For OG moto droid owners: Do you leave wifi on all the time & does it stay connected?

[Western_Son]

Since I've had my droid (nov 6) my wifi has always stopped working after awhile and I need to turn it off and use 3g or 1x to connect. Some time later I can turn it back on and it will connect and be useful again.

Now with the Froyo update the situation has gotten worse. After talking with other friends about their droid experience they all say wifi works fine for them and they never really turn it off (especially for connection problems). I have to do this several times a day if I'm trying to do lots of internet stuff over wifi.

So how does your wifi work? Always ON and connected when available or do you have to futz with it whenever you want to use it. I'm thinking the latter is not the majority situation. Wondering if I should get a warranty replacement before they are all gone.

Just to clarify that my problems are with all the wifi routers I connect to. Some are open and some are encrypted. All perform the same. For 5 or ten minutes it will be fine and then I get "page is not available" and "connection error" type messages from apps and browsers. 3g always works when available.

[bikedogrun]

I think you need to exchange your phone, I've never seen any of those issues. My WiFi does stay on all the time and never has lost its connection.

/BD

[klguffey]

I've seen these same issues you mentioned. Wifi will work fine for a few minutes, or even longer, then I'll just start getting webpages not loading and connections unavailable in apps, etc. Have to turn the wifi off and then things start working again.

I've had them on two different Droids, one from the launch weekend and one from January or February when the first one croaked for some reason. I've seen them do it on three different routers from three different companies (dlink, linksys and netgear) at two different places. Only common thing I think is that they're all setup for WPA2. I'm inclined to think that might be part of the issue because it worked great for a week on my father's FIOS router running only WEP earlier in the year. But that's just a hunch. I just got a new Netgear router this past weekend and hoped it would work better and it seemed to for a day, but then it started acting up again.

If you read here:
https://supportforums.motorola.com/t...16191?tstart=0
you'll find lots of people with similar problems, but last I looked there was no consensus about the cause or a fix. I figured it was something that probably was unfixable and was never admitted to, but maybe newer phones had it fixed somehow. In fact, I opened a ticket with Motorola about it way back when. Their response was to resolve my ticket because there was no problem with the wifi in the droid, and for me to try a different router, even though I had no problems at all with four different laptops, a wireless desktop card and a Wii.

As long as the 3g is unlimited I've not minded it enough to bother trying another replacement phone and risking getting some other sort of problem.

[Western_Son]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. I skimmed the linked thread and the problems I read about were mostly about people who could not get a connection at all without all kinds of hoops being jumped through. I can connect any time I turn on wifi, the problem is that after awhile which can be minutes to a half hour or more it will lose the ability to access the web even though it says it's connected. I happens often to a live connection where I am browsing a site reading something and then I click a link and it wont open another page till I turn off wifi and let 3g take over again.

It wouldn't be that big of a deal to me but my 3g at home is only one bar and that depends on where I am in the house. Sometimes I up/down-load large files to my server on my droid and it takes a long time via 3g.

Maybe I will call vzw this week when I have the time and talk to a CSR.

Thanks.

[Icyhot1966]

I have no such issues with my Droid and WIFI is on constantly. My home router is WEP but my Palm is set up WPA2 and it stays connected to my Palm the entire time I am at work. When I get home and turn the mobile hotspot function on my Palm off, my Droid switches over to my home network without me having to do anything else.

[klguffey]

Maybe I will call vzw this week when I have the time and talk to a CSR.

If you do, I'd be interested in hearing the results of that and if you see any improvement if you get a replacement.

take care

[briareus]

On all the time and no problems here.

[matrix2004]

There is an app that keeps your WI-FI on all the time. This was designed for when the screen goes dark and the WI-FI turns off. I'm not sure if this is the way it normally works otherwise why would someone make this app? I have this app but don't use WI-FI that much so i don't use it and i haven't noticed if my WI-FI shuts off when the screen goes dark. The app is called 'WI-FI Keep Alive' and its free.

