Galaxy S II: The Missing Manual

Connecting via Wi-Fi

WHEN YOU CONNECT TO the Internet via a Wi-Fi hot spot, you’ve hit the mother lode of connection speeds. Wi-Fi hot spots can be as fast as your cable modem connection at home.

If you’ve ever taken a laptop on the road, you may already know where the best Wi-Fi hot spots are. Some coffee shops and hotels, for example, offer customers free Wi-Fi, while others make you pay for it. More and more, you’ll find Wi-Fi coverage in airplanes, libraries, and even entire cities. In fact, if you connect your computers to the Internet at home using a wireless router, you have your own Wi-Fi hot spot, and you can connect your Galaxy S II to the Internet via your home network.

Your actual connection speed varies from hot spot to hot spot. When you’re at a public hot spot, you’re sharing the connection with other people. So if a lot of people are using it at once, and the hot spot isn’t set up to handle that many connections, your speed may suffer. Also, Wi-Fi isn’t a good bet when you’re in motion. Hot spots have a range of only about 300 feet, so you and your Galaxy S II can quickly move right past them. 3G is a better option when you’re moving.

Note

When you’re connected to a Wi-Fi hot spot, the Galaxy S II uses it for more than just Internet access. It also uses Wi-Fi for finding your current location in apps like Google Maps (unless you turn on GPS, as described on Location and Security). The phone uses a clever technology that finds nearby Wi-Fi networks and uses fancy algorithms ...