Turning Wi-Fi On - No MAC Address

[Freesia Melon]

I've seen this question before with no answers (that work) for my phone model. I have a Huawei U8681. Under Wi-Fi it says: Turning Wi-Fi on... and just stays like that. Under Wi-Fi, Advanced, it just says: MAC address = Unavailable.

I've done multiple factory resets and I'm wondering if there's any solution to this problem or if it's just hardware issues (and time to get a new phone).

 

[anon(238680)]

Welcome as a new member! I've read that some Chinese phones may exhibit exactly the behavior you're seeing, something or other missing or not enabled. I'd guess that's where you are as the MAC address is burned into the phone.

 

[hallux]

A MAC address is the hardware address assigned to the network adapter (in this case a WiFi radio) at the factory that made the chip. This is a unique identifier for the card - EVERY network adapter has a different MAC address. Without the MAC address you won't be able to connect to a network (as the network wouldn't be able to address the card individually).

A failed wireless card could exhibit this issue, and there's really no way to fix it. Also, as @PJRed2008 indicates and I noted above, this is assigned or "burned" at the factory and you can't just assign one yourself.