WiFi issue

[Guest robot1000]

Anyone able to give me an idiots guide to removing the apk using ADB - all greek to me and I don't want to go through the hassle of reflashing the ROM.

If you've got ES File Explorer do the following:

Open ES File Explorer - Settings - scroll to bottom and click 'root options' - tick both boxes and click yes to popups - head to /system/app/ and remove the apk file

Once removed turn the Root options back off and you're done

[Guest IronDoc]

I removed the wifi notification thing and it's all good so far. Hard to tell with the apparent randomness of this bug though.

[Guest tonycornholio]

If you've got ES File Explorer do the following:

Open ES File Explorer - Settings - scroll to bottom and click 'root options' - tick both boxes and click yes to popups - head to /system/app/ and remove the apk file

Once removed turn the Root options back off and you're done

Thanks, just about got ADB working but went with your method as it's quicker! Still showing in manage applications unfortunately, tried wiping the dalvik cache to see if that would do it but no dice.

[Guest jimbobvfr400]

Well its not been massively long so far but WiFis been fine since I flashed earlier this evening to R4 and missed out the WiFi notification on the kitchen.

Of course it could be a fluke or even R4 thats helped, but its working so far.

[Guest IronDoc]

OK scratch that. Problem's back.

[Guest Nick Rhodes]

OK scratch that. Problem's back.

Same here. I baked Wifi Status-less (actually quite basic with no ZTE or Orange apps or Car Home) R4 last night, rebooted, checked I had Wifi, went to sleep and Woke up on 3G (even though I have Wifi set to never sleep) and after 20 minutes it had not attempted to retry to reconnect.

"Wifi Fixer" has been the best (not perfect, but now reduces issue to a minor hindrance rather than major annoyance) fix for me.

Cheers, Nick

[Guest robot1000]

Same here. I baked Wifi Status-less (actually quite basic with no ZTE or Orange apps or Car Home) R4 last night, rebooted, checked I had Wifi, went to sleep and Woke up on 3G (even though I have Wifi set to never sleep) and after 20 minutes it had not attempted to retry to reconnect.

"Wifi Fixer" has been the best (not perfect, but now reduces issue to a minor hindrance rather than major annoyance) fix for me.

Cheers, Nick

Have you unchecked 'Network notification' under network settings?

[Guest Nick Rhodes]

Have you unchecked 'Network notification' under network settings?

Unchecked in Wifi Fixer.

Checked in Wifi settings.

Why do you ask ?

Cheers, Nick

[Guest robot1000]

Unchecked in Wifi Fixer.

Checked in Wifi settings.

Why do you ask ?

Cheers, Nick

Having it checked caused an issue when using Y5 Saver app, so thought it may be also be connected with the WiFi issue

[Guest androidswillkillusall]

hey everyone,

just registered on this forum so i could say this: I think if MSN Talk keeps the Wifi alive. I noticed it hasnt dropped ever since i left MSN talk online. Also more importantly, there is a setting in MSN Talk that says 'Keep Wifi' under 'Connectivity'.

[Guest kidkhaos]

i've got this problem and wifi enabler worked sometimes but not always, but when i enabled the pattern unlock the wifi seems to be solid now :)

[Guest Acathla-]

Just my input with this problem. I've tried almost all the 'fixer' apps on the Market and not had 100% success with any of them.

Best one to 'fix' a hung wifi after a sleep I have found to be 'WiFiReEnabler'.

Also a reply the most recent comments posted:

Setting a pattern lock hasn't helped me at all.

MSN Talk actually does keep the WiFi enabledfully when phone is sleeping - would be interesting to see what it does - may contact developer as I'd rather a simple app that does this than a MSN client. No reports yet as to how badly it affect battery life though - suspect it will quite a lot.

[Guest Tony Fonda]

Just my input with this problem. I've tried almost all the 'fixer' apps on the Market and not had 100% success with any of them.

Best one to 'fix' a hung wifi after a sleep I have found to be 'WiFiReEnabler'.

