AT&T Smart WiFi may end up costing you plenty

When I saw it was dropping my home router's wifi I deleted the app. I watched closely the few hours after I downloaded it and saw it tries to connect to neighbors open wifi as well as a businesses wifi down the street with a weak signal and when the signal drops to no bars it goes back to 4G instead of MY WIFI. 

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@harryspar wrote:
Ugh. I wish ATT would leave the phones alone. If ATT Navigator et cetera were actually good, you wouldn't have to force everyone to have it as a nonremovable bloatware app.
The first thing I do the instant I get a phone is root it and remove all the bloatware.

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yup, yup. Do not use the AT&T bloat ware apps as they are usually not free and do not work well on the android platforms. As Harry says, root your device and the bloat ware is deleted aUtomatically. Then you will notice your phone will be faster, and will not drop wifi connections.

I rooted my HTC one week after I bought it and have one of the fastest Inspires out there.

Good luck and enjoy

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@shchesser wrote:
Samsung Galaxy S III will no longer connect to wifi. I attempted to use AT&T Smart Wifi (downloaded automatically with the last software update from AT&T - even though my device is NOT on the list of supported devices). AT&T Smart Wifi kept dropping my connections and not connecting when it should. I turned it off, went to application manager and disabled it. Now my phone's wifi will not connect to wifi at all. Every network I have attempted (home & work) with a password, it tells me "authentication error". AT&T, step up to the plate and fix this issue ASAP!!! I have read numerous complaints about this and they have been posting for months. What gives?????

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Hi, this thread is about a year old and i thought this issue was handled. Also, this a peer to peer forum and only AT&T moderators check these threads to ensure all are following the posted rules.

Now I do not understand why the update messed up your WiFi connectivity so, I suggest calling Cstomer Care 800-331-0500 as they can access your account and see why the connection is not hapening. 

Let us know what appens.

I had the same problem today.  I found that in the first 10 days of the month that app used 85mb of cellular data.  Why does an app, which is advertised as "save money by findng Wifi locations" use more cellular data than any other app on the phone?   

Just recently had a somewhat related problem. Sometime on or shortly before Feb. 1, the SmartWiFi application (on a Samsung Galaxy S2) apparently started having trouble connecting to my home WiFi. I say apparently, because it continued to show it was connected, although I did notice the 'connected' message kept reappearing frequently.

This only came to my attention when I got a data usage warning that with 24 days left in my billing cycle, I had used 1.65G of my 2G allotment! In the years I have had ATT wireless I had never come anywhere near my allotment.

Looking at the data usage logs on the phone, the vast majority of this usage (about 1.4G of it) occurred over the course of one day, Feb. 1 to Feb. 2. In addition, the log provided by AVG Anti-Virus showed it was the AT&T SmartWiFi app that used all that data!

Coinciedenatlly, or maybe not, the week before I had upgraded the phone with the latest Android release provided by AT&T, and updated the SmartWifi app. as well.

I called ATT&T customer support and complained about this. The rep. had me uninstall the most recent update to SmartWiFi. However, this uninstalled it entirely, as when I went to start the app., I got a notice that an install was necessary. After doing so, I noticed that even with it running, both the WiFi icon and the 4G icon were showing, the 4G indicating activity. So in Setting, I turned off the Mobile Data ability. This is when I discovered that although the Smart WiFi app. was indicating it was connected to my WiFi, it was actually not. I then deleted the entry for my home WiFi, re-established it, entering the password. Then, it actually connected.

If I turn on Mobile Data, then once again both the WiFi and 4G icons appear. Which seems to mean that I am now going to have to keep Mobile Access turned off when I am at home, connected to my WiFi, but then turn it on if I am not connected. Previously, this happened automatically - that is, with Mobile Data turned on, when I was connected to WiFi, the 4G icon went away. Talk about backwards 'updates'!

PS. The rep. said she was able to reset my data usage cycle, so that the 'wasted' 1.65G will not count. That is as of today I have a 2G allotment, although this doesn't appear as such on my account. I guess I will have to wait and see.