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[Q] wi-fi not Sensation-al at all, any hacks?

I thought I had my weak wi-fi problem licked, by using "wi-fi best performance" in the settings.This is my second Sensation, I took one back for awful wi-fi and speaker, this one no better even after discovering the "best performace" setting.
I first took the sensation to a Mickey D's nearby, as I know they have wi-fi. Not a blip. I tried with and w/o "best performance", nothing, nada, I parked right next to where customers would sit, as well as tried a couple other areas in the lot. Nothing at all when I scanned.
I then went to another McD's. Pretty much same thing, even though one spot in the lot, I got 1 bar/poor, but not stable to make a connection. I assumed it was theirs, but maybe not,didn't say Wayport or attws. I also parked as close as I could to a sports bar that has wi-fi, again not a blip. I was inside that sports bar the other night, and even though it seemed to get a decent wi-fi signal inside, kept saying "page not found". If I used 2/3/4 G (actually only 2G was working in there), I could get web pages.
I came home after my first trip to McD's, grabbed my laptop, my Sensation, as well as my original HTC Dash, which I decided to try a unused SIM card in. I couldn't make calls of course, but I could connect to wi-fi at my house.
So I set sail with all 3 devices. I went back to the first McD's I tried a half hour earlier, and parked again right outside where the customers sit. Good to excellent signal on the laptop. A consistent 1 bar signal on the Dash, but stable and functional, and it definitely showed McD's sign in page - attws hotspot plus a Wayport icon showing also. The Sensation - not even a hint of wi-fi service again.
Any updates or hacks that will make the wi-fi more normal?
Or else the thing is going back. If I have to eat $50 for the T-Mo store restocking fee, so be it, but now I'm reading people are getting phones from Best Buy and Costo (I assume Sam's Club maybe too) and getting pretty long periods to try them out and no restocking fee. So I may do that. The T-Mo store is 14 days, and I had the first Sensation 7 days, plus the new one 4 so far. Thanks.

I agree 100%. My wife's Vibrant gets 3 bars strong from my bedroom (where the wifi is) to my living room, my Vibrant only gets one bar, and often just disconnects all together???? WTF???? Not so Sensational right? I hope a better ROM or some kind of fix becomes available soon.

Look guys, there are already dozens of threads on this. Can you repost this in one of those?
Just trying to avoid clutter
Thanks guys
BW

Wifi Issues

When I move into my room, my laptop gets 90%-100% signal strength from my Wifi, my phone however randomly looses signal completely and especially when I take up the phone to use it. It's very frustrating. Plus when I'm on 3G, it constantly switches from 3G to H too.

The 3g H switching is normal if you are on tmo us and running the eu roms and has been discussed quite a bit
not sure what you mean by losing signal, but i get diff bars diff places in my house. never lose the whole connection as in not being able to dl or browse web
did you run speed tests at these diff locations in house

rugmankc said:
The 3g H switching is normal if you are on tmo us and running the eu roms and has been discussed quite a bit
not sure what you mean by losing signal, but i get diff bars diff places in my house. never lose the whole connection as in not being able to dl or browse web
did you run speed tests at these diff locations in house
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I think you misunderstood his post. His primary problem is that the wifi on his phone doesn't come close to the signal strength his laptop has when in the same room.
The secondary problem was the 3g/4g switching.
OP -- I have no idea what to tell you.

no, i understood. just saying my phone wifi bars fluctuate even if my laptop has good signal. may just be the way they both display strength readings
i think op should run speed tests btw the two at same time. however both devices are splitting signal so may not be as good as only one running at a time
his speeds may be fine even though bars don't show it

rugmankc said:
no, i understood. just saying my phone wifi bars fluctuate even if my laptop has good signal. may just be the way they both display strength readings
i think op should run speed tests btw the two at same time. however both devices are splitting signal so may not be as good as only one running at a time
his speeds may be fine even though bars don't show it
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I'm in Jamaica, no T-mobile. I'm not sure if I'm running an EU rom. My problem is that I loose connectivity to Wifi totally randomly in my room with even little motion. I mentioned my laptop for reference... it's like there's poor signal in my room. The phone'll just bit sitting on my bed, I hear an alert and pick up the phone to realize I've lost Wifi.
Speed is not the problem, I've been able to run a speed test to confirm I get the speed I'm supposed to get. Other times though, the speed test could not complete because I moved a little and lost connectivity.

