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Phone with best wifi reception and wifi calling?

tommydog

Pro Member
I am looking for a phone with the best possible wifi reception, mainly for wifi calling as I live in a network blackspot. I already have a Samsung Galaxy A40 and an unbranded Chinese phone, neither of which have great wifi reception or handle wifi calling particularly well. Sometimes calls drop or I only get a few wifi signal bars on the phones. This is in contrast to my laptop that gets great wifi coverage throughout the house and even in the garden. When I am in other locations, transitioning from indoor wifi calling to the outdoor network (when walking outside) is also a poor experience on these phones.

Can anyone recommend a phone with great wifi reception that handles wifi calling well? I don’t care about any other feature of the phone and would prefer to buy a used phone to save on money.
 
Never experienced problems with phones connecting to WIFI but some issues moving between APs with same SSID (they try to keep to the original signal even though a better one is available).

The classic is you arrive home and the phone connects to your home 2.4 outside and then you go indoors where there is 5Ghz and the phone will carry on happily with 2.4. If the band in use is also used by a neighbour then parts of the house and garden may have issues. Alternatively the laptop may be better at filtering interference or its simply good at the locations where you would use it.

Are your phones using the same frequency and bands as the laptop?
Is there any interference coming from elsewhere?
 
Never experienced problems with phones connecting to WIFI
They do connect, but to be fair the access point is quite a long way from where I work and they struggle to get a reliable signal. The laptop does not have this problem and my friends iphone 13 gets a decent wifi connection.
 
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If you want the best WiFi calling, I’d highly recommend an iPhone.

This is just somewhere that the iPhone excels at. It’s the most supported by networks because of the carrier profiles. The WiFi connection itself I don’t think you need to worry so much about, all phones are pretty good at this now.

With some android phones you have to worry whether SMS will be delivered to the phone or not because of WiFi calling sometimes not supporting SMS because of the network.
 
The WiFi connection itself I don’t think you need to worry so much about, all phones are pretty good at this now.
I understand, but surely some have better wifi antennas / hardware than others?
If you want the best WiFi calling, I’d highly recommend an iPhone.

This is just somewhere that the iPhone excels at. It’s the most supported by networks because of the carrier profiles.
Any recommended alternatives other than iPhone?
 
I understand, but surely some have better wifi antennas / hardware than others?

Any recommended alternatives other than iPhone?
Honestly, no. Network providers create iPhone specific carrier profiles which configure the device for WiFi calling, no matter where you got it from. It just works exceptionally well. Android can be hit and miss because you don't know how the network have configured it, if at all, for Android, and it can very much depend on where you got the phone from and which software it's running. It's a bit of a mess on Android due to the lack of centralised carrier settings. Even a very old iPhone tends to work perfectly with WiFi calling because after around the time of the iPhone 5(?), it's been fully supported by all models. Carrier profiles have been a thing on iOS since the start.
 
Honestly, no. Network providers create iPhone specific carrier profiles which configure the device for WiFi calling, no matter where you got it from. It just works exceptionally well.
Trouble is I just don't like iphones. Unless things have changed they are just so locked down and barely usable. With android I can download APK and install things myself without going through the app store. I can use the phone like a flash drive connected to my computer, I can use it as a NAS. I can set it up as a free standing device without icloud etc. When I looked into iphone before, I can't even plug it into a computer and transfer video / photos and upload content to the SD without going through some silly app. Maybe things have changed?
 
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As someone who uses an iPhone for my personal device and Android for knowledge and hobbies I like the Apple ethos of a secure environment. Apple support connectivity for tethering, SD, syncing etc but not just part of the phone. The family use a mixture of iPhone/Android but only from the leading brands.

Our phones are more and more key to our lives and therefore need to be both dependable and secure. Their performance is also impacted by the network providers as highlighted by TTJJ.

Android phones are more flexible but this advantage can also be their Achilles heel. If you want a phone that allows customisation then Oneplus is the leader, PICO or the Google Pixels. The cheaper phones may be exact clones but the greater the volume the main brands may provide more confidence that more effort has been put in the design, faults corrected and that bad models will be highlighted in forums.

To compare particular phones I would look at their chipsets compared to the same generation of leading brand equivalents.
 
Wi-Fi reception on phones will vary more by how someone holds it than anything else, so what works well for one person may not seem as good for someone else, but generally Wi-Fi is so ubiquitous now they are much the same in performance terms.

Google Pixel phones are the closest to Apple phones in terms of a controlled eco system, and they support Wi-Fi calling in the UK with no issues.

Otherwise the next best thing is to buy a Android device from the mobile operator you want to use Wi-Fi calling with, as they will be tested to work, and you can ask them at the point of sale you need Wi-Fi calling, if it fails to work you should be able to return it.

