs 2

I noticed on my s1, froyo showed more strength bars than when I installed gingerbread. Maybe it is just a display problem caused by gingerbread?

Wifi signal is more stable than in sgs1 or my HTC desire.
10m from router, 3 walls
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

I get slightly higher signal strength with the SGS2 than I do with my Nexus One (dBm as viewed in Wifi Analyzer).
However, I do have definite throughput issues -- can't get over 2mbps downstream on my SGS2 vs 6-8mbps downstream on my Nexus One at home. However, on my work network it's a different matter - the SGS2 is slightly faster than the N1. To me this suggests that either there is a compatibility issue between the SGS2 and certain APs, or the SGS2 is more prone to interference than the N1...

Hi, you could try wifi analyzer app, it will show you the strongest signal on channels.

signal strength gives no indication of 4g speed?

Experimenting with modems to try and find a better one and came across something very irritating. It seems after my testing that the number of bars of signal and the signal strength reported in Network Signal Info seem to have no relation what so ever to the 4g data speed you may get.
Earlier I was testing with 4 out of 6 bars of signal, NSI showing 94dbm and something like 60% signal.....and I consistently got speed tests of around 1mbps or less and even that was slow and stuttery. On other occasions with only a 40% signal at 106dbm in NSI I was able to get 22mbps in speed tests. All these tests were done using the same speedtest server as well as subjective testing by running various apps and seeing how quick or slow they were (and the performance of all the apps matched the performance of the download tests). So what the hell is going on? It looks like signal strength has nothing to do with the 4g connection speeds.
Is the signal strength even indicating the strength of the 4g signal or is it merely indicating the strength of the phone signal because that's what it kinda looks like.
I am on EE UK with their 'double speed' 4g (which gives me 97.5mbps download when at home with a perfect signal).

ewokuk said:
Experimenting with modems to try and find a better one and came across something very irritating. It seems after my testing that the number of bars of signal and the signal strength reported in Network Signal Info seem to have no relation what so ever to the 4g data speed you may get.
Earlier I was testing with 4 out of 6 bars of signal, NSI showing 94dbm and something like 60% signal.....and I consistently got speed tests of around 1mbps or less and even that was slow and stuttery. On other occasions with only a 40% signal at 106dbm in NSI I was able to get 22mbps in speed tests. All these tests were done using the same speedtest server as well as subjective testing by running various apps and seeing how quick or slow they were (and the performance of all the apps matched the performance of the download tests). So what the hell is going on? It looks like signal strength has nothing to do with the 4g connection speeds.
Is the signal strength even indicating the strength of the 4g signal or is it merely indicating the strength of the phone signal because that's what it kinda looks like.
I am on EE UK with their 'double speed' 4g (which gives me 97.5mbps download when at home with a perfect signal).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, in fact the signal strength and data speed are different things and they do (most likely) not affect to each other.
By detailed, signal strength is depend on if you are far or near from the mobile tower.
While data speed depend on many other factors: max capability of the network, your subscription with the service provider, and the congestion on the network.
The signal strength will also impact on data speed, but only when you are very far from the tower, when the signal strength is very weak. That may impact the data speed.

Exactly what I was afraid of. This would mean it is not even possible to test how good your signal is (for data) without running endless speed tests (which are going to kill your data usage in no time). There is no other way to test data strength?

ewokuk said:
Exactly what I was afraid of. This would mean it is not even possible to test how good your signal is (for data) without running endless speed tests (which are going to kill your data usage in no time). There is no other way to test data strength?
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The term "data strength" has no meaning. If you want to test for signal strength, it is the received level. If you want to test for data speed, there is no way without actually testing it.
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