Galaxy Note 2 wifi authentication error when connected to bluetooth headset
pejmanb
Newbie

Hi everyone,

First I have to say I absolutely love my GN2 that I bought last Nov.

Last week I bought a Plantronics BackBeat 903+ Bluetooth Headset to listen to online radio when I'm at work. While at work I connect to company wifi.

Here's what I have:

WIFI               on (connected)

Bluethooth     on (connected to my headset)

As soon as I open the radio app it drops out of wifi and connects to 4G. I open wifi setting and it says "Authentication error". My thought was that may be the URL that the app is trying to connect is blocked on the company wifi. So I tried to check a website on my phone that I'm sure is not blocked (verizonwireless.com in this case). To my surprise the same thing happened. My Note 2 dropped the wifi and connected to 4G. I tried couple of other apps that require data and every time I got the same result.

This time I disconnected my Bluetooth Headset (there was nothing else connected thru bluetooth) and tried the Internet radio app once again and to my surprise it worked flawlessly. It was playing the radio while connected to wifi without disconnecting!!!

I wasn't sure if it's the Headset or the phone! I have a Samsung H6000 Bluetooth headset that I use when I'm driving. So I brought that in and while connected to wifi I connected my Note 2 to that Headset. And guess what, same problem as the other headset happened. It was constantly dropping out of wifi and connecting to 4G and when checking the wifi network this message was showing "Authentication error occurred"!!!

I have done the same tests with my wifi at home and have got the same disappointing results.

I have disconnected from the wifi and have reset the connection but still have the same problem. I practically have done everything short of resetting the phone to factory defaults which I highly doubt that it helps.

Any ideas?

Thanks

P.S. After a little try out I found out that this happenes only when I'm connected to the wifi at work. Plus I found out that this even happenes when I start to listen to the music that's saved on my phone (not even using the internet)! It seems the Bluetooth and WIFI radio are in conflict that only one can be active at a time!!!!

I'm really baffled!

Please, anyody?

Message was edited by: Pejman Bakhtiar    After a little more digging I found out that it happens on 2.4GHz WIFI regardless. It either disconnects or slows down drastically! I was able to duplicated the same problem with Galaxy S3! I even tried to duplicate it on an iphone 4s which I couldn't (though the WIFI speed dropped but did not disconnect). I have called Verizon Tech. Support with no luck as they have not heard of this problem and that they couldn't help me and they refered me to Samsung. I contacted Samsung and they also said that they haven't heard about this problem and that BT and WIFI should work together with no problem but they wanted me to send the phone in for them to check it out! I also found this article by HP (even though it was written in 2002 but it sheds some light on this issue, though you'd think they would've fixed it by now!): http://www.hp.com/rnd/library/pdf/WiFi_Bluetooth_coexistance.pdf I'm still waiting to hear from a verizon rep. here which it seems is not going to happen as this post has been on for almost 3 weeks now and no answer from Verizon!!!!

Labels (1)
0 Likes
Re: Galaxy Note 2 wifi authentication error when connected to bluetooth headset
pejmanb
Newbie

I think I found the answer to my own question (no thanks to Verizon)!

I found this article online which was written recently (2012) and explains the WIFI - Bluetooth interference pretty well. Here is the link:

http://www.ecnmag.com/articles/2012/03/wi-fi-and-bluetooth-coexistence

The way it has been explained is that if the WIFI & BT radios are on the same chip and using the same antena to send and receive, they WILL interfere no matter what. Having them on two different chips is the best way. But Frequency Isolation (Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH)) is a way to reduce interference when they are both on the same chip (as it is in Galaxy Note 2 & S3 - they have Broadcom BCM4330 for wifi/bluethooth/FM) which I guess needs to be addressed in a software update (or may be it already has and is not working well). The last solution is to use 5GHz band for WIFI.

There you have it. But please let me know what you think and if you have found out anything else.

Thanks

0 Likes