Droid Turbo Wifi

Apcman · Nov 6, 2014

I am thinking of upgrading to a droid turbo and I have been hearing competing things about the wifi on the turbo. Does the turbo have a good wifi antenna that can get good ranges. It is said if you go to far you will not get a good signal, but other phones int he same area will be just fine. I currently have a droid Maxx, is it better or worse than the Maxx?

fasteddie0073 · Nov 6, 2014

I'm coming from a Samsung Galaxy S3, and the WiFi is at least as good as that phone. The cell phone reception on the the Turbo seems to be much much better than my old Galaxy.

vr4 · Nov 6, 2014

The limited WiFi time I've had with it shows better reception that my RAZR maxx

coulterjosh · Nov 6, 2014

i have not had any problems with the turbos wifi

ekyle · Nov 6, 2014

No real differences between this and my M8 or iPhone 5S. I use WiFi at work all day as well as at home and miscellaneous places a visit.

WAMstr · Nov 6, 2014

Rich123 · Nov 6, 2014

WAMstr said:
Got the Turbo the day it went on sale (7 days ago). Coming from Razr Maxx HD. Turbo has about same wifi strength. While at home anyway I found an easy way to significantly boost wifi signal. I moved the modem/router all in one from the bottom of a desk in a bedroom at the far end of the house to the center of the house atop a 8 foot kitchen / living room divider wall. WiFi signals "fall" downwards and do not as easily "travel" upwards. Signal strength went from 1 or 2 wifi bars to full strength anywhere in the house and out on front and back screen porches. Hope this helps. P.S. if you for some reason on any phone can not connect to wifi as was the problem today with wife's Note 2 you can reset your home modem/router. When all else failed this simple trick worked!

What are you talking about regarding "fall" and "travel" and WiFi signals. The radiation pattern of the router is determined by the antenna configurations of the router and whether it is the 2.4 or 5GHz bands.

Vaetix · Nov 6, 2014

I'm coming from the Droid MAXX, and the Turbo has much better WiFi reception.

WAMstr · Nov 6, 2014

There

WAMstr · Nov 6, 2014

wolf_walker · Nov 6, 2014

I did a side by side with dB signal strength software running on my GS4 and the Turbo.
The Turbo wifi is not as sensitive as the GS4. I wouldn't call it dramatic, but if you had spots you needed wifi that the signal was weak on a previous device, it might be a problem. Also of note, the graphical signal strength "bars" are not an especially good indication of reality on either device. If anything the Turbo is pessimistic and the GS4 was optimistic based on the dB readings. It absolutely has worse reception than the GS4 though, from 3-5db within a FOOT of the router to 10-15 in a fringe area.

budfox66 · Nov 6, 2014

My DT seems to be a little weaker than my RMHD, but i'm curious. How do you get the db signal strength readout on the phone? I'd like to check my phones side-by-side at various points around my house. It does make a diff in batt life if your wifi signal is weaker and competing for connection. I'm constantly check the score or scorecenter in my garage (manland) when the guys come over for games, and the signal is weaker in my garage. I'd like to see which phone pulls it in better in manland!!

wolf_walker · Nov 6, 2014

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer&hl=en

budfox66 · Nov 9, 2014

Update: let me rephrase, my wifi seems to be significantly weaker than my RMHD. I'm losing signal (after resetting router Xmany) in what should be strong range. I also noticed I don't pick up my friends' nets when I goto their houses. I have to fumble with the wifi, on-off, settings, etc., to get linked. Never did it but once on my RMHD, to initially setup the network at various locations...from then on it was recgnzd immediately and linked on RMHD. Not happening on DT! I cd pickup 3 nearby friends home networks in MY house on my RMHD that don't show up on my DT. DT still picks up wifi ok in most of my normal places at home but thinking weak wifi signal might be tapping my battery more too? Hopeful for an update that will assist wifi range...one of the more important downsides for this phone if not. Anyone recognize these issues? Thoughts?

wolf_walker · Nov 9, 2014

Yep, pretty much.

I hit MT tech support with it the other day and they volunteered
"yes ours is weaker signal than the GS4 too, but don't worry because it's faster" lol

They had no answer otherwise. I doubt this get's fixed, the reception part anyway, they cut a corner with the antenna I suspect.

budfox66 · Nov 9, 2014

wolf_walker said:
Yep, pretty much.

