With unlimited data, why should I even use wifi with an LTE phone?

[JasW]

I'm grandfathered into an unlimited data plan on my Note 2, and I've stopped using wifi anywhere outside of my home -- it's always much MUCH slower than the LTE connection. Most wifi hotspots (like the AT&T ones at McDonalds or Starbucks) are about 2 Mbps or so. When I was in a McDonalds over the weekend, I clocked their wifi with Speed Test at just a little over 2 Mbps. Then I turned off wifi and clocked my LTE connection. It hit 29 Mbps (I forget what the upload was, but it was up there, too). I get similar speeds at home (though not in my office, where I have a 2-3 bar connection and it rarely gets above 12-14 Mbps).

I get 25 Mbps on my hardwired computer at home, and similar speeds over wifi as long as I'm very close to my router or one of the two Powerline hotspots. Otherwise, I get speeds of around 15Mbps over wifi, though I still get well over 20 Mbps minimum over LTE no matter where I am in my house. Which leads me to ask: why should I even use wifi? The only reason I still do at home is that, for some reason, when I stream a movie from my computer to the Plex app on my phone, the video quality is better over wifi.

Has anyone else with unlimited data and an LTE phone just turned off their wifi permanently?

 

[umpirerob]

Battery life is the only reason I use Wifi at home.

Sent from my HTC Mecha with 4.0.4 (Finally!) using Tapatalk.

 

[androidluvr2]

Has anyone else with unlimited data and an LTE phone just turned off their wifi permanently?

Me, but I turn it on if I can't get a 4G LTE signal.

 

[sting7k]

I'm grandfathered into an unlimited data plan on my Note 2, and I've stopped using wifi anywhere outside of my home -- it's always much MUCH slower than the LTE connection. Most wifi hotspots (like the AT&T ones at McDonalds or Starbucks) are about 2 Mbps or so. When I was in a McDonalds over the weekend, I clocked their wifi with Speed Test at just a little over 2 Mbps. Then I turned off wifi and clocked my LTE connection. It hit 29 Mbps (I forget what the upload was, but it was up there, too). I get similar speeds at home (though not in my office, where I have a 2-3 bar connection and it rarely gets above 12-14 Mbps).

I get 25 Mbps on my hardwired computer at home, and similar speeds over wifi as long as I'm very close to my router or one of the two Powerline hotspots. Otherwise, I get speeds of around 15Mbps over wifi, though I still get well over 20 Mbps minimum over LTE no matter where I am in my house. Which leads me to ask: why should I even use wifi? The only reason I still do at home is that, for some reason, when I stream a movie from my computer to the Plex app on my phone, the video quality is better over wifi.

Has anyone else with unlimited data and an LTE phone just turned off their wifi permanently?

I actually keep LTE off because I find HSPA+ to be plenty fast to save battery, same reason for using wifi. LTE eats up battery fast.

Also "unlimited" is not really unlimited. AT&T may throttle you after 5GB of LTE usage.

 

[Jaguarr40]

Battery life is the only reason I use Wifi at home.

Sent from my HTC Mecha with 4.0.4 (Finally!) using Tapatalk.

Same here not to mention that if you do have unlimited there is no reason for WIFI except for a faster connection, That is what I use it for at home and work and to save data.

 

[KJ78]

I leave wifi on. It helps determine your location without gps and, being grandfathered into unltd data, I don't want to motivate Vz to find a way out of this nice perk for me.