iPod Touch Has Weak Wifi
I purchased the 64 GB WiFi version of the iPod touch last week. I’m quite pleased with the fidelity and versatility of this little media computer, and I especially being able to go anywhere in the house with the thing in my back pocket and the ear buds inserted, and listen to Internet radio.
I’m running a Bountiful WiFi BWRG1000, which is a full-power access point (AP) (1 watt), and this gives tremendous coverage throughout the house and several hundred feet surrounding the house, at least, when I’m surfing the web on a laptop. However, the WiFi range appears to be much shorter with the iPod Touch.
The other night, while shoveling snow, I noticed that the Internet radio stations repeatedly cut out as I moved away from the house; reception became erratic at a distance of 80 to 100 feet. Occasionally, they’d return on their own as I moved back into a strong signal pocket. But mostly, once they dropped, they’d stay out for good, until I pulled the Touch out and pressed the play button to restart them. Then, they’d drop again a few seconds later.
Part of the difficulty may be that the AOL Radio app I’m playing the stations on does not recover from momentarily dropped WiFi signals very well. I’ve got the current version of this app as of 2010-02-05. Indeed, when the stations go silent, pressing the play button usually makes them resume when I’m standing still, unless I’m 200 feet or more away. At that distance, they might not play again until I walk closer to the AP. So while I may be on the inner fringes of WiFi reception at 90 feet from the house, there still appears to be plenty of strong signal around; my laptop reads signal in the “very good” strength range at 200 feet distance.
So given these strong but admittedly sporadic signal conditions (conditions that one would likely encounter in a residential wifi installation), I’d think that a well-designed app for the iPod Touch would retry every second or two when the signal is lost; particularly on a device so portable as the Touch. People using the Touch will likely be moving around with it, just as I was while shoveling. So an iron-clad error detection and correction design is mandatory for such a player and the software that it hosts. However, I realize that this would deaden the battery faster, and it could be that the app designers may have been searching for that ideal balance between good battery life and robust recovery from wifi signal loss.
Still though, even if the designers had implemented the perfect app, the problem remains that the iPod touch does not put out a very strong wifi signal. Why? A couple of reasons: The wifi antenna is housed inside its metal-clad shell; indeed there’s just a little plastic area on the top edge, near the left corner (a “hole” in the metal case if you will), where wifi signals enter and exit the unit. Internal antennas like this don’t work as well as the full-length external “duck” aerials found on many of the better wifi network cards and less portable devices such as desktop Internet radios. I suspect that the antenna in the Touch is not full-length.
Further, Apple limits the wifi transmit power in the Touch to increase battery life per charge. In fact, my Handi-Cassette II tape recorder in play mode, with the volume adjusted to maximum, makes a pretty good wifi field strength tester, and I used it to verify this hypothesis. Indeed, when positioned near the antennas on my AP, I clearly hear the “woodpecker” sound of the wifi packet transmissions. However, I do not hear them when I put the iPod Touch near the HandiCassette II while the Touch plays an Internet radio station. The Touch is definitely transmitting ACK packets back to the AP during radio station play. So I suspect that its power output to be very much less than my wireless G access point. I doubt it even outputs a hundred milliwatts.
When I purchased the iPod Touch with WiFi, I thought I’d be able to enjoy it throughout the entire two acres of property here, especially while cutting the grass, burning brush out back, and so on. While that’s still possible if I move my AP to the attic and invest in outdoor antennas and cabling, I was nonetheless saddened to learn that the Touch doesn’t work well nearly as far away as my laptop. While I get great wifi connections on the laptop as far away as my pavilion, which is 220 feet or so down into the back yard, the iPod Touch only works well to about half-way there before sporadically cutting out. Now it does work at the pavilion as long as you don’t walk around with it too much, because the further away from the AP you get, the more sensitive to movement the Touch becomes. Move around too much, and you lose your stations. So though I invested in a full-power AP, the low wifi output of the Touch coupled with its low sensitivity (which is how well it can hear nearby APs) seems to severely limit the usable distance available.
Don’t misunderstand. I still think the iPod Touch with WiFi is a great device; mine works very well all throughout the house and the connected porches outside. But as with most other things, there’s definitely room for improvements for the next generation of iPod Touch.