Why are phones' browsing/streaming so slow?

[ChristopherV]

A couple weeks ago, an issue popped up. In my household, there are four Samsung devices (S4, S5 and two S6's) that have been having a web browsing/streaming problems. When connected to the home Wifi, web browsing and streaming apps (Netflix/Hulu) are extremely slow. On my S4, Netflix is not even able to connect. It takes several attempts to get Netflix to connect with the S5. Web browsing on all phones crawl. Just to load yahoo.com with the standard Android web browser, it takes 30-60 seconds to load. However, when a speed test was done (Ookla) on each device, download speeds were hitting 41 mps. Tried restarting phones, restarting modem, restarting both at the same time, clearing phone caches, but nothing worked.

I started thinking the modem was the issue. So, today I went to the Comcast store and got a brand new dual band modem/router and service plan with speeds up to 75mps. Got home and set it all up, happy that I was going to be rid of the problem, or so I thought. Still the same problem. Ookla speed test app is showing Wifi download speeds of 90mps.

This makes no sense. There was never a problem until a couple weeks ago, and now FOUR DIFFERENT Galaxy devices can barely browse the internet. Got brand new modem equipment with very fast speeds and zero improvement. How can the speed tests show 90 mps download yet we're lucky to load the simplest web page? Something feels very strange about this, but I don't care. I just want to know how to get the phones to be able to browse the web and use apps like normal again.

 

[SpookDroid]

Do you have any laptops or smart TV or non-Galaxy devices on your network? Do they work properly or do they show the same issue? Are you using any proxies/VPNs? Have you tried different browsers? Do they all do the same?

 

[ChristopherV]

We have a PC, laptop and Chromecast all connected to the wireless network, and they all work fine. There is an XBOX One connected by ethernet. Different browsers on the phones all have the same results. I am not entirely sure if I am using a proxy or VPN, but after some googling it seems that a proxy or VPN is something that has to be set up manually, which I know I have not done.

 

[SpookDroid]

It can be set up by apps, too, but usually there's an explicit request to change network settings. Was anything updated on the phones when this started happening? Have you tried any other MOBILE devices? It's still weird that it's only affecting your phones, though.

Can you please try to boot any of them in Safe Mode and see if the browsing issue persists?