Before I got my Note 4, I had a Note 2 on AT&T and I still have it. Comparing the Wi-Fi performance between the two phones, I noticed how much weaker the Wi-Fi performance of the Note 4 is. I did a series of speed tests, and I was able to confirm that the Note 2 definitely had a better Wi-Fi chip than the Note 4.
I live in a 6-floor university dorm that has one router on the 2nd floor. But I can get a signal in my room on my phones, both of which get anywhere from 1-3 bars of Wi-Fi when I'm in my room. I get around the same speeds when I'm standing right under the router (the Note 2 still outperforms the Note 4). Download speeds on the campus network these days ranged anywhere from 0.8 to 16 mbps. I kid you not; speeds were very inconsistent even when doing speed tests on both phones. (Upload speeds were blazingly fast on both phones.)
In real-world testing, I have tested streaming two YouTube videos (1 short and 1 long) and downloading a large app (~700 MB) from the Play Store. They are streaming the same videos and downloading the same app. And this is where things take a weird turn:
Directly under the router, the Note 4 buffers the videos much quicker than the Note 2, but it downloads the app slower. The opposite is true for the Note 2 (it buffers slower but downloads faster). Away from the router in my room, however, the Note 2 consistently downloads and buffers faster than the Note 4. When streaming the video, the Note 4 actually keeps stopping the videos to buffer, and the download hangs often and starts back up downloading anywhere between 60-200 KB.
Are any of you experiencing similar situations? Is my Note 4's Wi-Fi chip defective? What is so different about the Note 4 that its Wi-Fi performance is inferior to the Note 2? I'll provide more details about my settings later.
In case things like these matter: the routers that my school uses are Cisco ceiling routers. They operate on 802.11n dual-band. (I could tell it was dual-band because my Note 4 could connect to either of them at will.)
I live in a 6-floor university dorm that has one router on the 2nd floor. But I can get a signal in my room on my phones, both of which get anywhere from 1-3 bars of Wi-Fi when I'm in my room. I get around the same speeds when I'm standing right under the router (the Note 2 still outperforms the Note 4). Download speeds on the campus network these days ranged anywhere from 0.8 to 16 mbps. I kid you not; speeds were very inconsistent even when doing speed tests on both phones. (Upload speeds were blazingly fast on both phones.)
In real-world testing, I have tested streaming two YouTube videos (1 short and 1 long) and downloading a large app (~700 MB) from the Play Store. They are streaming the same videos and downloading the same app. And this is where things take a weird turn:
Directly under the router, the Note 4 buffers the videos much quicker than the Note 2, but it downloads the app slower. The opposite is true for the Note 2 (it buffers slower but downloads faster). Away from the router in my room, however, the Note 2 consistently downloads and buffers faster than the Note 4. When streaming the video, the Note 4 actually keeps stopping the videos to buffer, and the download hangs often and starts back up downloading anywhere between 60-200 KB.
Are any of you experiencing similar situations? Is my Note 4's Wi-Fi chip defective? What is so different about the Note 4 that its Wi-Fi performance is inferior to the Note 2? I'll provide more details about my settings later.
In case things like these matter: the routers that my school uses are Cisco ceiling routers. They operate on 802.11n dual-band. (I could tell it was dual-band because my Note 4 could connect to either of them at will.)
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