Samsung Galaxy A53 can't connect to mesh wifi (TP-Link Deco X60)

[Akuher]

Samsung Galaxy A53 is not able to connect to TP-Link Deco X60 mesh wifi. Connecting to the wifi fails most of the time and when it finally succeeds it soon disconnects again. I have tried resetting Galaxy A53 network settings and even hard resetting the phone. Those measures didn't solve the problem. I also got a replacement phone but still the same problem occurs. We have two other Samsung phones and multiple other devices connected to the same mesh wifi without any problems. Galaxy A53 is the only one that fails to connect.

I have tried to solve this problem with TP-Link and they have acknowledged the problem. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to fix it and now they are leaning towards this being Samsung's problem, not theirs. Maybe a problem with latest Exynos chips. You can also find discussion about the problem here:

New Samsung A53 can't connect stable to Wifi on Deco X60, connection keeps dropping - Home Network C...

It seems that the problem is with 5 GHz wifi with safety encrypion enabled. If any kind of safety encryption is enabled on the wifi when 5 GHz is also enabled, A53 is not able to connect to it. As soon as I disable safety encryption, connection becomes stable. Also disabling 5 GHz removes the problem. Sadly, neither of these are a permanent solution to the problem. I also noticed that A53 is able to connect to the mesh wifi's main router. Wifi connection is stable near the main Deco but connection fails as soon as A53 moves nearer one of the two slave Decos.

I really hope Samsung can fix this soon! A few weeks ago I posted about this problem to the US Samsung Community but for some reason that post got deleted without any answer from Samsung. I know this is a wide spread problem as you can see from the TP-Link forum discussion (the link above). Hopefully Samsung isn't trying to wipe this under the rug.

Galaxy A53 5G 

[Lingard87]

Have you tried turning off Mac Randomisation in the WiFi settings for the network?

[Akuher]

Yes, tried that. Nope, does not help.

[dwb037]

I'm having exactly the same problem on a Ruckus multi-Access Point home network. 

I've pretty much reached the same conclusion as you re new Chipset in this A53

See my post here 

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-a-series/samsung-a53-wifi-6/td-p/5534937

[Members_IiSY2bU]

I have the same issue on a tp-link Deco. Tried with 2 different A53 and all the troubleshooting that samsung support provided, nothing works. All other devices that I tried (samsung or not) worked just fine. 

The temporary fix is to disable mesh, every advanced setting and 5ghz. 

Any permanent solution? 

It is really bad to have a new phone that isn't compatible with the current network set up. 

[Akuher]

You could try disabling fast roaming (IEEE 802.11r) between Decos. That helped at least with Deco X60 version 3. That isn't an optimal solution because then none of my other devices can leverage the fast roaming feature. But at least A53 seems to be able to connect to the mesh wifi and keep stable connection. I could not find any reliable info if A53 supports fast roaming or not. Looks like it doesn't. If so, it's yet another downside of Exynos 1280. Just like not supporting wifi 6.

Not sure if this will help with Deco 60 version 2, though. Different versions apparently have a little bit different hardware which may cause  different kinds of problems.

[Akuher]

My A53 got updated to One UI 5, but still this wifi problem hasn't been fixed. 👎

[mobiker64]

I also have the same problem with 2 new A53 connecting to my Deco X60 with 1 main-router and 3 satellites. It is really crazy, that the new A53 does not work with a new Mesh WiFi. When I connect the A53 to another, WiFi-systems, it works perfectly. And all my other WiFi-devices work perfectly with my Deco X60. As workaround, I changed my guest-WiFi to 2.4 GHz only. I also tried working with a fixed IP on my A53 and I changed the MAC settings to use the MAC from the A53. But both settings did not help. I also really hope that Samsung will solve this issue with a driver-update for the WiFi-chip.

[Members_pAV3Df1]

Exactly same issue for me...! 

[RogierBend]

Same issue with my new A53 5G and Deco set