Solved: Re: Galaxy A33 5G - Restart required to switch on WiFi

Frederiek74 · ‎04-03-2023

Whenever I am at the office at work, after a short while my A33 5G loses wifi connection with the company wifi-network, and the phone will no longer succeed in switching to wifi, even after moving to another wifi-network. The only way to switch on wifi is by restarting my phone. But at the office, within minutes I lose wifi connection again. Never had issues connecting to the company wifi-network using my old phone.

Until now I rarely experienced this issue elsewhere but at work. I think I'm using my A33 5G for about one month now.

My phone runs

One UI 5.0
Android 13

Does anyone have more information on this issue? Is there a way to fix it? Is this a known issue to Samsung?

Badger42 · ‎04-03-2023

You could try to turn on and off airplane mode to see if it helps reconnecting the WiFi instead of rebooting the phone. You could also try the reset option under general management, reset. But this resets the WiFi, mobile and Bluetooth settings as well. The final option if these don't work, is to do a factory reset on the phone to see if helps.

IceColdCrash · ‎06-03-2023

I am having exactly the same problem,

Have tried everything, factory reset and installed apps one by one instead of smart switch, changed all settings and problem persists, sometimes lasts a day, sometimes more but keeps happening and the result is me running out of mobile data, there is definitely a problem that needs to be fixed and it's hard to "replicate" for warranty purposes

Frederiek74 · ‎07-03-2023

Hi Badger42,

Thanks I will try the things you suggested. As for now, I can tell turning on and off airplane mode does not solve the problem. The phone will not connect to the wifi network. It does after rebooting.

My gutfeeling tells me none of these suggestions will work. I am using my phone for a month, and have been using it for ordinary stuff, i.e. social media, google, ... nothing special. So, if I run into a persistent problem like this within days, while just doing normal things, then I'm pretty sure I will run pretty quick into the same problem again, after doing a factory reset. But I will try all suggestions, just to be 100% sure, and so I can say that I did, to hopefully motivate Samsung, or any other party that is responsible for the proper operation of the phone they built, to do something about it.

Anyway, this problem feels like a fundamental reoccurring issue, not a problem due to a temporary glitch in the network, or some rarely triggered software bug. The reason I think so is, the problem happens persistently. I go to work, my phone tries to connect to the wifi network at the office, fails to do so, and from that point will fail to connect to any wifi network, until I reboot. 100% reproducible. With my previous phone, I had no problem connecting to the wifi network at the office. And, as far as I am aware, neither does any of my colleagues currently have problems connecting their phone to the wifi network. At home on the other hand, I have perfect wifi connection (after rebooting the phone when I arrive from work). Walking out of wifi range disconnects the phone from the network, and walking back into range automatically connects to my home wifi network. So, thus far, no problems at home. But, apparently, the wifi network at the office completely locks down the wifi functionality on my phone. And just my phone. This is pointing towards an issue that is related to the combination of my phone and the wifi network at the office.

Badger42 · ‎07-03-2023

That is weird that it works on the home network and not on work properly. Just another quick thing to check is under wireless network setting is the MAC address set to randomised or to phone. It maybe worth changing it from its current setting to the other option. If you are still having issues and factory reset doesn't help, you will need to speak to Samsung about getting it checked under warranty. I use the A53 which is a similar version to A33 with slightly better camera and have no issues on WiFi switching using A13 and One UI 5.1.

Frederiek74 · ‎11-03-2023

Just a small rectification regarding my previous message where I say I can't connect to the wifi-network at work. Fact is, my phone initially does connect to the wifi-network. Or at least, initially it indicates that the phone is connected. But within 5 minutes I lose connection, i.e. wifi on my phone gets disabled. And after that, I can't connect to any wifi-network anymore, until I reboot my phone. And this scenario is 100% reproducible.

Things I tried to solve the problem thus far:

switch airplane mode on/off
reset network settings

Neither of these options restored the wifi-function on my phone. Still had to reboot to get it working again.

In the wifi-settings on my phone, the MAC-addresstype is set to random. I will see if I still lose connection with the company wifi-network if I change the MAC-addresstype to phone. If that doesn't work, I'll reset my phone to factory settings. If I'm not mistaken, Android 12 was originally installed on the phone. Within days after using the phone for the first time, Android 13 was pushed on it. I think, after the factory reset I'll hold off on Android 13 for a while, just to see if Android 13 is the culprit.

I also figured out we are using Fortinet FortiAP U221EV access points at work. These supposedly have built-in firewall, and MAC blacklist & whitelist. Perhaps the evil IT-department is blocking me from their precious wifi-network. Just kidding. About the IT-department being evil that is.

Frederiek74 · ‎25-03-2023

A couple of weeks ago an Android update was installed on my phone. After the update, the problem with the wifi on my phone getting stuck, does no longer occur.