iPhone 4 - painfully slow wi-fi performance

thats well and good for those who have a router that can do 802.11N, mine only does g & b :@

I have no problems with WiFI:

SpeedTest Results:
Down: 7216 kbps
Up: 1943 kbps

I'm having the same problems as well. My iPhone 4 is being beaten hands down for wifi speed by my 3GS.

Ive got a netgear dg834gt router supplied by Sky. Everything has been fine up until now, but the iP4 is very slow.

Whats to be down about this? If this is what I'm stuck with then I'll go back to the 3GS!

No issues whatsoever on my 802.11n Wi-Fi network.

I know there is no solution but just wanted to add "me, too" to this topic. The first thing I noticed with the 4 was that wifi was so noticeably slow on my home N network. My original iPhone, 3GS/iOS4 and iPad test virtually identically in terms of speed (about 10000 - 13000 kbps down) while the 4 tests on average at about 3000 - 6000 kbps. That's quite a difference. Obviously, I have no idea what technically is different in the 4's wifi implementation and the 4's performance is not horrid but something clearly is different.

This becomes a real issue when checking mail. Checking/retrieving mail on iPhone 4 has all of the charm of watching paint dry. The spinning gears just go on and on and on. I tested by retrieving my mailbox with 3 pieces of mail in it. The 3GS and iPad were able to check & retrieve then finish (no spinning gears) in about 8 seconds. The iPhone 4, grabbing the same 3 pieces, took 1-1/2 minutes.

I did a search last night, because i having the exact same issues as everyone else described.

Problem:
Fast wi-fi connection on initial phone boot, and than a massive slow down. I tried to download the large 580MB navigon update yesterday, and it never finished after about 12 hours. I ran speed test on the phone and was getting only about 4-5K over my wifi. I thought i was on EDGE!?

So reading this thread i discovered the problem. I have an new Apple Time Capsule router. I switched my main wireless network from a mixed b/g/n network to an a/b/g network.. The older slower speed protocols.

Problem solved. Speedtest results immediately went thru the roof on the iPhone. the older protocols offer plenty of speed for an iPhone.

In retrospect remember having this problem with my macbook previously. I have a heavy mix of older G wifi devices (Xbox, tivo, wii, etc.). Faster N devices like my macbook or apple tv would choke in this mixed environment. I think in a mixed environment there is so much protocol switching going on that it bogs down the router something fierce!

The problem was solved by my Time Capsule router also, it allowed me to great a separate N network on the 5ghz frequency, which isolated my macbook and apple tv, and they have been lightning fast ever sense.

The iPhone is a N device, but only on the 2.4 ghz frequency. So throwing it into the mixed b/g/n environment was causing the same problems i had before with the laptop. Like i said locking the network into the older a/b/g protocols solved the problem, less protocol switching i'm guessing.

Message was edited by: toddlermn

Turning off the N network is fine, but what do you do if your router doesn't support N?
Mine has the options for g only, b&g, and 108Mbps (its a netgear router) There is no option for N, so theoretically I cant see how that can be causing the problem??

As rickyfc has said, checking mail is a chore, it takes ages!

I have just updated my Iphone 3gs to the new operating system and my wifi is horribly slow. It worked perfect before the update a couple of hours ago, but not it runs slower than the 3g. It's obviously an operating system error that needs fixing, as everyone said before not everyone has the option to change on their routers and if your out and about you can't go changing routers anyway!

Well I updated my 3GS back when OS4 came out, and that has been functioning fine.
Now I'm not sure what to do. The iPhone 4 supports 802.11n (2.4ghz) correct? Well surely it supports b & g as well? I just cannot understand why it would be considerably slower than the 3GS?

If I was to get a router with N capabilities, i;m not sure that would make a difference as people seem to be suggesting that the N signal is switched off!

Thinking a trip to the Apple store is needed!

Just done another speed test....

IPhone 4

Download: 46kbps
Upload: 9kbps
Ping: 282ms

IPhone 3GS

Download: 1339kbps
Upload: 506kbps
Ping: 188ms

Come on, whats wrong!!

I'm having the same problem as well guys. I have two routers set up (G and N) and through every other device my N router performs at higher speeds like it should. While connecting with my iPhone 4 my SpeedTest is as follows:

N Router: (Down) 0.96 Mbps (Up) 0.45 Mbps
3G Network: (Down) 2.39 Mbps (Up) 0.81 Mbps
G Router: (Down) 10.81 Mbps (Up) 4.25 Mbps

As you can see my iPhone 4 is working faster over 3G than over my N network! Is it because I have two routers?

My bad guys I just realized I didn't have the firmware on my N router updated. Sooo I just upgraded the firmware and my download speeds are at 11 Mbps!!! Totally fixed the issue. Thanks for the help guys. My only other question now is should my N speeds be faster than my G speeds because right now they're the same?

My slow wifi story has a happy ending. I have a 2g, 3g, 3gs as well as a 4. All had faster download speeds than the 4 on my N router. So I compared download speeds with a colleagues 4 at work and sure enough mine was half the speed of his. So I took my phone back to the O2 store I purchased from that had a look at the download speed and promptly replaced it.

The new phone download speed is now as expected on an 802.11N router with NO configuration changes to my network.

The morale of the story is that sometimes there's defective hardware that needs replacing.

Right thats it, i'm off to the apple store tomorrow!