iPad users continue to experience a variety of Wi-Fi issues, including weak/fluctuating Wi-Fi signals, inordinately slow transfer speeds, and/or inability to maintain wireless connections (constant drops).
We previously noted a seemingly incongruent fix for some Wi-Fi issues: adjusting the iPad’s brightness level upward and off the lowest setting. Speculation holds that a power delivery issue associated with the screen brightness affects Wi-Fi.
As such, some users are now finding success in resolving iPad Wi-Fi issues (particularly one in which Wi-Fi connectivity suddenly ceases to deliver throughput in data-intensive applications such as YouTube and Netflix) by turning off auto-brightness.
To do this, tap Settings, then select “Brightness & Wallpaper” from the left-hand pane. Slide the auto-brightness option to off.
Dave Rensin, a poster to Apple’s Discussion boards, writes:
“When I have auto-brightness on (independent of the actual brightness of the screen) I can absolutely reproduce a WiFi lockup / forced hard-restart with something data intensive like Netflix or AirVideo. When I disable auto-brightness and fix the lcd brightness to something comfortable, the problem disappears completely.”
Feedback? info@appletoolbox.com.
Jack Lancaster says
Thanks for the suggestion to turn off auto-brightness. This appears to have resolved my problem, which was droping my wi-fi connection. Could power down and power up to get wi-fi back, but didn’t last long. I’ve had iPad for 4 wks and this was not a problem until several days ago. I wonder if there is also some interaction with apps loaded then deleted.