Phone not switching from WiFi to 4G

[Sajo]

I have some friends over for New Years Day food and football. She just bought a Galaxy S6 (nice phone by the way). She uses WiFi all the time at home, no issues there. Her phone is not switching from WiFi back to 4G when she leaves her house. She has to reboot every time for the phone to start a 4G data connection. It's on 5.1.1. Any ideas?

 

[Jeffrey]

Try logging on to your wifi and see if it switches to 4G. Is this new or has it been happening from day 1?

 

[Sajo]

I will try to find out if its been happening from day 2 or just started recently. I wasn't sure if this was an issue with many Sammy phones or not

 

[Jeffrey]

What I meant was... see if your friends phone switches to 4g after leaving your wifi network...

 

[Sajo]

Thanks Jeffrey. Did some searching and found the Setting for Smart Network Switching. It was set to OFF. We turned it ON, and will see if that helps.

 

[Jeffrey]

Sounds like a plan..

 

[IIGood]

I've been having the same problem intermittently; I'll give the Smart Network Switching a try now. Did not know about that setting. Though kinda have to wonder why that's an option...why not do it automatically?

Thanks!

 

[Sajo]

I've been having the same problem intermittently; I'll give the Smart Network Switching a try now. Did not know about that setting. Though kinda have to wonder why that's an option...why not do it automatically?

Thanks!

To my understanding, Android is supposed to switch from WiFi to cell data (3G / 4G) automatically as soon as you leave that WiFi connection. The more I have been reading about this, I don't think that Setting is the fix. It seems like the same thing as the Moto Setting for "Avoid Poor WiFi Connections" and probably will have no impact on this issue? From all the posts I have found on other forums, many folks reported this on GS5's, GS6's and Note 4's after the Lollipop update; and a FDR seems to be the common fix. But maybe not? Knowing my friends and how they already hate OS updates (they have the "it works good right now...the way I bought it...why should I update anything" attitude) they will not do a FDR and just keep rebooting the phone every morning when she leaves home and leaves the WiFi signal; that forces the phone to connect to 4G for her. More reading and research when I have time.

 

[jackiescivic]

Out of curiosity, has she tried just turning off/on the mobile data instead of a full power cycle? I have no issues with the switch from wifi to 4g on my s6 edge.

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

 

[Sajo]

I forgot to ask that, I will mention that when I talk to them again. I did mention that toggling Airplane Mode On then Off again should do the same thing and force the 4G connection, and is faster than a reboot.

 

[Jeffrey]

As soon as the phone is out of wifi range, it should seamlessly connect to 3G, 4G.. whichever is available.

If this is not happening, the radio could be defective. I would exchange the phone while you can..

 

[Jonny Kansas]

While the Smart Network Switching option is more to get you the best connection possible, it should, in theory help. If the wifi signal is weak or the internet connection behind the wifi signal is slow, it should automatically switch to mobile data. You would think that being out of range would trigger the weak signal situation, but no guarantees there.

Aside from toggling mobile data, how about toggling wifi as well? For years now, I've had a quick toggle or widget for wifi. When I leave a trusted wifi network, I turn my wifi off. Though I ran tests a long time ago and verified that android is actually really smart about conserving battery while still periodically scanning for a wifi network, I don't want to take a chance that my phone will connect to a network that I don't trust and I figure it has to be saving a tiny amount of battery life by not polling for open networks as I move around town. Just my own personal policy, but I'm wondering if toggling wifi off will force it to use mobile data instead. I'd think either one (wifi or data) should work, since it should poll for connections either way.

 

[IIGood]

Just my own personal policy, but I'm wondering if toggling wifi off will force it to use mobile data instead. I'd think either one (wifi or data) should work, since it should poll for connections either way.

For me, just toggling wifi did not help. At first I thought only a full reboot was the answer-which would have been annoying -but then found just toggling airplane mode did the trick.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

For me, just toggling wifi did not help. At first I thought only a full reboot was the answer-which would have been annoying -but then found just toggling airplane mode did the trick.

Really? That kinda sucks. Did you toggle it off and leave it for a bit and it still wouldn't grab on to mobile data? You'd think it'd automatically search for a mobile data signal if you told it no wifi.

As I said, I'm big on turning my wifi off when I don't intend to use it. The biggest issue I had with my Note 4 on wifi was that it seemed to regularly drop the connection and reconnect. I had it set to always be on, regardless of whether the phone was asleep. But, sometimes I'd turn the screen on to do something and see the toast message saying it had just connected to my wifi.

 

[Sajo]

Thanks for all of the feedback everyone. I still think the Smart Network switching is not really helping her phone. As @Jonny Kansas mentioned, that Setting seems like it is designed more as an "avoid poor WiFi and don't connect to it...use cell data instead" kind of Setting. In her case, the WiFi signal at their house is excellent, fairly new router with up to date firmware. As soon as she leaves the house and gets out of range of the WiFi signal the phone "should" auto connect back to a 3G / 4G cell signal; but does not...without some user manipulation of Settings (Airplane Mode On > Off) or a reboot. I have found quite a few posts related to this on other forums, all related to the Samsung Galaxy S5, S6 and Note 4 & 5 immediately following the Lollipop update. I am 99% sure that a FDR would clear up the issue, and I would have already done that...if it was my phone. Seems like a glitch in the Lollipop update that affects some phones? But...my friends are not willing to do a FDR, she is happy with the Airplane Mode toggle On/Off as a quicker fix than a full reboot. She is angry because it worked fine when she bought it, and started having problems when "he did something to it". I'm pretty sure the "something" he did was upgrade it to Lollipop; not aware that the software update screen was a whole new OS and not just some minor security update. As I mentioned earlier, they are the kind of phone users that like their phone just the way it was when they bought it, they don't want the OS to change. I'm sure many of us know people like that. As she put it yesterday "Google broke my phone so Google can fix it, I am not doing a reset". If I do learn anything more (other than a FDR as the best possible fix) I will let you know.