Slashdot Mirror
iOS 9 'Wi-Fi Assist' Could Lead To Huge Wireless Bills
Dave Knott writes: One of the new features introduced in iOS9 is "Wi-Fi Assist." This enables your phone to automatically switch from Wi-Fi to a cellular connection when the Wi-Fi signal is poor. That's helpful if you're in the middle of watching a video or some other task on the internet that you don't want interrupted by spotty Wi-Fi service. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi Assist is enabled by default, which means that users may exceed their data cap without knowing it because their phone is silently switching their data connection from Wi-Fi to cellular.
...and people still have to deal with metered internet usage.
Pitiful.
Just price it in (it already is) and be done with it. Jeez.
Why? I'm leaving it on because it's damn useful.
Yes it's useful. But what happens when you're sitting at home, watching Netflix or Youtube on your phone, and your wifi router craps out? I'm thinking it might automatically switch to cellular without me knowing about it, and there goes my 4 GB for the month.
With the current state of things in terms of cell network pricing in the US, this is defective design. It's a disaster waiting to happen. If any device is "using lots more data" then that's probably a serious design issue driven by the mobile version of "game developer syndrome".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't see how netflix could automagically start streaming to your new IP address, so most likely, you will have to restart the stream from the beginning.
You might not understand how, but that's EXACTLY what this does transparently. It's one of the use cases - streaming a video, moving away from the WiFi, and the stream continues transparently.
Possibly you don't realise that just because it's streaming doesn't mean it isn't being delivered in packets. And packets can be re-routed and resent.
You might not be used to being able to swap and change like this on your existing phone. But that's the point, this is a new feature that other OSs don't do as yet.
As I understand it the difference is that as soon as the WiFi signal is seen to be failing the request for a packet is send straight away via Cellular. And whichever comes back first will get used. The WiFi will eventually properly time out, but starting to use Cellular doesn't have to wait for that. The details might vary slightly from this, but that's the essence.
If you miss your flight because your phone isn't on a usable network, you, quite frankly, deserved to miss that flight.