Inspire and Wifi?

[Blanco720]

So, a little emberassing I suppose, but here goes...

I have had a blackberry for years now and never was able to use wifi with it. Mainly due to the difficulty connecting to networks with even the most modest of protection. Additionally, 3rd party browsers that were good to use required me to toggle wifi or network data, and I have never really been able to get it to work quite right.

I hear a lot of you will "live on wifi" and I can see the merit in that; my netbook pulls 54 mbs while the att hspa+ is pulling down 4 mbs on a good day. My questions are:

1. How easy is it to connect to a home/public network

2. What steps do you need to take in order to ensure your device is using wifi

3. What programs/services take advantage of wifi (voice, emails, etc.)

4. How does wifi affect battery life

5. Any other advice or insight

 

[YouGotRedOnYou]

So, a little emberassing I suppose, but here goes...

I have had a blackberry for years now and never was able to use wifi with it. Mainly due to the difficulty connecting to networks with even the most modest of protection. Additionally, 3rd party browsers that were good to use required me to toggle wifi or network data, and I have never really been able to get it to work quite right.

I hear a lot of you will "live on wifi" and I can see the merit in that; my netbook pulls 54 mbs while the att hspa+ is pulling down 4 mbs on a good day. My questions are:

1. How easy is it to connect to a home/public network

2. What steps do you need to take in order to ensure your device is using wifi

3. What programs/services take advantage of wifi (voice, emails, etc.)

4. How does wifi affect battery life

5. Any other advice or insight

1. It's very easy to connect to a wifi network, as long as you know the password! The device will recognize all the local wifi in range, you select the one to connect to, enter password, enjoy the wifi!

2. Go into settings, enable wifi. Done!

3. Everything data related (emails, web browser, market, etc), minus voice calls and texts, are used over wifi (fairly certain of this).

4. Wifi can effect battery, but I don't find it drastic. Bluetooth will have more of an effect.

5. I usually keep wifi enabled 24x7 on all my devices. Never found a reason to turn it off. It's like a part of the phone I never think about. Not sure if this helps you or not. Feel free to ask away! We'll all try to help the best we can.

 

[Blanco720]

So, when you are connected to a wifi network, all the data related features (email, web, etc.) intelligently prioritize wifi data and not att data?

 

[AndreaCristiano]

So, when you are connected to a wifi network, all the data related features (email, web, etc.) intelligently prioritize wifi data and not att data?

yes sir

 

[Blanco720]

:giddy like a school girl:

 

[mattbe213]

4. Wifi can effect battery, but I don't find it drastic. Bluetooth will have more of an effect.

I'm pretty sure that WiFi saves battery life because it isn't constantly searching for a signal.

Matt

 

[Blanco720]

Isn't wifi considerably more draining than bluetooth? It makes sense it would be since the data flow is much greater...

 

[AndreaCristiano]

actually no it takes more out of the phone to use wifi and bluetooth is a battery hog

 

[mattbe213]

I have found that since the RC29 update, my phone lasts a lot longer regardless of what I am doing with it. Lasts all day - a miracle.

I pulled this from another thread about WiFi and battery life. BUT, this is about the T-Mobile G1! So it could vary. Some people say that you should turn off WiFi when you aren't using it, but I'm going against that and I will leave mine on all of the time unless I start noticing shorter battery life from the phone. Hope this helps!

Matt

 

[Blanco720]

I pulled this from another thread about WiFi and battery life. Hope this helps.

Matt

pulled what?

 

[mattbe213]

pulled what?

My post above. It is right above the post that I quoted you on.

 

[Blanco720]

Another random question, though i dont mean to derail the thread I created....lol

Do android phones require hard reboots like blackberrys? What i mean to say is that, blackberrys are notorious for memory leaks and after a certain amount of time (varies from phone to phone and the applications used) they become extremely sluggish. You literally pull out the battery and put it back in for it to start from scratch (there are apps that you can install to get the same result, like quickpull). Anything like this for androids?