[tbower]

There is no need to install a separate app to keep wifi on. In the wifi setting menu, touch the menu button, and then advanced. You can then set your wifi sleep policy.

My wifi gets a littlr weird sometimes, dropping the connection, connecting and then disconnecting and then reconnecting again. I find that if I change the channel that my router is transmitting on, it clears up. I use the wifi analyzer app to see if there are any other routers nearby that are occupying the same frequency, and thus confusing my phone.

Hope it helps.

[Western_Son]

By "on all the time" I mean that the wifi setting is ON but not specifically operating outside the default parameters of having the wifi turned on. If there is power management that turns it off when the phone is not in use and that is normal operation then that's what I want to know about. I don't want something that will keep the wifi on and draining my battery by constantly pinging the router or something.

I know two people with droids that keep their wifi setting turned ON all the time and the never have problems with dropping the connection when they are in range of the router. They say they never mess with it and it always works fine for them.

I use the google news and weather widget and I can usually read news stories for about 10 minutes and then I start having problems with pages being unavailable. If I turn the wifi off then then on again it will not restore the connection even though the wifi indicator icon is visible. It just keeps saying "obtaining ip address" or something like that when I check the wifi settings. Meanwhile my gf is browsing on her laptop or ipad without any service interruption. I've had this experience with every router I use regularly with all applications that use the internet; Youtube, AndFTP, xScope, Facebook, they all stop working after awhile.

The wifi also never resets itself in the sense that once it stops working it will never recover without intervention on my part. I have to turn off wifi for awhile and then it might work the next time I turn it on without having to power cycle my phone.

With all that said, it works fine when it works. That's why I've gone so long with it like that. It's only been recently that I've seen other Droid's with wifi that works without issue. What was once seen as a feature is now looking like a bug in my phone.

Calling support now... what the heck!

[Western_Son]

So I called and got up to tier 2 support. I described in as much detail as possible the issue I've had with the phone. They suggested changing a parameter in "Wi-fi Settings" to "never sleep" and a system reset. I did the former and said I would wait to do the latter until after some time to observe any difference in performance.

I will try a system reset after the weekend and make notes about the experience. The only time I've ever done that was when I was in a weak 3g area and with no wifi and it made getting all my apps and data refreshed a big pain. I will make sure I'm at home and with 3g and wifi access when I do it again. I will have to go through the same thing if I get a replacement droid so the practice will be good.

The support technician did say that he suspected that there might be a hardware issue with the wifi chipset but that we should at least try these two things first (sleep setting and reset). For this first call it could not have been a more pleasant, professional experience.

[nitrous9200]

I leave it on without thinking about it and as I go from home to office or vice versa, it drops the first one as I drive to the destination and it connects without me noticing. Both are WPA2, home is wireless-G and office is a wireless-N. Running Froyo. I know it doesn't help your problem much but I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring. IF you've reset and upgraded software and all of that, it must be a hardware issue.

[Western_Son]

Just got off the phone with a verizon TSR and I will be receiving a new droid in the next couple days. I hope this one has better wifi. It was pretty simple other then the fact that it took a phone reset to prove it was a consistent problem. If you have troublesome wifi I say get it replaced.

He did say the new phone would come sans battery, back and sd card. I was kind of hoping for a new battery just because a fresh one would be nice. My current one is just fine though.

Cheers.

[bcromwell]

If replacing doesn't work, I had the same issues using stock rom and rooted stock rom. For what ever reason ever since I loaded liquid frozen yogurt rom wifi works perfectly.

[Western_Son]

Holy ****! third time I've tried posting this.

Got a new phone. It worked better but not perfect. Still dropped wifi on any router I connected to. Updated the router firmware at home and suddenly it and all other routers I use are working perfectly. Wifi stays on all the time. Battery life is noticeably improved. Received phone on a friday. Three days of wonky but improved connections. Monday I updated the router firmware and all has been perfect since.

Weird. New droid has raised keys.