How Apple iOS 11 is improving the WIFI experience

How Apple iOS 11 is improving the WIFI experience

Given our news-packed summer, you’d be forgiven for missing some of the major Wi-Fi headlines that crossed the tech pub wires earlier this summer. And that’s not all. With the recent launch of its high-end iPhone line, Apple, the company that generated those earlier tech headlines, is right in the middle of a real media frenzy.

But let me turn your attention back to July. Back then, Apple was in the wireless news when it was revealed that a feature in its new iOS 11 software update would dramatically improve the Wi-Fi user experience for billions of iOS users. The iOS 11 update came out in mid-September, but by then, reviewers and users were preoccupied with the design improvements, and major news about the Wi-Fi user experience barely made it to a point.

So what’s going on, and what are Apple developers actually doing to improve the WIFI user experience? You may already know if you were one of the beta users of iOS 11. In a nutshell, a new feature in the iOS 11 update will remove automatic connections to low-quality Wi-Fi hotspots. If you have an iOS device, you’ve probably noticed that it has a tendency to constantly keep you connected to that one terrible hotspot every time you walk by. Another irritation: your device doesn’t move you away from a weak signal (to a stronger one) fast enough. Currently, there’s not much you can do here to improve the Wi-Fi user experience, take the offending network out of rotation (in settings), just disable Wi-Fi altogether or (you know) use MIOWIFI and you’ll have the best connection quality on your side permanently and your iPhone won’t hesitate.

The new iOS 11 update has given way to automatic joining functionality, which you can access by clicking the “I” icon next to a given Wi-Fi network (in your phone’s scan list). It’s thought that if you enable automatic joining, you can also sort out the networks you don’t want to connect to.

According to Apple, iOS distinguishes between two categories of networks: private networks and hotpots. And iOS sorts networks in the following order:

• Private networks, most recently joined
• Private networks, in general
• Hotspot networks.
• And when iOS encounters multiple networks at once, it makes the connection decision based on relative levels of security.

Finally, another way the new update will improve the WIFI user experience is that the auto-join feature will suppress notifications when you pass a WIFI network you’ve previously connected to.