Also, in terms of multi tasking...blackberrys have an application switcher, akin to alt + tab on a PC which allows to you to switch between multiple apps running simultaneously. So, question is, if you open an app, go to the home screen, open another, can you go back to the previous app with it still running? and if so, how do you close the applications? is it simply something like menu -> close/exit?

 

[Chew]

I've never had to reboot my Aria due to sluggishness. It works just as fine after a week of no-rebooting.

Yes, apps will run in the background. You can open one, open another, and go back to the first. And, yes, you can go menu -> exit on most apps if you wish. The OS is intelligent enough that you don't really need to though.

 

[Blanco720]

so how do you commonly switch between apps?

 

[YouGotRedOnYou]

so how do you commonly switch between apps?

Easily! At the top is the drop-down menu, swipe it down, and a list of apps will be shown that you can swipe left or right and select which app you want to switch to.

 

[Chew]

I think that's new with Sense 2.0, correct?

I don't have that option on my Aria. I just hit the home key and open up the next app.

 

[YouGotRedOnYou]

I believe this is something new with the newest version of Sense, though i may be wrong. Here is a screen grab showing it...

 

[Donatron]

When I had my Aria, I remember having an issue with WiFi. Whenever the phone goes idle for a while, the WiFi "sleeps". When you start using your phone again, it's supposed to "wake up", but my Aria never did. I'd always have to disable, then re-enable, the WiFi in order to get it to work.

I posted this issue in the forums on HTC's site, and several others had the same issue. Not sure if the issue ever got resolved.

 

[AndreaCristiano]

When I had my Aria, I remember having an issue with WiFi. Whenever the phone goes idle for a while, the WiFi "sleeps". When you start using your phone again, it's supposed to "wake up", but my Aria never did. I'd always have to disable, then re-enable, the WiFi in order to get it to work.

I posted this issue in the forums on HTC's site, and several others had the same issue. Not sure if the issue ever got resolved.

Did you ever try putting the wifi on.never sleep.

 

[Donatron]

Did you ever try putting the wifi on.never sleep.

Yes. I actually dug up my old thread:

WiFi doesn't automatically connect when within range - HTC Aria? (AT&T) - Android Forums - HTC Community

Latest post is 12/3/10, and it looks like it hasn't been resolved yet. There's another post that says that it's actually a common problem among several HTC devices.

edit: The issue also had to do with coming into range with a known network. So when coming home from work, it wouldn't automatically connect to my home network, I'd have to toggle WiFi off and back on.

 

[Chew]

When I had my Aria, I remember having an issue with WiFi. Whenever the phone goes idle for a while, the WiFi "sleeps". When you start using your phone again, it's supposed to "wake up", but my Aria never did. I'd always have to disable, then re-enable, the WiFi in order to get it to work.

I posted this issue in the forums on HTC's site, and several others had the same issue. Not sure if the issue ever got resolved.

Hmmmm. I'm currently using the Aria and I'll get occasional errors when my podcast agent downloads podcasts. I have the program set to wifi only. I thought it was the program until I tried another, which had the same problem.

I hope this has been fixed between Froyo and the new Sense.

 

[Allenfx]

Now for a monkey wrench....

I was told (at least on the 3gs) that using wi-fi for surfing SAVE THE BATTERY LIFE over using the 3g network to surf.

I have found this to be true in practice as well.....can surf on wi-fi for longer before killing the phone then i can over 3g.

What gives?

 

[Kopsis]

With 3G your phone's radio is typically burning between 0.75W and 1W of power to transmit. By contrast, WiFi transmit power is typically 0.05W to 0.2W. Makes sense if you think about it -- how far does your 3G signal have to travel vs. your WiFi signal? The greater the distance the greater the power and the greater the drain on battery.

Obviously this is for sending information. Just "listening" (but not receiving anything) doesn't take much power in either case. But if data is moving (in either direction), WiFi will be about 5X more efficient.