HTC One S wifi
HTC One S wifi
Make sure that your SIM access cover is snapped in place.
It happened to me with the WiFi signal - The phone was losing signal, and had low signal 1 foot away from the router.
I 'pinched' the top-right corner of the access cover (thumb on the glass, index finger on the back cover) - I heard a 'click' and suddenly my WiFi was at full strength. I believe that the WiFi antenna is not connected unless it snaps together.

ok, not sure what to suggest. you could try turning airplane mode on and of and see if that helps
maybe router settings with the phone if you always had the issue
under settings/wifi/ tap on wifi then the 3 dot menu--Advanced. See if Keep Wi-Fi on during Sleep is Always. If not tap on it and change to Always
Also at bottom of Advanced menu is a DLNA setting, you could toggle that
barring that or someone else's ideas--maybe hardware and needs replaced

Try turning on Best Wifi Performance in Wifi, advanced settings.
Sent from my HTC VLE_U

Turning on best WiFi performance totally killed my battery life, but that may just be me.
If you're losing signal on one device but not another, I'd recommend changing the channel on your router. Interference on certain channels can cause weird issues with some devices. There are apps on the market that will show you which channels are congested in your area.

ptweasel said:
Turning on best WiFi performance totally killed my battery life, but that may just be me.
If you're losing signal on one device but not another, I'd recommend changing the channel on your router. Interference on certain channels can cause weird issues with some devices. There are apps on the market that will show you which channels are congested in your area.
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Hmmm... I'll try that. So far turning on DLNA and Best Performance hasn't made any difference. I'll try changing the channel when I get home later and post the results. I REALLY hope h/w is not the problem.. it's gonna be a hassle sending this back.

It might be worth gently cleaning the contacts exposed when you remove the SIM access panel. As District noted, good contact is necessary for wifi (and probably other features). Dust or a fingerprint may be problematic.

Anything to bear in mind when trying to clean it or adjust it? I'm really paranoid I'll mess it up.

make sure you use electrical cleaner
radio shack sells it, comes in spray can
if you haven't had sim card out or phone long, probably not issue. but, worth try
if you have another router, you can always try that

Nothing seems to work... I'm using channel 11 @ home which doesn't seem to be crowded. I have the same issue @ work with our router. I've been having this problem from I got the phone last week. This is after I initially removed the back cover to first insert my SIM.
I'm going to try and see if I can secure a cleaner... I tried blowing on it mean time. Also turned on DLNA and best wifi performance and all.

DLNA auto-IP setting worked for me.
Hi OP,
I had the exact same wifi issues on my One S. I tried the router at work, the router at home and my mates router with the same results.
Mine seems to work now, with no disconnections or manually connections. What seems to have worked for me -- Wifi - Advanced menu -- DLNA auto-IP setting - toggle on. Then restart, making sure the setting is still set after reboot. Seems to have fixed my wifi issues.
HTH.
Darren.

Please help!!! On 3rd Nexus 5, having same issues. Phone support is abysmal :(

I am having ongoing issues with the wifi on my Nexus 5. To the point I've received my 3rd one from RMA, but still have the exact same issue. At first I thought it may have been a hardware issue with the phone, so I RMA'd it. When I got my second and had the same problem, I started to not think it was a physical defect with the phone. The odds of getting two phones with the same issues would be astronomical. Now, on my 3rd, and still have the same issue. Every time I try calling and speak to phone service reps, they really don't know anything, and based on the questions they ask, or troubleshooting steps they suggest, lead me to believe they don't even understand the issue I'm trying to explain.
The wifi on my phone seems to "freeze", or stop working, stop scanning, something throughout the day. My day starts with my phone connected to my home wifi network. I leave for work, and I can watch my phone picking up random wifi signals on my drive. I get to work, and it picks up 8 wifi networks. None of which I've connected to. When I leave work 8 hours later, my phone is no longer picking up wifi signals, and won't scan for new ones. I get home, and it still says the 8 networks from work are in range, even though I'm miles away.
This is how my wifi list should look sitting in my living room. It has my network that it is connected to, as well as it picks up 4 of my neighbors networks.
This is how it looks sitting in my living room after getting home from work. Those are the 8 work wifi networks, which are miles away. It still says they're in range. You can see the last one cut off on the bottom, is my home one that says it's out of range.
I can hit the 3 dot option button, and choose "Scan", and it won't rescan. If the only issue was that it didn't pick up my network, I could see it possibly being an issue with my home network. But the fact that it still shows 8 networks that are out of range, as well as the fact it won't detect any network, mine or my neighbors, kind of rules out that it's an issue with my network.
Turning wifi on and off won't fix it. However, power cycling the phone will, or if I toggle airplane mode. But I shouldn't have to do that every day when I come home.
With my most recent Nexus 5, when I took it out of the box I didn't do a single thing to it, aside from turn it on, and manually put in the info to connect to my home network. Not a single app was downloaded, just to rule out it wasn't something I was installing on the phone. I absolutely love the Nexus 5, it's probably the best phone I've owned. But I am at my wits end with this issue.