Also a reply the most recent comments posted:

Setting a pattern lock hasn't helped me at all.

MSN Talk actually does keep the WiFi enabledfully when phone is sleeping - would be interesting to see what it does - may contact developer as I'd rather a simple app that does this than a MSN client. No reports yet as to how badly it affect battery life though - suspect it will quite a lot.

I've tried many enablers too.

Tasker gave me 100%. It is great.

[Guest Stuart_f]

I've tried many enablers too.

Tasker gave me 100%. It is great.

Can you give me the idiot version of how to get tasker to reconnect to wifi?

I've got a profice that says when near my home AP, wifi on, reconnect but nothing happens...

[Guest Tony Fonda]

Can you give me the idiot version of how to get tasker to reconnect to wifi?

I've got a profice that says when near my home AP, wifi on, reconnect but nothing happens...

I use:

When Display On

Wifi Off

Wifi On

[Guest kidkhaos]

what happens when you switch the wifi off, will it turn on?

Edited October 15, 2010 by kidkhaos

[Guest Stuart_f]

I use:

When Display On

Wifi Off

Wifi On

I tried this, tasker tells me there's no active profiles and it doesn't do anthing at all to the wifi - ever.

Ninja edit - works perfectly if I manually connect to wifi and never leave coverage of the wifi. I can let the phone sleep for as long as you like and it reconnects every time. If I go for a walk, wake the phone up while mile away from anything so it cannot connect to the wifi, then go home again and wake the phone up it doesn't reconnect.

Edited October 15, 2010 by Stuart_f

[Guest Simon Baker]

I tried this, tasker tells me there's no active profiles and it doesn't do anthing at all to the wifi - ever.

Ninja edit - works perfectly if I manually connect to wifi and never leave coverage of the wifi. I can let the phone sleep for as long as you like and it reconnects every time. If I go for a walk, wake the phone up while mile away from anything so it cannot connect to the wifi, then go home again and wake the phone up it doesn't reconnect.

Ive just installed and used tasker but it seems to slow the resonse of the phone down enormously.

[Guest Simon O]

I'm starting to think this is down to the power management settings in the device. When the phone is on USB I can leave it and it'll go to sleep after some time. I'll wake it up and WiFi will be connected as I told Android to keep wifi connected when sleeping. But when the phone is running from battery this setting is ignored and the phone won't keep the wifi connection active or attempt to automatically re-connect. Most of the time I need to enter the settings and manually connect to the network. In very few cases this hasn't worked or Android 'forgets' my wifi password, but switching wifi off and back on fixes this.

It's annoying and it's similar behaviour which I experienced with my old T-Mobile Pulse. I'll have to dig deeper and see if there is any way of fixing this for good.

[Guest kidkhaos]

cheers :)

[Guest idroid84]

The thing is, if the phones in sleep mode why would you want wifi turned on. I mean a widget can be adding to the home screen to turn wifi on/off when needed. It saves power afterall if wifi is off. No need to use it really in sleep mode. Well I would only want to use it when I am actively using my phone.

[Guest jdtanner]

The thing is, if the phones in sleep mode why would you want wifi turned on. I mean a widget can be adding to the home screen to turn wifi on/off when needed. It saves power afterall if wifi is off. No need to use it really in sleep mode. Well I would only want to use it when I am actively using my phone.

It is still checking emails etc whilst the screen is off...some people prefer (or are only able to) use a wifi connection in their home for this type of thing; the stone walls in my cottage mean we get no data connection at all.

[Guest idroid84]

It is still checking emails etc whilst the screen is off...some people prefer (or are only able to) use a wifi connection in their home for this type of thing; the stone walls in my cottage mean we get no data connection at all.

From that angle I see a point.

[Guest Nick Rhodes]

If wireless disconnects, my phone switches to 3G. This seems to use roughly same amount of battery as WiFi (which is not a huge when phone is sleeping).

I prefer to use wireless, rather than 3G due to quite limited monthly bandwidth.

