VERY poor wifi signal on Universal

[yourmate]

Hi,

I am new to Universal (but not to HTC units :)), so when I got a used one with a broken LCD last week I was very excited. But after I replaced the display and played around a bit with this toy - I thought it was not worth the hype.
But I got more & more suspicious about its wifi antenna and yes it definitely has some problem. It has 50% of the signal strength a half meter from my wifi router. From three meters it drops to 25%. And after 5 meters it's dead.

I upgraded the Radio stack to 1.14.10, but nothing's changed. Has anybody any suggestion?

The unit was taken apart by the previous owner and it is missing some screws - but all the screws around the antenna is in place...

If somebody needs photos I can post some.

Please advise!

Last state:
QTek ROM
ROM 1.3.77 WWE
Radio 1.14.10
ExtROM 1.30.176 WWE

Cheers :)

[Xeon_IV]

Have you tried going into wireless lan settings, then click on the power mode tab and change to best performance. That should do something. Maybe its set to best battery which would give you crappy performance and range. I am able to log into the internet wifi within my block.

[onlineemails]

HTC UNIVERSAL wifi power is very very ow i have the same problem and way to solve it.:( when my laptop says what signal is excelent my ppc cannot connect.:mad:

[yourmate]

Have you tried going into wireless lan settings, then click on the power mode tab and change to best performance...

Thank you for your suggestion - now it's in midway position. It should do better - 4 meter is deadly! I have tried out with an Alpine and a Wizard as well and both done a better job!

Can you do me a favour and test it? I measured it at 0.5 m - 1 m and 4 m without _any_ obstruction (no wall whatsoever) between Universal and my router... That is why I suspected a hw failure.

Thanks,
ym

[yourmate]

HTC UNIVERSAL wifi power is very very ow i have the same problem and way to solve it.:( when my laptop says what signal is excelent my ppc cannot connect.:mad:
But _that_ low?!?

Very strange however, since both Alpine and Wizard do a better job than my Asus laptop with built in wifi. So this would be a big surprise for me from a HTC unit...

Today I will test it with a Pretec SD wifi card - if this beast let me install the card's driver at the first place ;)

[geoffdeath]

i can use my exec in bed which is 10 meters, one floor and one wall away.
the signal is at about 1/3 strength at that distance which is ok but not as good as my laptop.
have you changed any settings on your wireless base station as this could also be the problem.

[GurneyHalleck]

Sorry to post in an old thread, but there doesn't seem to have been any resolution here. I have the same problem as the OP, in that my Uni will only detect WiFi about two metres from the router unobstructed. Any further, and the Uni loses the signal. My Laptop gets the signal up to 15 metres away, through walls & floors, and my desktop is in another room using the wireless aswell. If it's any use to possible helpers, i'm running KDS WM6, previously standard WM5, and the router is a TP-Link branded thingy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, it's intensely annoying being unable to use the WiFi functionality on the PDA.


Thanks in advance.

[Steve-C]

No real help sorry, but my Exec has terrible WiFi performance too. Within a couple of metres of the router it has max signal, but this drops off to 1/2 after 5m. (Laptop still shows full) And anything over 7/8m you may as well forget. Laptop seems to get twice the range. My old HP Ipaq 5xxx series PDA used to get much better perfromance than the exec, but lasted a lot less on WiFi. Maybe HTC have deliberately sacrificed range for battery life? Even with the device set to max performace? I wonder if anyone could do a registry hack to up the power to the WiFi, or would this potentially burn our the device?

[GurneyHalleck]

Thanks for the reply anyway Steve. I reckon my range is even worse than yours - I mean, seriously, I have to be sat right nest to the router to get a signal. As may be apparent, i'm more of a 'consumer' than a developer when it comes to my Exec, but to continue your line of thought, is it an issue with the power coming from the Universal's Wifi, or from the router itself? I imagine if there are very few of us with this problem, then it's down to some poor router setup/cheap hardware on our part...

But yeah, if anyone with a little more knowhow could shed some more light on our problem, i'm sure we would all be very grateful.

Regards

[msabri1]

wow i thought i only had this problem, a friend of mine said upgrading might help. any way i've posted a thread about the same problem here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=321872
doesnt it kills you not being able to use the wi-fi in such a device???????:mad: :mad: :mad:

[Steve-C]

is it an issue with the power coming from the Universal's Wifi, or from the router itself?

I would bet the Universal, as I've always had the same router, in the same place with every wireless device I've used. The Uni is the worst performing of the bunch by a noticable margin.

Then again, I wonder if it has something to do with where the WiFi antenna is in the Uni itself? If the phone is pointing the wrong way the the phone itself blocks the signal? Every other device I have used has an external antenna (even the Ipaq)...

Hmm help needed from some experts here me thinks!

[GurneyHalleck]

I doubt it's anything to do with the orientation of the antenna in the device, my lappy has an internal antenna and gets the signal just fine. Also, to add to the list of 'working' wireless devices, even my Nintendo DS picks up the signal throughout the house... Does radio version have anything to do with Wifi reception? I'm using 1.10 - y'reckon I should try 1.18 see if that helps? Rhetorical question, sorry - I'll TRY 1.18 and let you know if it helps.

Regards

[hkyoon]

not only poor wifi signal, the gsm signal also poor at uni, any solution of the gsm signal become stronger??