How's your wifi connection on Note 3?

[barry bowers]

i swaped out note 3 for another at att. they said the one i originally bought was a lemon, so i got another and i still had problems with the wifi not connecting
called att technical support and they had no answer. they called samsung in a 3 way conversation the tech at samsung said this, turn off or disable the att smart wifi and take out battery and then put back battery and start it up. sure enough that did the trick, he said that the app att smart wifi was interfering with the radio in the phone and thats why the wifi would not connect especially outside at wireless spots or att hot spots. thats all she wrote. give it a try! it should work good luck i was very agitated till now was ready to bring back the phone and get something else but i do love this phone!

 

[Sean Smith11]

I have tried it all.. disable auto connect, mobile, ATT Smart Wifi and set router to BG only. Wifi does not improve. The iPhone 5 and 4 continue to work throughout the house and even across the street. I cannot go more than 40 feet with the Note 3 phones and the signal bar starts jumping up and down and then the unstable message. Also will add that our Lenovo Yoga, PS3 on other side of house and Dish Hopper, which are all wireless work without issue. So to say the problem is not the phone but rather the router just does not stand. Based on my experience it's a range \ signal strength issue and that has me leaning towards possible hardware issue. I have 15 days to return these so hopefully it's not hardware and will get addressed in a timely manner. Will be holding off on upgrading other 2 iPhones until then.

I love this phone in every way over my iPhone 5 with this one exception. Unfortunately 40 foot Wifi range is a deal breaker for us.

 

[barry bowers]

just disable the att smart wifi then power the phone off. take battery out put back in and boot it up thats it dont mess with other stuff good luck!

 

[mhettrich]

i swaped out note 3 for another at att. they said the one i originally bought was a lemon, so i got another and i still had problems with the wifi not connecting
called att technical support and they had no answer. they called samsung in a 3 way conversation the tech at samsung said this, turn off or disable the att smart wifi and take out battery and then put back battery and start it up. sure enough that did the trick, he said that the app att smart wifi was interfering with the radio in the phone and thats why the wifi would not connect especially outside at wireless spots or att hot spots. thats all she wrote. give it a try! it should work good luck i was very agitated till now was ready to bring back the phone and get something else but i do love this phone!

Hmm, wonder if there is a similar fix for Verizon.

Posted from my Note 3

 

[GtoJon]

I finally got a chance to test my Wife I held both my Note 2 & Note 3 at the other end of the house & both signal bars looked the same

Cheers, Jon

My husband and i were sitting opposite each other at Starbucks(outside sitting area). I noticed that my husband's S4 was able to connect to the Starbucks Wi-Fi while i was not able to connect to the Wi-Fi unless if i sit inside the shop.

Is there anything wrong with my note 3?

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 4

 

[Jocelyn84]

The BCM4339 Wi-Fi chip Samsung decided to use for the Note 3 is horrible. You might see 433mbps or great peak speeds, but the ping is horrible due to its power saving features. Just set up an RMA return for mine due to this.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Sean Smith11]

Nope. Disabling ATT Smart WiFi and removing battery changed nothing. Same problem. Unusable Wifi past 40 feet. My daughter is across the street and streaming YouTube on an iPhone 5 and I'm 50 feet away from the AP and can barely browse. Hope that tip fixes the issue for others.

 

[dpham00]

I have tried it all.. disable auto connect, mobile, ATT Smart Wifi and set router to BG only. Wifi does not improve. The iPhone 5 and 4 continue to work throughout the house and even across the street. I cannot go more than 40 feet with the Note 3 phones and the signal bar starts jumping up and down and then the unstable message. Also will add that our Lenovo Yoga, PS3 on other side of house and Dish Hopper, which are all wireless work without issue. So to say the problem is not the phone but rather the router just does not stand. Based on my experience it's a range \ signal strength issue and that has me leaning towards possible hardware issue. I have 15 days to return these so hopefully it's not hardware and will get addressed in a timely manner. Will be holding off on upgrading other 2 iPhones until then.

I love this phone in every way over my iPhone 5 with this one exception. Unfortunately 40 foot Wifi range is a deal breaker for us.

Did you try setting to N only?

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

 

[Sean Smith11]

Did you try setting to N only?

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

Yes I tried N only and BG only. As soon as I get approximately 40 feet from AP the WiFi signal indicator starts jumping around from 0 to 3.

 

[hehubado]

My Verizon Note 3's Wi-Fi performance is definitely less than stellar. I'm using an Asus AC68U router and experiencing unstable Wi-Fi connection issues as well. Tried the recommended fixes to no avail. Just for a side comparison I tested my note 2 side by side with the note 3 and I've noticed I'm getting significantly slower dl/ul speeds along with the intermittent unstable Wi-Fi notice. I remember having the same Wi-Fi issue with the Samsung S3...the phone was replaced three times with no resolution of the issue. Makes me wonder if this has something to do with Qualcomm's modem since the S3 and Note 3 have that in common. Not sure but I think the Exynos Note 2 might have had a different modem?

