Wifi dead due to water need alternative to use wifi

[sitagasuma]

Hi guys I am from Pokhara, Nepal. My another phone which is oneplus 3 recently got water damage which took my bluetooth and wifi. One of my friend is mobile technician he saved mobile from further damage but couldn't save the wifi and bluetooth. Since we don't have authorized oneplus service center here I can't fix this problem. However not having wifi is big problem so I bought one local otg cable and usb to lan adaptor but it didn't work. Only mobile data is working. Can you guys suggest me how to get the wifi connectivity back? I researched about otg and usb wifi adaptor too but didn't find proper results. Is there any way to get usb wifi adaptor work with my mobile? please suggest me.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Those adapters are made for use on PC's and require drivers that your phone doesn't have, so even with OTG the phone doesn't know what to do with it. I'm afraid the only real fix for this is a replacement phone.

 

[sitagasuma]

I just bought the phone 2 weeks back and I cannot think of getting new phone. If usb wifi adapter doesn't work why otg to lan/ethernet doesn't work either? is this mechanism somewhat related to my wifi chips too? I think at least otg to ethernet cable shall give me the working internet isn't it?

 

[mikedt]

The USB WiFi requires drivers from its manufacturer, which are NOT in the OnePlus 3 OxygenOS firmware, so the phone will not recognize it. To get it working a custom ROM would need to be specially built for your OP3 that includes the Linux kernel drivers that are required for the USB WiFi adaptor, that's it. Do you know any ROM devs that are familiar with OP?

Any chance of you shipping it to OnePlus in China or India for a repair quote? Although might be as much as the whole phone is worth.

 

[sitagasuma]

Yeah not possible. so basically using wifi again in my mobile is shattered. How sad

 

[efflandt]

Even though Android is based on Linux, the phone expects to have built-in WiFi or mobile data, so besides not having drivers for WiFi dongles that normally work in Linux, it does not have drivers for USB to Ethernet adapters which normally work in Linux, even on a Raspberry Pi which uses an ARM CPU, but not Android. Tried that, USB to Ethernet that automatically works in Linux, does not work on my Samsung J7.

OTG is most useful for dongles for wireless keyboard/mousepad/mouse or things like Plantronics headset or other headsets which are similar to Bluetooth even if proprietary (like Logitech Unifying receiver which works for input devices). I have not tried seeing if OTG supports regular USB Bluetooth dongles because Bluetooth built into my phone works.

 

[sitagasuma]

Even though Android is based on Linux, the phone expects to have built-in WiFi or mobile data, so besides not having drivers for WiFi dongles that normally work in Linux, it does not have drivers for USB to Ethernet adapters which normally work in Linux, even on a Raspberry Pi which uses an ARM CPU, but not Android. Tried that, USB to Ethernet that automatically works in Linux, does not work on my Samsung J7.

OTG is most useful for dongles for wireless keyboard/mousepad/mouse or things like Plantronics headset or other headsets which are similar to Bluetooth even if proprietary (like Logitech Unifying receiver which works for input devices). I have not tried seeing if OTG supports regular USB Bluetooth dongles because Bluetooth built into my phone works.

But usb to ethernet is supposed to work isn't it?

 

[Dannydet]

No

 

[efflandt]

I believe it is a matter of Android not including drivers for Ethernet devices (in this case "asix" module), but I do not know path to Android modules. Or maybe power from OTG on a phone is limited to low power devices (like 100 mA vs. 500 mA that USB normally supplies). In any case the link LED on my USB/Ethernet adapter does not even light up when connected to my J7 and Ethernet (no link) even though Linux would normally recognize it.

These are details about Sabrent USB/Ethernet adapter in Linux, from "lshw" (only uses 200 mA):

*-usb:1
description: Generic USB device
product: AX88772B
vendor: ASIX Electronics Corp.
physical id: 4
bus info: usb@2:1.4
version: 0.01
serial: 000C01
capabilities: usb-2.00
configuration: driver=asix maxpower=200mA speed=480Mbit/s

Which farther down says this while Ethernet is not connected:

*-network
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 1
logical name: enx000000000f1d
serial: 00:00:00:00:0f:1d
size: 10Mbit/s
capacity: 100Mbit/s
capabilities: ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=asix driverversion=22-Dec-2011 duplex=half firmware=ASIX AX88772B USB 2.0 Ethernet link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s

And it shows up in "ifconfig" (no IP since it is not connected), Ubuntu now uses strange labels instead of eth0, eth1, etc:

enx000000000f1d: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether 00:00:00:00:0f:1d txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

On my J7 phone nothing is added to ifconfig if the USB/Ethernet adapter is connected through OTG (it remains rmnet1, lo, wlan0, p2p0). I am guessing that rmnet1 is mobile data, lo of course is loopback, wlan0 is WiFi, maybe p2p0 is USB tethering for providing network to a computer. But no e anything for Ethernet.