[Guest oh!dougal]

I'm starting to think this is down to the power management settings in the device. When the phone is on USB I can leave it and it'll go to sleep after some time. I'll wake it up and WiFi will be connected as I told Android to keep wifi connected when sleeping. But when the phone is running from battery this setting is ignored and the phone won't keep the wifi connection active ...

Yep, I've been saying this for a while.

I believe the Barnacle report demonstrated conclusively that when on battery power (no usb charging) the wifi shuts down with the screen.

http://android.modaco.com/index.php?s=&amp...t&p=1436742

This is the case with the the MoDaCo roms. Dunno about factory standard firmware.

Anyone?

Now that might be an accidental bug, or it might be deliberate - a battery-saving feature implemented by a designer not thinking about what the user might want.

There IS a user preference setting for EXACTLY this question.

It is a pretty poor design decision to think that the designer knows better than what the user explicitly says she wants.

It is unfortunate behaviour.

But once the behaviour is understood, it can be sensibly worked around, and hopefully eventually properly fixed.

Which leads us to the actual issue.

On WiFi waking up from sleep, the phone may not always connect reliably to the available network. This currently appears to be principally an issue of compatibility with certain routers.

HOWEVER - there is something else going on, which is confusing people.

On waking from sleep, I don't think that the phone auto-selects which WiFi network to use.

Laptops typically do, connecting to the strongest known network - but, for whatever reason, I don't think the SF does.

It only seems to want to auto-connect to the one it was using when it went to sleep.

Example:

Connect to home network, remember settings.

Put the phone to sleep and go to work.

At the office, create a connection to the office network, the phone will remember those settings too.

End of the day, put the phone to sleep and go home.

On waking up at home, the phone fails to automatically reconnect to the home network, despite the settings being remembered -- and people post about "an issue". However, I think that the phone is looking ONLY for the office network to reconnect to --- it will not say to itself, 'that one's not available, but I've got another one I can connect to, so I'll switch over to that one' -- Laptops routinely do that, but I really don't think this phone does!

In fact, if you've had a mobile data connection (like 3G) on the way home, the phone will hang onto that even after you arrive home - because it would only switch back to WiFi when it re-encountered the last-selected (ie the office) WiFi network.

But of course, when WiFi is initialised - goes through a full turning-on procedure - it actively searches for a network (any network) to join. So that is why the brute force "turn it off then turn it on again" method (or some App doing that) does provide a work around.

So, I'm going to say that "the wifi issue" looks to me like a combination of possibly four different things

1 - Running from the battery, WiFi does indeed 'sleep' when the screen does - despite setting WiFi Sleep: Never. (Note that its WiFi sleeping, not being turned fully 'off'.)

2 - The phone does not initialise WiFi (therefore does not search for a new network) when it "wakes from sleep". (It just resumes what it was doing!)

3 - The phone never auto-selects a WiFi network (except when initialising), and therefore when it wakes from sleep, it will look ONLY for the last-selected, last-used network.

-- All of these could be bugs or features, but I think its important to recognise that this is what the phone is known to be doing. Then we users can know what to do about it, and the slaves in the code-mines can work on giving the phone different behaviours in these specific situations. --

4 - Beyond that lot, there might possibly be a compatibility problem with certain routers, and this might be principally with the MoDaCo roms --- but until the effects of items 1, 2 and 3 are understood and watched for in testing, the 'issue' of simply not connecting to WiFi cannot be put down to 'compatibility'. However the business of 'resuming' an 'old' connection could possibly cause problems with some routers with some settings.

Personally, I think the phone would be (even) better IF

A - the WiFi sleep policy did do exactly what the user selected

- and -

B - when WiFi does wake from sleep, it would take a few moments to reinitialise its network setup. Perhaps the ideal WiFi wake-up behaviour would be for it to firstly try to use the old settings, and then, only if they don't work, take the time to re-initialise and look for another available and remembered WiFi network.

While I'm fairly sure I've analysed WHAT the problems actually are, fixing them is beyond my current skills!

Edited October 17, 2010 by oh!dougal