Sent from my SM-N900V using AC Forums mobile app

 

[barry bowers]

1) disable att smart wifi 2) power off the phone 3) pull battery from phone 4) put battery back in and power up phone. give it a try it worked for me. i had no trouble with the wifi in the house it was outside in hot spots couldnt connect. good luck

 

[andreo]

I also had an issue with Wi-Fi on the Note 3. I was able to connect to public Wi-Fi spots with no issue. The connection was strong and didn't drop. I tried the phone at home and started receiving messages that the internet connection was unstable. I have an Asus RT-AC66U router.
Even when I didn't have the unstable message on the phone, ages were slow to load. Watching YouTube was painful. Trying to control Chromecast was hit or miss and I would have to retry playing items several times.

My Note 2 worked fine. The wife's S4 worked fine. Our old Galaxy Nexus phones worked fine. All the other devices that use wireless (tables, game consoles, printer, etc. has not had a problem with this router).

My ultimate fix was to set the mode for the 2.4GHz band to legacy only. Everything worked fine on the Note 3 after making that change. I was able to leave the 5GHz band as auto.

The strange thing is: Before making the change I did a few speed tests on the phone. I was able to download a 40Mb/s (about the speed of my internet connection of 50Mb/s). And not one speed test failed. So it seems that when a task started the connection was stable. But between sessions something would happen to the connection. Apps such as Wi-Fi analyzer showed a good signal at all times as well.
After making the change my speed in the tests dropped as expected (28Mb/s), but the overall performance of the phone on the net was much improved.

I suppose that it wouldn't be a deal breaker to have to leave the router at legacy mode to keep the phone working well at home. But it bothers me that no other wireless device has had a problem. And I also think it may be a bit on the unusual side to find a public hot spot that would be in mixed mode. But if I did happen to run across something like that the hot spot would be unusable to me.

 

[MisterMe11]

This is one of the best routers you can currently get according to reviews, so this is disappointing.
Do you know what 'legacy mode' is? The 802.11ac improvement is in the 5 GHz band. I thought that 2.4 GHz would be essentially identical to 802.11n. So has Asus added a proprietary extension to the 2.4 GHz mode that doesn't play nicely with the Note 3 ?

I also had an issue with Wi-Fi on the Note 3. I was able to connect to public Wi-Fi spots with no issue. The connection was strong and didn't drop. I tried the phone at home and started receiving messages that the internet connection was unstable. I have an Asus RT-AC66U router.
...
My ultimate fix was to set the mode for the 2.4GHz band to legacy only. Everything worked fine on the Note 3 after making that change. I was able to leave the 5GHz band as auto.

 

[MisterMe11]

To be perfectly honest, I was considering AC just because it is new and interesting. I have a cable modem connection which maxes out at about 16 Mbps, so in terms of transferring data from the internet, AC will not help; N is good enough.
In order to justify AC I was looking at things like photo/video file transfers etc, but I don't have a really strong use-case. I hadn't heard of Kies, so thanks for pointing that out! There is an app that I saw mentioned here which backs up app settings, I read. I may look into that (don't recall the name offhand)

Also, my current router (Netgear WNDR3700) is just a little too weak to be useable from my back yard (at least with a Blackberry Playbook). I was hoping that by upgrading I'd have a product with a little extra range/sensitivity at 2.4 GHz. From what I've been reading about the new AC routers, however, they don't necessarily offer any improvement at 2.4 GHz (and some may be worse than the best N routers)

For the Note 3 what would you get from an AC router that you don't get from N or even G? Are you transferring files to your device wirelessly via Kies?


from my Note 3

 

[barry bowers]

i have to be honest it worked yesterday after i disabled the att smart wifi but have had problems again, this really sucks samsung or att has to come clean if there is a problem with either hardware or software PRONTO very dissapointing! very close to switching out from the note 3 but i love the phone so i am just hangin on as long as possible

 

[foe516]

mine works fine at home, but anywhere i have to sign in i keep getting the message that the connection is unstable, when i know it is good. i unchecked auto connect as well. no help. hope this is fixed soon.

 

[Sean Smith11]

All I can do at this point is wait all the way up to my return deadline and go from there. Already boxed up one and cancelled my other 2 upgrades. I will keep mine active to keep trying suggestions. I really wanted to ditch the iPhones but they do work. If Samsung would acknowledge the issue and at least determine if it hardware.or software I could justify holding out, if it were in fact software. Our iPhones are easily 3 times the range this point and that's through multiple walls while the Note 3 has no obstruction. Have to think it's hardware.

 

[lighterlit]

My wifi on my note 3 works better than my s3 it seems. No complaints.

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk now Free

 

[jiden77]

My wife and I both purchased Galaxy Note 3's from Verizon and have the same issue. Our former iPhone's are doing just fine, but we frequently get the "wifi connection is unstable" message. I hope this can be fixed with a software update.

 

[Jonbo298]

Mine has been absolutely horrible at home. Thankfully I figured out how to disable the auto-switching between networks because it kept thinking it's unstable. Now the problem I continue having, which no other device connected to it has this issue, is that it just randomly loses connection and says authentication error. Then the only way to reconnect is to toggle wifi off/on or tell it to forget the network and re-set it up.

It's extremely frustrating when it happens while watching videos from people I'm subscribed to on YouTube. I won't even know it dropped the connection until it randomly pops up that it connected to Wifi. Thank god for unlimited data or I'd be tearing through a data cap by now. Considering I'm at 3.13 gb as of this morning and I have 10 days left in my bill cycle, when I typically average 1.5-2gb a month (most of my time is on Wifi due to YouTube). I may have to RMA this insanity.