Eli5:Why is it that cell phones , with their tiny antenaes are able to download files at LTE speeds inside concrete buildings from cell towers kilometers away yet getting wifi to work behind a corner is an exercise in frustration?
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3 main reasons:
1) you are comparing a use case (wifi) with two small devices with relatively bad antennas transmitting in all directions at low power with another case (4G) where on one side you still have the bad device, but on the other side you have a very effective antenna, transmitting just over a narrow angle and at a power orders of magnitude higher. Obviously the second case works better.
2) 4G frequency is usually lower than the WiFi frequency. And the lower the frequency, the better it travels through stuff. The drawback is that the lower it is, the less data you can transmit (yes, I know, that sentence is almost wrong, it has a lot of shortcuts).
3) 4G frequencies are used by a handful of actors with properly dedicated frequencies so it is usually a fairly clean environment. On the other hand, the WiFi frequency is basically a free for all with anyone being able to transmit over it (under specific conditions of course). This means you would have a lot more devices trying to talk over each other. Your phone is talking to your router but your neighbours phone talking to their router is also using the same frequency and everyone have to share it. There are WiFi mechanisms for this but if it gets too crowdy, then it impacts the speed.
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