I think the wifi performance issues could be related to Bluetooth.
Today my colleague and I noticed how poor both of our iPhone 5s wifi performance was compared to my iPhone 4 while comparing them at work.
Because of this I decided to take a scientific approach and promised to run some controlled tests at home.
One thing I did noticed when arriving homes was how poor the wifi performance was on my iPhone 5 compared to my iPhone 4 while sitting in my car just after I had essentially disconnected it from my blutooth headset by turning the car off. This performance difference was very much on par with what I have noticed at work so I didnt think much of it at the time.
I even tried running the same tests but disabling LTE and 3G on my iphone 5 however it didnt seem to effect the result by a consistent amount.
Note that my iPhone5 and my Colleagues had been on and off different Bluetooth connections a few times during the day (various work utes I had used)
I then headed to my office to run some tests using my own wifi connection.
My first recorded run showed as expected, the iPhone5 speedtest result was about 50% faster, on par with every other test I had run that day.
Before I starting the recorded tests I turned off BLUETOOTH on my iPhone5 then turned it back on when I decided to run the first test with it on
Misc Settings
- Wireless G/N
- WPA2
- iPhone 5 (iOS6)
- iPhone 4 (iOS5.1.1)
Test 1 -Speedtest.net (5 metres from router through a few walls)
Settings: Wifi on / Cell Data On / Bluetooth On / LTE On
iPhone 5
Run1 12ms 7.98Mbps / 1.01Mbps
Run2 12ms 8.22Mbps / 1.02Mbps
Run3 12ms 8.24Mbps / 1.02Mbps
iPhone 4
Run1 20ms 8.95Mbps / 0.99Mbps
Run1 20ms 8.46Mbps / 1.02Mbps
Run1 17ms 8.42Mbps / 1.02Mbps
Comments: This is not what I had been getting earlier.
I not have very consistent speeds between the 2 iPhones.
Before I started recording my test results my iPhone5 could barley reach 4Mps download from this exact position... perhaps toggling bluetooth off/on earlier has resolved the speed issue?
Ill try turning bluethooth back on and re running the tests...
Test 2 -Speedtest.net (5 metres from router through a few walls)
Settings: Wifi on / Cell Data On / Bluetooth Off / LTE On
iPhone 5
Run1 12ms 8.31Mbps / 1.00Mbps
Run2 12ms 8.31Mbps / 0.97Mbps
Run3 12ms 8.31Mbps / 0.99Mbps
iPhone 4
Run1 18ms 8.49Mbps / 1.03Mbps
Run1 19ms 8.34Mbps / 0.99Mbps
Run1 17ms 8.40Mbps / 1.01Mbps
Comments: Hmmm its almost like my wifi issues have melted away. Whats going on here? I still have a feeling its bluetooth related since I have been using my iPhone 5 on bluethooth in the car all day and as soon as I turned off Bluetooth my speeds have doubled...
Lets go connect the iPhones to my Car headset again and see if it destroys by speeds again....
Test 3 -Speedtest.net (7 metres from router through a few walls in my car)
Settings: Wifi on / Cell Data On / Bluetooth CONNECTED / LTE On
iPhone 5
Run1 17ms 2.36Mbps / 0.62Mbps
Run2 12ms 2.15Mbps / 0.49Mbps
Run3 12ms 2.45Mbps / 0.48Mbps
iPhone 4
Run1 20ms 4.56Mbps / 0.45Mbps
Run1 19ms 4.39Mbps / 0.44Mbps
Run1 17ms 4.41Mbps / 0.41Mbps
Comments: JACKPOT. While connected to Bluethooth I have managed to recreate the poor wifi performance of the iPhone5. Now if this was a simple world I would still retain the poor iPhone5 wifi performance when I turn my car off....
Test 4 -Speedtest.net (7 metres from router through a few walls in my car)
Settings: Wifi on / Cell Data On / Bluetooth on (disconnect) / LTE On
iPhone 5
Run1 17ms 6.36Mbps / 0.65Mbps
Run2 12ms 6.15Mbps / 0.44Mbps
Run3 12ms 5.98Mbps / 0.55Mbps
iPhone 4
Run1 20ms 6.96Mbps / 0.45Mbps
Run1 19ms 6.79Mbps / 0.49Mbps
Run1 17ms 6.21Mbps / 0.41Mbps
Comments: Ok....so this time as soon as I disconnected my car from my headsets speeds returned to normal. I then confirmed this by running the test again from my office, same as test 1.
Conclusions Drawn:
While connected to Bluthooth the iPhone5s wifi performance is around 50% worse than the iPhone4.
During testing, simply disconnecting the iPhone5 from the bluetooth stereo headset restored wifi performance back to iPhone 4 levels.
After spending a few hours connected to a bluetooth headset in the car streaming audio and taking a few phone calls, apon leaving/disconnecting from that bluethooth connection my iPhone 5s wifi performance was halved until I turned bluetooth off completely. This was also the case with my colleague who had without realising it been doing the exact same thing as me with his iPhone 5 and has the exact same wifi performance degradation.
I will try and call up my colleague and get him to test his wifi performance at home, then have him switch off bluetooth and re test.
Can ANYONE confirm any of these results?