Android phone internet problems

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tyred

Legendary Member
Location
Ireland
My Alcatel A3 works fine on mobile data. If I connect to Wifi it appears to be connected but there is no internet - the browser won't load any pages, FB messenger sits saying "connecting" etc. I know the Wifi is working as I am using it no on my personal laptop to make this post and I have been using it all morning on my work laptop without any issues. I also tried another Wifi network at the weekend which gave the same issues.

It's something that has only started in the past week or so. If I power the phone down and back up again it will probably work but will stop again (no fixed time, could be a few minutes or a few hours). The funny thing is that if I leave it sitting there, just occasionally I'll get an email notification or something but it still won't work so it seems to connect itself very momentarily. I haven't made any changes or installed/removed anything on the phone in at least three months.

Online suggestions like disabling wifi and re-connecting or turning off mobile data but none of it's done anything. I have reset the Wifi router too. I see some suggestions to set it to a fixed IP address setup but I don't really want to do that if I could help it and I don't see why it's necessary anyway as it's worked for years with dynamic IP address.

Any suggestions?
 

the_mikey

Legendary Member
I'm not familiar with the phone, but you need to check with your router to see if the DHCP service has allocated an IP address to your device, can the device access the google DNS servers (this is usually used by default by most android phones and will ignore whatever DNS is provisioned by your router or service provider) , also check other aspects of your device, ensure it has some free ram , particularly the app launcher software, check and clear the cache as a lack of free space will also cause problems for you.
 
OP
OP
tyred

tyred

Legendary Member
Location
Ireland
Thanks to all who have replied with suggestions.

I'm a bit rusty with all of this stuff and never did these sorts of checks on an Android device before.

I cannot really do anything with the router as I do not have the password.

I did clear the internet cache. One of the first things I did and have done it a few times since as well. I have checked for updates and told all is up to date. (Android 6).

It seems I can't ping Google or ping the router when the problem is occurring.

The phone's internal memory is getting quite full but still has over 1GB free and the memory is at 80% usage so I should have thought that was okay.

I am tempted to uninstall the Covid tracking app as although this is a new problem, the phone just hasn't been right since I installed it and as I am not mixing or mingling with people I have it disabled just about all of the time anyway as it hammers battery life.
 

Cletus Van Damme

Previously known as Cheesney Hawks
If it was mine I'd remove the app you mention, if that doesn't work I'd factory reset the phone. Doesn't take a huge amount of time if you take all the pics off it etc. If other mobiles are working on the router Wi-fi the phone is maybe knackered. Whether you can look on youtube see if you can replace the wi-fi board on the phone, or if it's part of the motherboard, I really wouldn't know. I've repaired several laptops and phones using youtube, I wouldn't have had a clue where to start otherwise, but it's not as hard as you'd think, if you have patience. I'd really reset the thing before resorting to that though.
 
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