Droid Incredible Crashes Wifi Networks

Well, I’ve been holding onto this dirty little secret for over a week now. I was hoping Verizon and/or HTC would address this issue BEFORE the story got out into the hands of the general media.

Why have I waited to release this story? Personally I think the Incredible is a great competitor to the iPhone. In fact I terminated my contract with AT&T just last week. Boy did that feel good after 3 years of no cell service ANYWHERE in the country and especially here in Charleston. I truly want the Droid Incredible by HTC to be a success. I want the dominance of AT&T and Apple to be tested by the likes of products such as the Incredible. Good healthy competition is good for all of us. Better phones, better service, better prices.

BUT… the problem has gone on for too long with only a warmed-over “must be your network” response from the people at HTC. And that response came after more than a week of telling them “I think you have a problem” and “is anyone home?” messages.

I told Verizon about the problem as well. To their credit they did ship a replacement phone overnight. It didn’t help, but at least they tried. Guess it was what I expected after I explained the problem to the local “tech” at the Verizon store down the street and got nothing but a blank stare in return. I knew then & there that the guys at the local store knew as much about wireless networking as they did quantum mechanics. When I brought the problem up with Verizon Corporate they simply bounced my mail back with a URL on “how to connect to WiFi” (thanks, NOT useful) and a tacked-on “not our problem – call HTC” note at the end.

So now it is time to let the story out…

What Is Going On?

Well, I first noticed a problem the day I brought my new HTC Droid Incredible home. My network was pathetically slow. It would crash at odd hours, and I’d get NO Internet connection at all. Odd, I thought, must be the new Comcast service. I called Comcast, and after missing their first appointment and showing up 30 hours late they finally got a knowledgeable technician to the house. Everything checked out fine. No problems at the home, on the line, or down the street at the head-end router.

Yet, every so-often the network would just crash. Then a week after working with Comcast, tracking network connections and sniffing packets on my network I figured it out quite by accident. I was online on my PC running a diagnostic when I wanted to check email. Not wanting to interrupt the CPU intensive task I reached for my HTC Droid Incredible and started reading my email. One of the attachments was rather large so I flicked on the Wifi switch. That is when the world came crashing down. My wife ran into the room saying “Did you DO something? The network just crashed!” Sure enough, I was looking at my PC and seeing a “service disconnected” right in the middle of my testing. Turn off the WiFi on the HTC Incredible, reconnect and everything starts running along just fine. Flick. On goes the Wifi on the HTC. Off goes the network. Hmmmm….what an ODD coincidence.

After several hours of testing, checking configurations, and re-testing I realized… this HTC Droid Incredible has a serious design flaw.

Proving The Fail

A few days after realizing that MY HTC Droid Incredible indeed crashed MY network, I visited the local Verizon store. They expedited a replacement phone which arrived a few days later. I immediately went into test mode. Shut down the original phone, power up the new phone, activate, and connect to my network. Same results… the network slowed to a crawl and crashed almost immediately.

Next test – a different network. I brought the original HTC to my office after sending back the replacement phone (it had the same result, so it didn’t fix my problem). Power on the wifi and connect to the office wireless. Instant failure. Every wireless device was unable to connect to the outside world.

The HTC Droid Incredible has effectively taken down 2 different networks at 2 different locations. The only thing they have in common is that they are open networks with a 40/64-bit (10 character) all-numeric WEP key enabled. Whether or not that is the trigger or whether it is more generic still needs to be tested. One thing is certain, this phone is adept at crashing the only 2 networks I use on a regular basis. Luckily I can stay online with 3G and not get on wifi, but this is still a problem. Not everywhere I go will have 3G access especially in the bowels of various commercial buildings where I visit clients.

Current Status

Fast forward to today. I have received a communication from HTC (finally) and they basically asked a few questions and hinted that it must be my network. Reconfigure & reset the HTC. Yup, been there done that. At this point I KNOW the HTC crashes at least two networks with absolute certainty. Later this week I plan to roam various public WiFi hotspots and the homes of various wired (wireless) friends and see what happens. My guess – the problem will be 100% reproducable with little effort.

Sorry Verizon & HTC, this story is just too big to keep to myself. The word is out, both to let people know there is a potential problem & to see if I’m alone in this situation.

So how about it Droid Incredible owners… anyone else run into a problem like this?

14 Comments | Posted in Gadgets,blog by lcleveland on June 01, 2010

14 Comments for this entry

Jeff June 5th, 2010 on 4:04 PM

I have used my Droid Incredible on my wifi network at my home (using a Linksys router & AT & T broadband service) several times and not noticed anything out of the ordinary. I have connected my Incredible and a laptop to the internet at the same time and moved seamlessly between web pages on all devices. I will try my Incredible on some wifi networks here in Chattanooga this week and give another update.