I hit MT tech support with it the other day and they volunteered
"yes ours is weaker signal than the GS4 too, but don't worry because it's faster" lol

They had no answer otherwise. I doubt this get's fixed, the reception part anyway, they cut a corner with the antenna I suspect.

This is disappointing, if it is hardware related and cant be fixed with an update. The range issue probably will result in a battery drain too, the more one should use the phone at the fringe of one's network.

wolf_walker · Nov 9, 2014

Yeah, biggest bummer on the device imo. I'm not an engineer so can't say it's impossible that the reception will not improve, but my technical gut says this is likely the case.
Someone cut a corner somewhere, weather it was necessitated by the screen or battery or speaker or what I can't say, but it's noticeably worse reception than my Galaxy S4, wifi and bluetooth. I haven't decided if it's a deal breaker or not, I don't have any problem connecting and reconnecting, just the range/signal strength. I was in the way back yard yesterday and it did better than I would have thought but was still struggling where my former year or two old phone was fine. Not cool.

coulterjosh · Nov 9, 2014

If its at your house I would look into getting a more powerful router because my turbo is bounds and leaps better than my s4. At work in areas where I used to get no WiFi signal to just enough to show up as a network I now have two bars of wifi signal in those locations.

wolf_walker · Nov 9, 2014

coulterjosh said:
If its at your house I would look into getting a more powerful router because my turbo is bounds and leaps better than my s4. At work in areas where I used to get no WiFi signal to just enough to show up as a network I now have two bars of wifi signal in those locations.

Same house, same router, same weather, same time, same place, both phones side by side, dBm monitor software running, the DT averages 5dBm worse than the S4. A more gross test is to open youtube and click play on same vid at same instant, the Turbo stops to buffer and lags behind the S4 significantly.
I do think the Youtube app on the Turbo is having issues since it'll stutter a bit within three feet of my router, but it's still a connection issue. Another obvious test is the S4 shows half a dozen or more nearby but very weak wifi AP's, the Turbo shows mine and one other, occasionally seeing a 3rd. Similar behavior from my Nexus 7 tablet, it's not as bad as the Turbo, but not as good as the S4.

It's not dramatic but the S4 will have functional wifi in a fringe area (my shop, my backyard) when the Turbo does not. WiFi like any other radio signal is inconsistent and variable and it takes some serious study and comparison to make definitive observations. The stock signal bar icon is next to useless on any of them for anything but very general signal strength as well.

Moto contacted me wanting some log files to see what the deal is and I'll help them out if I can, but I suspect 5dBm give or take isn't enough for them to worry about, and it's not till you are in a fringe area when every bit counts. If I didn't hang out in my shop or sit in my backyard where I know the S4 works I might not have noticed it so quickly. I have a pretty decent dual band/antenna Asus router just so I could have useable wifi back there.

It's not the end of the world, but it's there.

kmf · Nov 10, 2014

Not experiencing any wifi issues at home with the Turbo. Just watched a few Youtube videos. No lag or buffering what so ever.

coulterjosh · Nov 10, 2014

Could it possibly be your phone. I still have my old s4 if you list the app you use to get these results send it to me and I'll test it out

wolf_walker · Nov 10, 2014

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer&hl=en

Both phones 3' from router.
Of note is that the GS4 picks up some near by wifi AP's the DT does not regularly even see, and that the 5ghz band is the same for both at this minimal distance, but the 2.4 is not.
-33dBm is an ideal that is generally only seen right at the router, the DT isn't even doing that unless you put it within inches of it. Something is amiss.

Droid Turbo..

Galaxy S4

speede541 · Nov 10, 2014

In my basement, Maxx would usually pull a weak 3G, maybe even 4G, but Turbo is essentially blind.

At work, in the room most distant from our router, Maxx would struggle to make use of a week WiFi signal. Turbo receives it just enough not to drop the connection, but won't receive data. But also won't drop it to switch to the very strong 4G connection in that same room.

At my favorite restaurant, Maxx had marginal but useable 4G/3G data. Turbo has very, very slow data over a 1 bar 3G connection.

These represent my three "worst case" scenarios. In most situations, the Turbo is fine.

wolf_walker · Nov 10, 2014

That jives exactly with what I've been seeing.
It's really on a problem if one regularly needs to use the thing in a
really weak reception area. I might actually buy better wifi AP or an extender
rather than get another phone since there really aren't any I'd rather have still
that are not gigantic.

budfox66 · Nov 10, 2014

I've tested all my fringe zones and WiFi actually registers as strong as my rmhd, to my surprise!

Droid Turbo Wifi

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