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Android Can Now Tell You How Fast Wi-Fi Networks Are Before You Join Them (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the decisions-decisions dept.

Today, Google announced that Android 8.1 Oreo will now display the speed of nearby open Wi-Fi networks to help you decide whether they're even worth the effort of connecting to. The Wi-Fi settings menu will now display one of four speed labels: Very Fast, Fast, OK, or Slow. The Verge reports: The difference between Very Fast and Fast, according to Google, is that you can stream "very high-quality videos" on the former and "most videos" on the latter. Most coffee shop dwellers should be fine with the OK level, as that's enough for web browsing, social media, and Spotify streaming. Private Wi-Fi networks that require passwords don't display any speed data since it's really none of your business and Google can't randomly test them, but they do continue to indicate signal strength. Google says network administrators can also opt out of Android's Wi-Fi Assistant showing speed info by using a "canary URL."

1 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. How? by markdavis · · Score: 4, Informative

    Exactly how does one know how "fast" a WiFi network is without "joining" it? All you can tell is what the signal strength is (something already shown), the frequency, and the protocol (a/b/g/n/whatever). None of those will tell you how fast your actual Internet speed will be without connecting to it and trying it. It might indicate a cap on top theoretical speed, but how useful is that?

    I mean, a 100% signal perfect signal on an N access point with nobody else connected to it that is on a saturated uplink which manages 0.1 Mb/s with horrendous latency is pretty crappy.

    Are they saying that your Android device will, behind the scenes, actually connect to everything it can, without asking you, and TEST the link? What does that do for battery life? How much will that delay your connecting? How does that interfere with networks you have specifically chosen to automatically connect? How accurate is a quick test that might have touched the worst few seconds of use in the last hour?

    Or is this based on Google "sharing" speed information from one user into a cloud database? I don't see how that is going to be very accurate either- things change constantly. And that speed rating will very much depend on your EXACT signal quality.

    More questions than answers... the article doesn't help much, either.