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Problems when mobile phone is connected to wifi

FIXED
VictoriaIceni
Grafter
Posts: 60
Thanks: 6
Registered: ‎29-01-2011

Problems when mobile phone is connected to wifi

I have a Hub Zero router, which was new last month(it solved most of the wireless issues I began to have with my previous Hub Zero) and all is fine with connecting with my laptop via wifi. Using an extender too. I only use wifi, never ethernet.

At one time I can stream content via my blu ray player(Amazon or BBC iplayer etc), while looking at things on my laptop with no effect to either. I can also use my tablet at the same time as my laptop and there's no problem.

 

I don't often use my home wifi for my Moto G5 mobile phone, but the past few days when I have to check email, I've found the internet very slow and pictures not loading. It might have been sluggish before and I didn't notice, only today my tablet wasn't charged and I thought I'd try my phone to read my email.

Today I did a few tests after my phone was slow again, so on my laptop I used Speedtest, (I couldn't get the page to load on my phone to test from that device itself.) It was really slow, with a ping of 500ms - 700ms. I turned the wifi off on my phone and tried speedtest again on the laptop and it was fine and back to speed and only 15ms - 20ms ping as normal. So I experimented with performing the test when my phone was connected and not, and during a really slow test on my laptop I then turned off my wifi on the phone and the needle flew up and it was back to speed. Despite not having done anything on the phone other than have it connected.

I restarted my phone, made no difference. I restarted my router from the router page, which made no difference either. I've tried both the extender SSID access and direct to the router with the same result. What is it about my Moto G5 that completely melts down my entire internet connection when it's connected? I have data saver on, so no unnecessary background data is in use when I'm on wifi. I always close down all tabs that are not in use too.

As I said, I rarely use my phone for the internet, as I'm around the house most of the day(I'm disabled), so use my laptop or tablet, and I could easily manage on my data allowance to only use it on 4G instead, but I'm just curious how other devices can be logged on at the same time without seeming to affect my internet, but my little Moto G5 grinds everything to a halt? The phone works on 4G, so it's not like it's struggling to deal with internet content.

 

I'd like to know what I could try to do to improve it, in case any family staying want to connect, but end up with either too slow internet on their phones or completely slowing everything else in the house. I'm not that technical-minded, so jargon-free suggestions would be most helpful. Maybe it's a quirk of the new router I have? As I don't remember problems when I first got this phone back in March.

I should also mention that I turned everything off and tried to connect just my phone and it went just as slow and was hardly fast enough to check my email.

4 REPLIES 4
mikelahey
Pro
Posts: 236
Thanks: 88
Fixes: 12
Registered: ‎24-11-2015

Re: Problems when mobile phone is connected to wifi

I see you're using a Moto G5 which is and Android phone if I recall correctly.

Android phones default setting is to automatically download app updates when connected to WiFi which may explain the slow connection when the phone is connected, go to the Play store app and press the menu (three horizontal bars) icon in the top left and select my apps and games from the menu, it will show you there if any apps currently updating.

You can turn auto updates off by clicking on the menu icon and selecting "Settings" which has a cog next to it From the settings menu select auto update apps and set it to "Do not auto update apps"

The other thing it could be doing is downloading an Android update from Motorola which would be quite large.  Select the cog (Settings) item from the Android system tray, and find the System Updates menu item (its 2nd from bottom on my phone but its not a Motorola so you yours may be different. This will tell you if its downloading an Android system update.

If you're on a slow ADSL connection the updates could kill the connection for everything else.

MisterW
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 14,575
Thanks: 5,411
Fixes: 385
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Problems when mobile phone is connected to wifi

Fix

I have data saver on, so no unnecessary background data is in use when I'm on wifi

AFAIK Data saver will only restrict background data when using mobile data( 3/4g ). So if your phone is not connected to wifi very often, then when it does connect it is either downloading lots of queued updates or ( more likely to cause problems ) is synching/backing up your data to your google account. Check your sync settings on your phone

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

VictoriaIceni
Grafter
Posts: 60
Thanks: 6
Registered: ‎29-01-2011

Re: Problems when mobile phone is connected to wifi

Thanks for your suggestions. Thumbs_Up

I'll look into the syncing and updates and go through all those settings and see if that improves.

I haven't got automatic updates on, as I've always preferred to check manually and update that way. But I'll definitely look into syncing. 

VictoriaIceni
Grafter
Posts: 60
Thanks: 6
Registered: ‎29-01-2011

Re: Problems when mobile phone is connected to wifi

Looks like it was syncing causing the problem. I turned off some of the unnecessary google syncs that I don't even use and everything went back to normal. I'll probably sync each one, but one at a time for the ones I need.

Thanks. Thumbs_Up