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lcleveland June 5th, 2010 on 4:11 PM

Yeah – I can’t imagine it is a common occurrence or they’d be a big uproar over this by now. However it has happened on 2 Droid Incredible’s on 2 different networks. Maybe just a bad batch?

It also may be specific network settings. Both networks are on an open network, both use a 40/60-bit WEP key, both use an all-numeric key. What we have not tried is turning off wifi security completely, using a random router-generated key, or connecting to additional networks (we’ve only tried two thus far).

However this has happened with TWO Indredibles on TWO networks, so that is a bit of a coincidence. Rebooting phones, routers, etc. after full power-off state doesn’t fix a thing. :/

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Scott Emick June 9th, 2010 on 7:04 AM

I use mine all over the place, on uverse wifi at home (WPA2), and a hidden network at work linksys WPA2, absolutely no problem.

I’m very happy that I can keep the wifi on all the time and it doesn’t seem to suck down the battery like previous smartphones i have had.

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Billy June 16th, 2010 on 6:33 AM

I seem to have some sort of the same problem, but I dunno if its an HTC incredible or other HTC.. it is clearly an HTC though, given its MAC address.. (38:e7:d8:*:*:*)

right now I have 2 other HTC`s in a different WLAN, and the dont reek any havoc so its a bit odd.

anyways… more info later as I dig deeper in this problem

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Brian Kramer June 16th, 2010 on 12:10 PM

It happens to me. Everytime I tried to connect my incredible to my wifi network, the network went down. I tried everything and gave up…. glad it wasn’t just me.

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lcleveland June 16th, 2010 on 12:51 PM

Ok – so this is odd. Yesterday I tried to reconnect to network because the 3G signal was unavailable inside the house.

The phone connected to the wireless network without any problems and did NOT crash the network.

Maybe not having a 3G signal had an impact? Nothing changed on the router end, anywhere else on the network, and no new phone updates were installed. The only thing I could find different was the Verizon 3G network was not reaching my house yesterday (maybe a tower was down?).

Another wrinkle… this was less than 24 hours after my phone had a complete batter drain. 100% dead because I didn’t plug it into a charge for a day. Even the emergency power-on wouldn’t work, the battery was depleted.

Could it be a 3G v. Wifi issue? A system memory issue that was resolved with battery drain? If the later, maybe the fix is to remove the battery, try to power on to drain any capacitance in the device, and re-install the battery?

Very, very strange indeed.

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lcleveland June 22nd, 2010 on 9:11 PM

Well, HTC is being responsive at least. The bad news is the problem is still here, though “less aggresive”.

Now the Incredible can surf most of the time. Sometimes it even lets one or two other computers on the wireless, if they get on first.

However, at the office this past week I’ve had a few people show up and not been able to get online. They get to enter the WEP key, show a “connected to wireless” response, but then never get a proper DNS entry back form the DHCP server.

I turn off wireless on the Droid Incredible and within a minute they are surfing along no problem. If I keep the phone wifi turned on they never get access.

We’ll see if Josh over at HTC comes up with anything on this one. Definitely an odd one.

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Bill June 30th, 2010 on 2:32 AM

Just FYI I found this page looking for an answer to the same problem. Only difference is I am experiencing the same problem with the MotoDroid. Just makes me think it’s not an HTC problem.

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Paul June 30th, 2010 on 12:49 PM

Hmm funny I was in Charelston and had no problems with AT&T Coverage.

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Bill2 June 30th, 2010 on 1:42 PM

I have a mytouch 3g slide from t-mobile and have the same issues. I have two wireless networks at my office one is wep encryption and the other is wpa2/psk tkip. The wep router crashes everytime I connect. When I walk into the office in the morning with wifi enabled on my phone and connect to the wep router….internet goes down for the entire office (lol). I deleted the wep connection and only connect to the wpa router and I have no problems with anyone on that connection. IMHO it appears to possibly be wep related .

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Lloyd July 19th, 2010 on 2:16 AM

I have this exact problem but im on an HTC Desire. Its so odd… as soon as I connect to the wifi everything drops.
My wifi is running on a motorolla surfboard cable modem. I just bought this phone so am quite dissapointed with this.. please let me know if anyone finds a solution

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DaveInSF August 1st, 2010 on 6:12 PM

EXACT same problem with my Incredible–connecting to a WEP-encrypted, hidden SSID, Linksys router brings it down immediately.

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Vito August 30th, 2010 on 9:13 PM

I am having same issue with MotoDroid. I even went as far as replacing router and WAP, as I thought they were the problem, but problem persists.

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wes September 8th, 2010 on 12:44 PM

Just updated my incredible five days ago and now it is crashing WiFi. After resting router, can only get my WiFi signal about 15 minutes to an hour before it crashes again. Have not had any problems with incredible until now but this is a major problem. Have had the phone four months with no WiFi problems until upgrade from HTC/verizon.

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