Also check the mobile operator and the device you choose that they support SMS over Wi-Fi, not all do, and not will all devices. EE is the closet thing I've found to Wi-Fi calling being just like on the mobile network, not only are text messages delivered just the same, but you can even set up call forwarding and call waiting etc.

Apple tends to support text messaging over Wi-Fi as it uses their own messaging service and not SMS messages. Android now have a similar thing called RCS, you may want to check but I think that probably works around the issue of the mobile operator not supporting SMS over Wi-Fi calling, as RCS is like Apples messaging in that it all gets done as data over an Internet connection.
 
Apple support connectivity for tethering, SD, syncing etc but not just part of the phone.
Do they definitely do this without having to download software? I can plug my unbranded Chinese phone into any windows or linux system and freely copy to /from the phone any files I want. I don't want to have to download software to do this.

Secondly when I looked into iphones before, you could not setup the phone without going online and entering your details. I don't want them to have my details and don't want to sign up to any of their online services. Has this changed at all?
 
An iPhone plugged into a Windows PC will allow access to the DCIM folder (photos/videos) of Internal storage (after permission prompt). Other content will require additional software.
SD access via approved accessory.
Tethering via approved accessory.

I have never used an iPhone without an iCloud ID or an Android phone without a Google account.
 
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Other content will require additional software.
SD access via approved accessory.
Tethering via approved accessory.
What a load of nonsense. I dont want to have additional software / hardware for something so simple. My existing phones work in Linux and windows to transfer any file I want. I simply plug in without worrying about additional software or other hoops to jump through.
 
What a load of nonsense. I dont want to have additional software / hardware for something so simple. My existing phones work in Linux and windows to transfer any file I want. I simply plug in without worrying about additional software or other hoops to jump through.
In that case you will have prioritize something then:
get an Android if customization is more important
get an iPhone if wifi calling is more important (I assumed this was of more importance given the thread title)
 
I have a Realme 6 which supports Wifi Calling and has Dual Sims. It's wifi connection is also very good. But its not just the phone that's important but the service provider as well.

I mostly use Three PAYG and the mobile signal at home varies but when its bad the Wifi Calling kicks in straight away and works very well. It worked straight out of the box with no additional configuration and it supports Voice Calls and SMS/MMS

I've also tried Asda as the second sim who use Vodafone which supposedly supports Wifi Calling but it doesn't work on my phone and Asda are unable to make it work. Vodafone seem to be only able to support certain phones and mostly those you buy from them.

Some other providers don't support Wifi Calling on PAYG and some MVNOs that use a service that can have Wifi Calling don't provide it.
 
Have you tried other networks for the wifi calling? How do you know it’s the handset giving the problem?

Is there anyone else with another android you can prove where the issue lays?

My partner is Vodafone and their wifi calling is poor as he can never hear anyone.

I’m iPhone and never have an issue until I’m the wrong side of the garden where wifi is patchy at best. Everywhere else is fine. I’m also O2, so could be a provider issue?

I’m moving over to Three in a month, not used the sim for calls etc, but can’t imagine I’ll have issues.
 
Have you tried other networks for the wifi calling? How do you know it’s the handset giving the problem?
I have tried Three and Vodaphone. In both cases the experience is not very reliable. Despite turning on wifi calling on the phones, it does not always connect, or it takes forever to show as enabled on the phones. Then I still get call drops. I suspect the phones try and use the rubbish network coverage before wifi calling. I want wifi calling as default whenever in the house.
 
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In that case you will have prioritize something then:
get an Android if customization is more important
get an iPhone if wifi calling is more important

I'm not really bothered about custom ROM's, but basic functionality. I should be able to plug a phone into a windows or linux computer and transfer what I want, without additional software / hardware. I also hate the whole emphasis of going through the cloud. For personal data, I'm not comfortable with this.

If I'm honest, I'm not really familiar with the whole limiations of the iPhone, or whether things have improved or got worse over years? I know when I looked into it years ago, I could not even plug an iPhone into a windows or linux computer and copy audio files (mp3, flac) into folders of my choosing. It seems people were forced to go through crapware like itunes (which did not even have an official linux release). Not sure if any of these restrictions still apply?
 
I have tried Three and Vodaphone. In both cases the experience is not very reliable. Despite turning on wifi calling on the phones, it does not always connect, or it takes forever to show as enabled on the phones. Then I still get call drops. I suspect the phones try and use the rubbish network coverage before wifi calling. I want wifi calling as default whenever in the house.
You’d need to put your phone on airplane mode when at home, and then switch on wifi only using the toggle in the drop down menu, and it’ll only use wifi then as no access to the mobile network.
 
You’d need to put your phone on airplane mode when at home, and then switch on wifi only using the toggle in the drop down menu, and it’ll only use wifi then as no access to the mobile network.
Airplane mode. Ah yes I remember that quaint concept back from a time when we could fly….😎🤣
 
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