Why can my laptop pick up my WiFi very well, but my phone, on the same desk, hardly connect at all?
In: Technology
One might be hardware or software issue of the phone. Not an expert on this field.
Two: WiFi signals are a weird thing. Your router will send out the signal. Everything that contains water will absorb this signal. Everything that is metal will reflect this signal. This results in WiFi being unpredictable. So moving you’re router a meter can result in some places in your houses getting better reception, and other places receiving less. It could be that your laptop is sitting in the sweet spot, where it receives signal from a reflection of metal (like a mirror), and your cell phone is on a dead spot.
Three: different router on same WiFi name can also result in a bad signal. WiFi is devided in 5 bandwidth channels, lets call them lanes. To send to devices, WiFi uses all five lanes to send cars, aka packets, up and down to different receivers. Each car containing part of the message. WiFi works with collision avoidance. Meaning it will check if no cars are driving on the lanes, and when it’s clear, it will send a message to all devices using the lanes to stop sending cars onto the lanes, until he sent his package. What can happen is that two WiFi signals share let’s say 3 out of 5 lanes. But if they don’t share all the lanes, they cannot know what signal other device is receiving or sending, resulting in both sending cars continues. This will result in collisions, resulting in having bad internet. We tested this at uni, and while having a good 10Mb/s speed when sharing all 5 lanes, it dropped to 0.1 Mb/s by just sharing 4/5 lanes. Moral of the story, either share all 5 lanes, or don’t use the same lanes at all.
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