[Hero, G2 Touch Android Development] dkelley:
here's a little known thing, at least I've never seen it mentioned...

I don't know what the hell is wrong with android's design here but it happened in 1.5 and still happens in 2.1:

I have wifi at home but terrible H/3G/2G performance at home (almost zero connectivity, but typically 1 or sometimes 2 bars... note that from my experience, 1 bar means it's connected but zero significant data can be transmitted/received). so at home, where I get 1 bar Mobile but 3+ bars wifi, with both networks enabled, I get ZERO data capability. I have to turn off the Mobile networking in settings for my phone to actually use wifi. otherwise it always tries to use mobile networking, even if the signal strength sucks. According to the settings in android 2.1 itself it is supposed to use wifi whenever possible and only use mobile if wifi isn't strong enough or is turned off. That's not my experience, either in 1.5 or in 2.1 villainrom 5.5.

This is an important bug in android OS itself (at least on my phone, consistent from 1.5 to rooted 1.5 to sense2.2 to villain5.5) and something that needs to get fixed. I'll report it to google at some point but am first wondering if it's something others have figured out is happening as well or if it's either unique to me or maybe just something I've come across but doesn't affect other users in their daily lives?

Maybe my situation (with bad mobile at home but good wifi there) is just the right environment to discover this bug, and maybe therefore it's gone unnoticed until now. I don't know :-) But if you think about that - if I'm correct then it means that you could well be using lots of mobile data each month even if you have wifi setup and showing in your phone's settings as being enabled and your phone claims it will use wifi first, mobile second.

So unfortunately it does mean that I must turn off mobile internet at home once I turn on wifi or else I'll still get no web browsing capability etc since the dumb phone only tries to connect through mobile's crappy signal quality in my house.

if this is something that a rom hacker can fix then go for it - I have no idea what visibility into things you guys have. however it seems to be that it's some simple logic that is basically missing or broken in android. If wifi signal strength is greater than 25% or something like that then get data from wifi. if wifi data getting times out then try getting data from Mobile internet but always check wifi level first. if wifi level always show > 25% but it always times out then after 3 or 4 fallbacks to Mobile internet popup a warnign to the user that somethign is wrong with their wifi data transmissions and to talk to their wifi service provider or check their wifi's firewall or security settings.

blah blah... speaking as a developer that's what I would think should be in Android. I somehow doubt that's within the realm of what can be done within a rom hack - you're not rewriting and recompiling Android code after all - but hell, it's worth asking! :-)

can't wait to see what you've worked on for 5.6 when it comes out. Personally I'm rooting (haha) for fixes to the alarms and fixes if/where possible to the phone ringing delays and to the headphone jack and/or to bluetooth connectivity for handsfree devices. but I'm sure you've been working on 5.6 much longer than the past 2 days where I've been whining about my own petty little problems LoL

no matter what - this rom is killer!

cheers,

Don