Help Wi-Fi Range??

[Tucker1987]

So I have noticed that my laptop will pick up on a WiFi router from at least 75ft away and come back with decent siganl stregnth whereas my Droid Eris can be about 20 ft away and get one bar. Is there anyway to turn up the sesitivity in the phone so I can get a better signal from routers at school and in my home??

 

[offanairplane]

So I have noticed that my laptop will pick up on a WiFi router from at least 75ft away and come back with decent siganl stregnth whereas my Droid Eris can be about 20 ft away and get one bar. Is there anyway to turn up the sesitivity in the phone so I can get a better signal from routers at school and in my home??

+1

I've noticed the same thing. My wireless router is in my bedroom, and even in the bathroom it barely has a signal. While my laptop is on the other side of the house, and it picks up just fine.

 

[Tucker1987]

Any idea if there is a update or somethin or better software???

 

[doogald]

As far as I know, no.

You may want to avoid going by "bars", for which there is not standard, and instead use something like the app WiFi Analyzer to determine what your signal strength is. If you can get a signal that is better than -85 dBm or so (at the risk of stating the obvious, less negative is better), you should have a good enough signal to have a good connection.

There's no doubt that the Eris does not have a great radio, but I can get a good signal within 75 feet of my house when I am outdoors, and that's not terrible. I actually have not even tried to determine if I can get further; it's possible that I could. Even if you can get something that increases the sensitivity of the radio, the problem will be that you will also be increasing the sensitivity to noise, so your signal could get marginally better, be the same, or even marginally worse.

 

[bberryhill0]

I have to ask. Does the poor signal slow down the connection?

 

[offanairplane]

As far as I know, no.

You may want to avoid going by "bars", for which there is not standard, and instead use something like the app WiFi Analyzer to determine what your signal strength is. If you can get a signal that is better than -85 dBm or so (at the risk of stating the obvious, less negative is better), you should have a good enough signal to have a good connection.

There's no doubt that the Eris does not have a great radio, but I can get a good signal within 75 feet of my house when I am outdoors, and that's not terrible. I actually have not even tried to determine if I can get further; it's possible that I could. Even if you can get something that increases the sensitivity of the radio, the problem will be that you will also be increasing the sensitivity to noise, so your signal could get marginally better, be the same, or even marginally worse.

Maybe your router has a stronger transmitter than ours, because there is no way I can get mine to connect outside of my house. I am using the one AT&T provided me with DSL service.

And I get what you're saying about no standard for how many dbm 2 bars equals, or 3 bars, etc. But still and all I would think it's a percentage. And zero bars is a weak signal and 4 bars is a solid signal.
In my living room, I go from 1 bar to 0 bars back and forth, and it takes forever for a web page to load when that happens, I believe because it's switching back and forth between 3g and wifi. And it never stays on one or the other. In that situation I can disable wifi, and pages load much faster, even though my 3g signal isn't great.

 

[doogald]

It's probably the router. You can get an inexpensive wireless g router for not that much and get much better coverage, and use that for WiFi rather than the DSL modem/router.

 

[offanairplane]

It's probably the router. You can get an inexpensive wireless g router for not that much and get much better coverage, and use that for WiFi rather than the DSL modem/router.

I actually already have one, but I haven't set it up.
What advantages does running on wifi have over 3g? Does it save battery? Is it faster?

 

[doogald]

In my experience, WiFi uses less battery. Quite a lot less. WiFi and 3G throughput depends a lot on distance from the tower and access point, but usually with WiFi the Eris can get faster and more reliable transmission with WiFi than with 3G, though there may be areas where your proximity to a 3G tower gives you about the same.

Where I live, I have terrible 3G service, so I use WiFi almost exclusively for data. However, if I leave the house (so connect to 3G for data), my phone's battery will drain much faster than when I am using WiFi.

If you really want to try it, send me a private message and I can walk you through some steps via email. I may be off and on over the next few days, but I'm sure that I can walk you through it to see if it works better for you.

 

[offanairplane]

In my experience, WiFi uses less battery. Quite a lot less. WiFi and 3G throughput depends a lot on distance from the tower and access point, but usually with WiFi the Eris can get faster and more reliable transmission with WiFi than with 3G, though there may be areas where your proximity to a 3G tower gives you about the same.

Where I live, I have terrible 3G service, so I use WiFi almost exclusively for data. However, if I leave the house (so connect to 3G for data), my phone's battery will drain much faster than when I am using WiFi.

If you really want to try it, send me a private message and I can walk you through some steps via email. I may be off and on over the next few days, but I'm sure that I can walk you through it to see if it works better for you.

The only thing I am not sure about is my AT&T router is password protected, and so I'd have to setup my Netgear wifi router with that password. Not sure how to do that.
Or would my Netgear router just re-broadcast (for lack of a better word) my AT&T router's signal, and I would just login to the Netgear router from my Eris using the same password?

But if what you are saying is really true, then I definitely would like my phone to have a solid wifi connection at home. Especially when I hook up my phone to my home theater reciever and listen to Pandora.

 

[Tucker1987]

I have to ask. Does the poor signal slow down the connection?

Quite a bit yes I always use WiFi the 3ğ for Verizon is crap here and I'm gettin much faster speed the stronger my connecton to my router is .. which is broadband BTW its jus wen I'm more than like 20 ft away then it slows to halt

 

[Deleted User]

Does anybody know what's the wi-fi signal range for Android?

I have the same problem with "Tucker1987". In my case, I'm in the office. Since I'm far from the WAP, I get poor signal on my laptop but good enough for browsing the web and for e-mail. However, my Android phone has no signal at all.