Slow WiFi 2.4 GHz

I figured out a problem with the WiFi of the FP3. It is half the speed of my PC even on the exact same WiFi and on the same spot. Sometimes it even feels like it is not connected at all. (Interrupted Videos, not loading images, …)
Is it a known problem?

Which modem do you have?

Welcome to the community forum.

There were some reports about several issues with WiFi, and several workarounds, mostly in router settings … even if I think 5 GHz was more affected than 2.4 GHz until now. Anyway …

https://forum.fairphone.com/search?q=fp3%20wifi

2 Likes

It was with every WiFi. Independent of the modem. With 5 GHz it is a bit better. But still slower than with the PC.
It has also no connection issue. It is without problems and stable. It is just very slow.

Any firewall or antivirus App installed perhaps?

Bitdefender on my phone. No firewall. Only my router.

I just remembered safe mode, which would be a better thing to try first to see whether any App is the culprit before going for Apps one by one …

1 Like

How did you test this? Is the problem latency or throughput?

I tested with https://www.speedtest.net/
Ping seems OK. It is mainly the throughput.
Even that much, that videos stop to stream or games tell that they lost connection.

1 Like

Hi,
Anybody found a solution for this?
I have the same issue, WiFi is at 1.5 Mbs when on 2.4 GHz , 22 Mbs when on 5Ghz, 97Mbs on my computer…
I’m connected through ubiqiiti ap.
Videos stop and takes age to load when in 2ghz.
Connection drop and reconnect very often (in the same place as a Samsung a5 phone, my fp3 disconnected from the wifi 6 times in 30 minutes this morning while 0 for the Samsung.)

FYI: The January Update is getting rolled out, and the changelog says “WiFi connection problems” have been adressed…

1 Like

Yes I already got the update. I’ll check if it’s better

I have the Same Problems. Very slow WiFi. I dont have any Idea what to do.
But that Phone makes No Fun…

I think, we have some interference between bluetooth and WiFi (2.4GHz) frequencies here.

Source Wikipedia:
Bluetooth : 2,402 GHz - 2,480 GHz
WiFi : 2,400 GHz - 2,484 GHz

Some observations:

1. Direct in front of my Fritzbox 7490 I connected my FP3 to my WiFi and measured the speed of my internet connection:
WiFi 2.4 GHz: 48Mbps download / 4 upload / ping 32
WiFi 5 GHz: 48Mbps download rate / 4 upload / ping 32

This is what I usually get from my provider.

2. Now additionally I connected my FP3 via bluetooth to my Bose Soundlink Mini, without playback.
Again:
WiFi 2.4 GHz: 48Mbps download / 4 upload / ping 32
WiFi 5 GHz: 48Mbps download rate / 4 upload / ping 32

Nice.

3. And finally I let my FP3 play a local song from sdcard through bluetooth and repeated the speed measurement.

WiFi 2.4 GHz: 7Mbps download / 4 upload / ping 32-66
WiFi 5 GHz: 48Mbps download rate / 4 upload / ping 32

All values are rounded to the nearest integer.

This was just a quick experiment out of curiosity with a fast conclusion but does this apply to the use cases of those having WiFi problems in this thread?

PS:
The FP3 seems no individual case. I just repeated this measurement with my Xperia Z Ultra under identical conditions with equal results.

PPS:
Further testing revealed the same happening to a Huawei Mate 9.

It seems as if this bandwidth decrease occurs only, if you use WiFi 2.4 GHz and bluetooth playback on the same device.
If you use different devices for each, they don’t influence each other, even if they are side by side.
So it maybe a general weakness of the hardware or software implementation.

8 Likes

Bluetooth and WiFi 2.4 GHz only have interference when people -out of ignorance) use different frequencies than 1, 6, and 11.

I notice interference on Amsterdam CS and Utrecht CS with my bluetooth connection. Everywhere else, it generally works. Not sure what’s up (apart from bluetooth stack being vulnerable to remote RCE).

Some month later, here is an update of my case: I’m running wifi only with 5ghz band now, because the 2.4 is not working fine as soon as the Bluetooth is on.
I own a smartwatch so there is always a bluetooth device connected to the phone…
When I’m using WiFi 2.4 I cannot get more than 3mbs
If I switch to 5 I’m at more than 30mbs at the same place.

Some tests:
Wifi2.4 + bluetooth on:

Wifi2.4 + bluetooth OFF

Wifi5 + bluetooth on

Very disappointed… How can the engineer missed this problem?
So I’m with 5ghz all the time, and sometime it’s not very convenient.’’

I have the same problem on my Fairphone 3. Ithink I figured out the root cause, which in my case was the withings health mate app, which connects to my Withings Steel HR. As soon as this app is installed, I experience the same drop in WiFi 2.4 speed as you described, WiFi 5 also not affected. Uninstalling that app brought back full WiFi speed. However, I installed a WiFi selector app, which keeps switching to WiFi 5 whenever possible, so I can use both the phone and SmartWatch.

1 Like

It’s not just healt mate.

Any app that keep a bluetooth connection with anything will give the same result.

As soon as you use bluetooth, it create interferences with wifi in 2.4ghz bands.

So forget using bluetooth or forget using 2.4g wifi.
In my case I disabled the wifi 2.4 in settings and I only connect to 5ghz wifi
It’s an ok solution for home or work. But it’s painfull with public WiFi

1 Like

I only use 2.4 on my router and I get 40MB which is the max and same on my various computers. I can confirm the speed drops below 20Mb when simultaneously transferring an image via bluetooth.

If you are referring to interference as a physical phenomenon, that doesn’t seem to be the problem here. With my BT headset connected and health mate killed, I still reach >40 Mbps. Also in that case, any other phone would have the same problem, which is also not the case. I assume that BT and 2.4 WiFi share the same piece of HW and some apps are prioritized in a way that WiFi is no longer usable. That should be solvable on OS side I guess.