Its probably not an actual fix, but I was having the same problems with mine, and I hate sending stuff back and play the waiting game over and over. So I got pissed off with wifi and just left it on LTE for a week or so and went back to wifi just to check up on the issue and it was gone.
Its been almost 3 weeks now and no problem, everything is working perfectly fine. LTE draining my battery was a pain thou but it paid off in the end somehow.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I'd be happy with just about any fix, as long as it fixes the issue. LTE draining my battery wouldn't be an issue, I'd be more worried about my data. While I have "unlimited" data from AT&T, I get throttled after 5GB. Since I stream large amounts of music, I can blow through that rather fast. So I try to keep my phone connected to wifi as much as possible. But it definitely is something to suck up and try if I don't get a better solution. I have this cross posted just about everywhere I could think of.

Delayed WiFi timeout to disconnect?

This is something I've noticed over time now, honestly not entirely sure if it's just this phone because I never really paid attention to it on others.
Does anyone else notice that it takes a bit of time for wifi to actually disconnect from a network when you get far enough from it to have poor signal?
I mostly notice this when I walk my dogs. I'm able to walk almost an entire block away before Wi-Fi disconnects, as per the status showing.
I already removed antennas from the router as I do not need extended distance but it honestly seems like a phantom connection.
When I go back to the same spot that the wifi eventually drops and use Wi-Fi analyzer I don't even see the network.
Anyone else notice?

Choosing/blacklisting cell towers

I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode (Android 5.02) for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.

ab1jx said:
I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.
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It may be possible to exclude certain towers, but for all intents and purposes, it is not possible to include/select/lock-in specific towers. Here is why, if the tools and methods to do so were readily available, then, inevitably more people would use those tools and methods. The more people were to use those tools/methods, the more unstable the whole network would become because the system would not be able to shift the load between towers to equalize/stabilize the network as a whole.
This is because the system works by balancing load, sometimes a signal can be weaker than another but, at the same time, also be faster than other. Stronger signal does not always equal faster speeds.
The concept would be similar to having more than one router/wifi signal at home, then, having everyone in the house and any/all neighbors that are in range, all connected to the same signal/router. The signal they are all connected to would be slow and unstable, the system must have the ability to "bounce" everyone around between all of the routers in order to keep performance at optimum levels "across the board". If everyone is "locked" to the one signal/router, the system can't manage itself, which leads to degradation.
Poor signal in rural areas can be expected, there isn't much you can do about it. The towers are positioned to provide coverage to as many customers as possible from their location. Also, some of the issue in rural areas is a "line of sight" thing. The lay of the land can be a hindrance to signal.
I also live in a rural area of a rural town. I get crappy signal when using cellular network, more down time than up time. I deal with having a decent(but still slow) signal for 1-2 minutes and then when the phone's system runs the next wifi/cellular data re-scan to search for better signal, everything stalls as if I'm getting no signal and it doesn't resume until it either keeps the connection it already has or it just drops out completely for 5-8 minutes until the next time the re-scan can find a signal to connect to. Then the cycle starts over with decent signal for 1-2 minutes or so, until the next re-scan, anyway. I have to turn of mobile data when at home because the virtually continuous re-scanning drains the battery and the device runs warmer than it should normally.
Sent from my SM-S767VL using Tapatalk

OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.

ab1jx said:
OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.
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Click to collapse
I am on Straight Talk also, but I'm on the Verizon side. In my opinion, the Verizon side is little better and has somewhat better coverage than the T-Mobile, Sprint or AT&T side. Other than when at home, I get perfect signal strength, the only reason I get crappy signal is I'm one of the ones dealing with line of sight. I'm several miles outside of town in a low-lying area between two hills.
Sent from my SM-S767VL using Tapatalk

I should try Verizon. They're the default for landlines here but I got the impression they only did contract phones. I have 3 working Motorola XT1527s plus my modem, not interested in some contract phone. This T-mobile experience is my first other than AT&T. There's a website where you can download APK files to sideload, that runs through T-Mobile last I knew.
I think I've figured out how to talk to a human at Straight Talk. Call during east coast business hours, and in the 2nd menu mention data issues. The night/weekend people never seem to accomplish anything. They're eager to help bit they're most effective at the bulk of common issues like billing or changing a SIM. Took me over 10 phone calls last time to get anywhere.