WiFi Speeds (iPhone 12 Pro Max)

brashaadt wrote:

I was on Wi-Fi and 5G/lte. Verizon’s digital secure VPN was the culprit. Soon as I disabled it, internet speeds instantly improved

When you use VPN your connection speed is no longer determined by your connection to your router or your router’s connection to the Internet. Your speed is instead limited by the bandwidth of the VPN connection plus the encryption and decryption overhead of every packet.

Most people should not be using VPN, unless it is to tunnel into a private network such as a company or a school network.

Here’s a commentary on this: Don't use VPN services. · GitHub

brashaadt wrote:

I really hope 14.4 fixes this issue, it’s very frustrating

I see there have been several posts removed that discussed a beta version. If you join the beta program you “signed" a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that among other things prevents you from discussing the beta in a public forum such as this. That’s why some posts may have been removed. (There is a private beta forum for beta participants).

Lawrence Finch

simply not true. I never mentioned that I had a beta! Plus when support reached out, they never mention about not telling ANYONE that they reached out. Listen, I am not trying to provoke anything and discredit anyone. I am just one Apple fanboy like you are and feel disappointed when this kind of thing happen. I think it is very unfair from the prospective of customer to be lied or hide something, in this situation the issue that is real! Why not promote transparency? ✌️

[Edited by Moderator]

I wasn’t referring to your post, but to several other posts in the forum that were removed, where posters commented on things they had encountered with the beta. A beta is not one version; it is typically a series of releases, from 3 or 4 to over a dozen for some major beta versions, and something commented about one of the interim releases may not be valid for another one. Registered beta testers have a way to report issues so they can be addressed (and they should report them; that’s the whole point of beta testing), but posting in a public forum is not permitted.

I performed some parallel tests with other iphones in our household (the iphone 10XS for instance another user has) which "seems" to behave better than my new phone. Previously on my IphoneX the 400+MB/s i was seeing i realize now was before i "adjusted" my mesh network satellite positioning in the house (swapping locations of router/satellite). theoretically swapping the units in those rooms shouldnt have affected netgear ORBI R50 for just some devices. But it was interesting, I repeated AppleTV Ookla speedtest over same mesh wifi (in another room) getting repeatable better 400+Mbs speeds), so device/position does matter about the inconsistencies. However my 12 Pro Max I started to see sometimes 400+ Mbs so now i really thinks its hypersensitive to enviornment and I need to try adjusting my mesh network exactly back to locations as had it before to really do a true comparison. Btw, I was impressed by Apple Supports commitment to solving my issues, which is why I want to gather as much info as possible, I suspect/(dont know) if it only shows up in a very specific environment (e.g.. hyperfast cable/internet, with radio wifi) not cell. I don't have very good cell service here (so mobile speeds sub-10gb/s). At apples request I'm trying repeating test outside (e.g. McDonalds which clearly had DSL type sub 20Mbs speed) but it is challenging finding public fast wifi to repeat the issue under current circumstances.

Thanks for this insight. Apple staff should report this thread to the engineers for review as you can see it affects all of the new devices across many ISPs and Vendors equipment. My LTE performance is much better on iPhone 12 mini but wifi is the main issue.

No sooner than I wrote that update, i retried my test in my office and saw amazing 480Mb/s suddenly. (nothing physically changed that i know of ) I did reboot router and satellites last night. But coincidently I see now a 14.3 update is available for download to my phone. I'm going to wait to update though until i can repeat the issue more frequently to know what is fixing it.

Had the same darn issue. Couldn’t get WiFi working on my month old 12 Pro Max tried everything. I just updated to 14.3 and there is a new option under WiFi.

Under your option to auto join your WiFi network there is a new option for a private WiFi address. It was already chosen. un-chose it and now no issue !!! I’m on my home network so I don’t need a private WiFi address. I never saw that option before. It really messes me up for a good few days. Was ready to return.

WiFi Band Steering is the foundational technology for selecting the best WiFi band and channel. Client sends probes and Access Point answers with a channel assignment. If both bands are supported using a common SSID, Access Point steers Client to the 5 GHz band by not answering on the 2.4 GHz band. Client must continue to send probes after channel assignment in order to possibly be reassigned to a better channel as client moves around the WiFi coverage area. This is very important in Mesh WiFi networks where the coverage area may span multiple Access Points. My theory: some iPhone 12 Pro power save profiles eliminate or reduce continuous probes leaving the client stuck on a substandard channel.

I experienced this issue on a new iPhone 12 Pro Max. I returned the phone to Apple after working with support on multiple occasions with no resolution.

I have same issue with iphone 12.

I compared iphone 12 pro max & iphone 11 pro max side by side.

Both have same settings, same IOS ( tested both few times on ios14.2 and also latest 14.3 ). Private address turned off. Both connected to same router at 5 ghz.

Iphone 12pm consistently show weak wifi signal ( -70dbm ) and slower speed on speedtest.

Iphone 11pm at stronger signal ( -56dbm) and consistently faster speedtest than iphone 12.

Wifi AX Router is already at latest firmware.

I really don’t know what else to do than making a trip to apple store.

I have same exact setup as yours! The Apple store won’t be able to do anything if this is a modem firmware issue. It is either that or a different software bug in iOS. LTE seems to work better than iPhone 11 but wifi is worse!

WildClyde

This is probably the most accurate description of the issue I have now along with dropping/unstable WiFi speed.

After updating to iOS 14.3 iPhone 12 pro max is failing to connect to the nearest wifi point and I need to turn wifi of and on or airplane mode on and off to reconnect to the nearest wifi point which is wired wifi point. Let me give you example, if I go to my garage, obviously my wifi speed there is not as great as inside the house so I have high ping and low speed. When I go inside the house and to my office where I have wired wifi point, speed test still shows me high ping and low speed which is unusual because it should automatically connect to the fastest wifi point. Only after I turn WiFi off and on it will reconnect to my wired wifi point and my ping is low and speed goes up as it supposed to do by itself.

I have an old Pixel 2xl that’s getting 240mb down on my home WiFi but my new iPhone 12 Pro Max only get 40mb. I checked my wife’s and sons iPhone 12 Pro Max and they only get 40 - 45mb as well. Not sure if it’s the chipset in the phones or we need to update the the chips.

SIOSER,

Apple is diligently aware of battery life in the iPhone 12 products because 5G is known to use more power. It seems plausible to me that in the iPhone 12 IOS, each overhead feature including WiFi was modified to subscribe to battery drain alerts and to reduce operations that consume power when battery drain may be an issue.

When I was testing poor WiFi performance on my iPhone 12 Pro Max before I returned it, I discovered that turning off cellular would restore WiFi performance. At the time that seemed curious to me as there should be no interaction between cellular and WiFi.

If my battery conservation theory is true, turning off cellular would reduce battery drain and WiFi would receive an alert to allow it to restore the full WiFi probe functionality. Reducing WiFi probes to save battery life would not be on my list of ways to contribute to better battery performance. Note: all of this is pure speculation on my part and I wish that I had access to a WiFi signal analyzer to check out my theory.

Clyde

I had the same slow WiFi when I switched from my old iPhone to my new one. This migration took over the known wifi connection, like many other things.

It didn’t matter to reboot the phone or set on/off the WiFi, this didn’t improve the WiFi speed.

But when I completely removed the WiFi from the existing connections. And reconnected again with password etc, I got back my expected WiFi speed. 🙂