The Samsung Galaxy S24
c2oncpr's profile

Teacher

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14 Messages

Thursday, May 17th, 2012 3:08 PM

How to disable Att Wifi auto connect on HTC Vivid

Does anyone know how to disable the auto-connect functionality that seems to be specially coded for AttWifi hotspots.  On my device, if wifi is enabled and my device sees any AttWifi hotspot, it will auto connect, no questions asked.  When in range or out of range, the AttWifi network will be listed with no "Forget" option.  No way to remove, no way to forget. 

 

The Att Smart Wifi app may offer some control over this behavior, but that app is not supported on the HTC Vivid.

 

ATT, have you coded to this behavior????

Teacher

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14 Messages

11 years ago

You may be right.  

 

Teacher

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22 Messages

11 years ago

I actually got a call from AT&T as a result of my postings and it was very favorable!  Thank you, AT&T.  Smiley Happy

Teacher

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14 Messages

11 years ago

If I may ask, what was your concern and what was the response ?

Tutor

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11 Messages

11 years ago

Our first month with AT&T on a pair of Galaxy S4's, we overran our data allowance. This got me into checking data usage carefully to identify the culprits. Guess what? AT&T Smart Wifi is the number one cellular-data user this month!

 

Apparently, AT&T Smart Wifi needs two data-consuming things to work: your exact location (GPS) which forces continual Maps downloads over the cellular data network, and a continuous location-driven download of nearby AT&T Hotspot locations! Astoundingly, the phones do this EVEN WITH MOBILE DATA TURNED OFF TO PREVENT USING DATA ALLOWANCES!!!!! So the app that is supposed to be SAVING me from using my cell data allowance is actually burning it up!

 

After reading this and several other forums, I have disabled both AT&T Wifi and AT&T Hotspots, I wish I could uninstall them (without rooting my phone), but I guess the data overages that these apps generate give AT&T too much of a $$ incentive for them to allow mere customers to remove this bloatware.

Contributor

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10 Messages

10 years ago

Hello everyone! I have figured out how to remove the attwifi network from your phone! Please note, this requires that you have your phone rooted. Please be careful following the instructions below, and always make a backup of anything you change! I am not responsible for any damage to your phone, and rooting your phone may void the warranty (although it is typically reversable).

 

I use a different phone (LG G2 running stock android 4.2, rooted), but I would think these instructions would work for you too. Even with auto-connect to ATT hotspots disabled, my phone still auto-connected to "attwifi" hotspots, which was so annoying it motivated me to figure out how to disable it!  Here are the steps I took:

 

0.) Root your phone. xda-developers forum would have specific instructions for how to do this with your particular Android phone.


1.) Get a text editor capable of running as root (I used 920 text editor, there is a permissions issue with it though that I detail later).

2.) Open /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf using your text editor. Make a backup of this file while you're at it.

3.) Find the 'attwifi' entry and rename it (I renamed it to 'attwifi2'.) You could also probably remove the entry but I didn't try that.

4.) Turn off and turn on Wifi
* Note, I couldn't turn on wifi at first once I changed wpa_supplicant's conf file. It turned out to be a permission issue - my text editor did not save the file with the correct permissions. I had to run 'chmod 777 /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf' in a terminal window to give permissions back (it probably just needs chmod 666. One way to get to a terminal is to download the "Terminal Emulator" app).

5.) Find 'attwifi2' in your saved wifi list and 'forget network'. It should now be forgetten. There is no more attwifi or attwifi2.

If this doesn't work for you, then you are probably using a different version of android where the conf file is in a different path. Try grepping for attwifi via a terminal window. If something goes terribly wrong with your phone, run 'dmesg' in a terminal window to see the system log - this could give you a clue as to what is going wrong. Best of luck!

Contributor

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10 Messages

10 years ago


@HoggyDog wrote:

Our first month with AT&T on a pair of Galaxy S4's, we overran our data allowance. This got me into checking data usage carefully to identify the culprits. Guess what? AT&T Smart Wifi is the number one cellular-data user this month!

 

Apparently, AT&T Smart Wifi needs two data-consuming things to work: your exact location (GPS) which forces continual Maps downloads over the cellular data network, and a continuous location-driven download of nearby AT&T Hotspot locations! Astoundingly, the phones do this EVEN WITH MOBILE DATA TURNED OFF TO PREVENT USING DATA ALLOWANCES!!!!! So the app that is supposed to be SAVING me from using my cell data allowance is actually burning it up!

 

After reading this and several other forums, I have disabled both AT&T Wifi and AT&T Hotspots, I wish I could uninstall them (without rooting my phone), but I guess the data overages that these apps generate give AT&T too much of a $$ incentive for them to allow mere customers to remove this bloatware.


Never attribute to malice, that which can be attributed to ignorance.

 

(also, see my reply above on how to fix the issue)

Contributor

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3 Messages

9 years ago

OK guys... I've been there: absolutely livid about a decision that a company made because I'm not happy with it. Sometimes poor judgment, service or quality. Sometimes just an attempt at saving themselves money, time or other resources. And plant of times I complained and wondered why the company did nothing.

Contributor

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3 Messages

9 years ago

But let's think about this from ATT's perspective...

Contributor

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3 Messages

9 years ago

... Forgive me, this forum apparently treats a line break as me saying 'post it'. So AT&T sees an opportunity to both save money and make cash.... The next thing they do is talk about how much it will cost them (I'm terms of lost customers, bad rep, etc.) to do whatever it is they are thinking about. Next they consider how much more hey will save or make. Now there can be plenty of argument over all of this and they may end up going with an invalid calculation but at the end of day it's a simple math problem: do what makes more money. A million happy customers is no good if you're not making money. A hundred customers is great if you're making more money than you expected...

Professor

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3K Messages

9 years ago


@Daved31415 wrote:
... Forgive me, this forum apparently treats a line break as me saying 'post it'. 

No it doesn't.  You can hit "Enter" all you want on your computer keyboard to create a line break, if that is what you are referring to.  It won't post until you click "Post Reply".

 

You can also click "post options" and delect Edit to revise your previous posts.

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