EastDog

Q: Wi-fi assist on iPhone doesn't work

There's been notable controversy about iPhone's Wi-Fi Assist feature as it relates to people racking up potentially-large, unexpected cellular data charges. I don't have this issue for two reasons:

1) I'm still hanging on with Unlimited Data on AT&T, despite their efforts to make this as unpleasant as possible, and

2) I have never seen any evidence that Wi-Fi Assist has ever functioned correctly on my phone (and yes, it's on)

 

Examples:

  • In my driveway, on the edges of the Wi-Fi signal where the phone shows Wi-Fi, I get zero connectivity despite showing two Wi-Fi bars and staying stubbornly connected to my home network. In order to have any connection with the Internet, I have to manually turn off Wi-Fi, or drive down to the bottom of the driveway and wait for it to leisurely switch to (a strong) LTE (signal). Same exact thing when I'm on the margins of other Wi-Fi networks.
  • At home, when my Mac has hijacked my entire download bandwidth while uploading my iCloud Photo Library (seems odd, but it's a fairly widely reported issue with Photos/iCPL, likely related to ISP throttling but also very poorly managed by Photos... and likely a problem for me for several more months due to the bizarrely slow iCPL uploads and a 500+ GB photo library. Anyways, it's a thing: Your internet on life support?  Blame Photos app.) cellular *never* kicks in. I and my wife, both with phones running iOS 9, have to manually turn off Wi-Fi on our phones to even so much as download an email message. (And don't let that specific about the source of Wi-Fi internet slowdown confuse the issue - I don't get an assist from Wi-Fi assist whenever my ISP/router render our home Wi-Fi network unconnected to the Internet but still connected to my phone, for whatever reason.)

 

These, and other similar scenarios, are (to my understanding - About Wi-Fi Assist - Apple Support) precisely where Wi-Fi Assist is supposed to help out. But I see no evidence of this. Note: Evidence that it is or is not working should apparently could get easier in iOS 9.3 (http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-9-3-displays-exact-wi-fi-assist-data-usa ge-numbers.1950131/), so this may allow me to provide a little more information if I can't get it fixed by then. And, hopefully, if Apple is tinkering with this Wi-Fi feature, maybe they'll accidentally/quietly fix my particular issue. In the meanwhile:

 

Has anyone else experienced this issue themselves? Any fixes that worked? (I will try to Reset All Settings tonight, which I haven't done in a while, and report back. And no, no, Level 9 guy, I'm just not going to then wipe my device and start over from a clean device. No. If that's what it takes, it would be a bug that Apple plainly needs to fix, and getting this feature to work is not worth it to me for the huge hassle this would create.)

iPhone 6, iOS 9.2

Posted on Jan 13, 2016 4:28 PM