I have a 4G connection that’s pretty solid, and a grandfathered unlimited data plan. I’m not even sure how to switch to wifi.
everyone’s pretty much said the same thing as each other, and i have little to add that hasn’t been said.
but a few notes:
- in some cities, wifi is much faster than the cell signal i get there. i have up to 4g, but for example in my folk’s city, i only get 2g, so it is always better to switch to wifi there. on the road, i notice in some smaller towns the cell signal may be even as low as G, so i connect to wifi in the hotels to get a reasonable data speed.
- leaving wifi on all the time is a huge battery drain, i found out. so it takes a little user input to control. i do not know if said aps that search under certain settings also turn wifi on/off (on my android, wifi has to be on first, THEN you pick where you want to connect. having it on at all, even disconnected from any actual networks drains the battery).
- even unlimited dataplans have a data limit before they throttle you. i have “unlimited” data but a 2gb plan; if i go over 2gbs of data, i can keep using it unlimited–but they throttle me to 56k downloading speed. i tested it. it’s true. it’s crippling.
so in that case streaming video or heavy data use is better to jump over onto wifi because once you’re throttled, unlimited or not, it is useless.
I do it (or let it be done automatically, as the case may be), even with an unlimited data plan, because it’s faster even than 4G. But I rarely do anything in a place where I’d be using a public network that I’'m really worried about some sort of eavesdropping on.
I leave WiFi off unless I’m at home, on campus, or somewhere where I know the cell signal is poor or nonexistent but the WiFi is good – like deep in a large building (think hospital, gov’t office) or at Disney World.
Android really likes having an internet connection, so hunting for a usable cellular data signal can kill the battery; this is why I use WiFi at Disney and in large buildings, cause I know that the phone won’t spend its life jumping around trying to get and keep a clear data connection.
At Starbucks or Panera or whatever I usually have my MacBook Air with me so I use that instead of my phone for anything there.
I turn the wifi on at home and update aps etc over that rather than over the phone network, mainly because it’s faster.
When i go out I tend to turn the WIFI off as if I want to go online while having a coffee or sandwich, the free ones are a PITA to log into.
Anyway, I get 1 gig with my plan on my Samsung Galaxy sIII and rarely use more than 15% of that.