Any way to stop an iPhone from disconnecting WiFi when locked and not on charge?

[east85]

I have an iPhone 4S on iOS 7.0 that consistently disconnects from WiFi after a few minutes if I lock the device. It does have a passcode.

I was considering upgrading to iOS 8+ but Hangouts updated for iOS7 so I didn't bother. Is this a bug or normal behavior, and can it be stopped with iOS 8+?

If this isn't normal behavior I'll go ahead and reset network settings as plan A.

 

[nightstalkerz]

This is normal behaviour for iOS6.

iOS7/8 broke this and appears to keep wifi on at least 90% of the time (at least for me).

You probably don't want iOS8 on your 4S since it lags a lot.


Is there a reason why you need wifi always on? You still can get notifications when they appear.

 

[east85]

This is normal behaviour for iOS6.

iOS7/8 broke this and appears to keep wifi on at least 90% of the time (at least for me).

You probably don't want iOS8 on your 4S since it lags a lot.


Is there a reason why you need wifi always on? You still can get notifications when they appear.

I hotspot my iPhone to my iPad which has unlimited LTE from AT&T so when I'm out I just carry both but silence my iPad and answer on the iPhone. My iPhone needs no plan because of this. I bring the mini with me everywhere anyways so it isn't much of a drawback. When I'm at home it's nice to have a choice as well, although I tend to prefer taking calls on my iPad or MacBook.

My phone number runs through Google Voice which is integrated with Hangouts and uses data only. My iPad plan only costs me $29.99/mo and pretty much acts as a router for home internet and whatever else I want.

All that aside I'll try and reset network settings to see if that helps any. The phone did ship brand new, with iOS 7.0 (the original release of iOS 7), not really looking forward to upgrading to iOS 8, but if I do I'm going with a clean install. Anyways as a result of all of this I've just been keeping the phone unlocked otherwise it's useless, which is pretty terrible for battery life as you can imagine.

 

[east85]

Resetting the network settings seems to have done the trick, for now. Fingers crossed.

 

[east85]

Spoke too soon. Anyways just did a clean install of iOS 8.2. Set up as new, no restoring. Reduced motion. Disabled predictive text because that takes up too much of the screen for such a small device tbh. Seems after testing it for a few hours now my problem has been solved.