In the last few days I’ve been increasing interested in the WiFi capabilities of my phone. I’ve been pretty satisfied with the 3G network and I’ve not really felt the need for WiFi because of that. I don’t do a huge amount of data transfer either, mainly email and RSS feeds, with light web use.
But, I’m starting to realize that my Motorola Droid does have some weird WiFi issues.
The issues are so bad actually, that I was initially convinced that WiFi was disabled or blocked by my provider.
I’ve since learned that isn’t the case.
When I first got my Droid a couple months ago, one of the first things I tried to do was to connect to my secured WiFi network at home.
After selecting my network and inputting my password, I was able to connect to my network just fine. It looked like I was connected to the Internet through the WiFi and the signal was strong. But any apps that use the Internet seemed like they didn’t have Internet access. My browser couldn’t load anything, my email no longer worked, and basically it just seemed like the phone wasn’t connected to the Internet, even though my WiFi connection looked fine.
Oh well, I thought, my provider must be blocking WiFi on my phone so that I am forced to use their 3G network. That is what I actually thought for a while.
DroidMod made it work for a couple days…
The next turning point for me was when I installed DroidMod a few days ago. Instantly after installing DroidMod I noticed that my WiFi actually worked! I connected to my home network just fine. I was able to connect to the secured network at work the next day just fine. I was able to connect to the WiFi at Atomic Coffee just fine. And while connected I was also able to actually browse the Internet and get my email!
Hmmm… what the hell does this mean? I initially thought that hacking my phone unlocked the WiFi capabilities. However I’m thinking that I’m still incorrect on this.
The WiFi should have been working from the start anyways, based on what I’m reading on the Internet.
Now today…
I grabbed my Droid after I woke up this morning to check email and noticed that my phone has not had Internet access since I left Atomic Coffee at about 7:30pm last night.
Hmmm… Atomic Coffee’s network is unsecured, and my work/home networks are secured – it appears that yesterday my Droid decided that it didn’t want the Internet to work on any secured WiFi networks that I’m connected to.
I’m going to go back over to Atomic Coffee today to see if I’m able to get on the Internet on that unsecured network, now that no secured networks work on my Droid anymore.
Annoying
The annoying thing is that my Droid is still able to connect to the secured networks just fine, but then it can’t transfer any data over those networks.
This is annoying because if I have the WiFi turned on it will connect to the secured networks, turn off the 3G, and basically leave me without any data connection, even though it looks like it’s connected.
In the meantime I’ll have to turn off the WiFi and just use the 3G 100% of the time but this is rather frustrating as WiFi is one of the reasons I bought this thing.
I just started having the same problem. Official 2.1 update. Not sure where the problem lies, it looks like it’s connected, but never any usable data connection.
Have you figured out any solutions?
Thanks
You know, I actually still haven’t figured this out and have actually just kinda given up on it, unfortunately
My droid won’t connect at all to my home network i have it encrypted with WPA/WPA-2 and it won’t connect at all after i entter my password it will however accept non secure networks so i am able to browse on a non secured router so i thought about setting up my laptop as a WAP no password and guess what..it worked fin i set up a pass no go! so i had to disable the pass to my WAP on my laptop
When connected to WiFi I cannot use email but can browse the net. Any ideas?
Hmm, this is actually something that I’ve not run into – it seems like when my wifi works, all my Internet related stuff works, and when it doesn’t nothing does
Recently I loaded a different ROM onto my Droid called Bugless Beast and ever since I’ve loaded this, I’ve had no wifi problems. I know it’s not the most convenient thing, to hack a droid and load a new ROM, but it appears to be working fine on my phone now with Bugless Beast 1.1