If you want to check if your Android device supports WiFi 5GHz along with 2.4GHz, these are the steps you should follow to know.
Any Android device with WiFi capability supports the 2.4GHz band. Being the last generation, WiFi 2.4GHz is pretty slow and cannot properly support multiple devices on the same network. In fact, when it comes to things like home streaming and online games, 5GHz band WiFi is markedly better compared to 2.4GHz. That is one of the reasons why WiFi 5GHz support is important if you are into online gaming, home streaming, local network sharing, or anything network intensive.
For the most part, WiFi 5GHz is becoming the standard in all most all modern routers. Thankfully, Android devices nowadays support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for WiFi. When your device supports 5GHz, you can connect to a WiFi 5GHz network without any problems.
However, if you are using an older Android phone or tablet and don’t know whether it supports 5GHz or not, follow the steps shown below to check if the Android device has support for WiFi 5GHz.
Steps to Check Android Device Support for 5GHz
To know if your Android phone supports WiFi 5GHz band, follow the steps listed below.
1. First, install the open-source WiFi Analyzer from the Play Store.
2. After installing WiFi Analyzer, open it from the app drawer.
3. As soon as you open the app, you will see all the available access points. Since we want to know if the device supports WiFi 5GHz, tap on the “Channel Graph” option on the bottom bar.
4. If your Android phone supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, you will see it right under the “Channel Graph” heading on the top bar.
If your device doesn’t support the 5GHz band, you will only see “2.4GHz” on the top bar.
Advantages of WiFi 5GHz
Below are some of the advantages of 5GHz over 2.4GHz.
- Compared to 2.4GHz, 5GHz has way better bandwidth. In the real-world, 5GHz gives you around 210Mbps to 1Gbps while 2.4GHz gives you around 150 Mbps.
- The 5GHz band is outside the other common devices like microwaves, cordless phones, home security and monitoring systems, etc which work in the 2.4GHz band. This means that your WiFi network will be interference-free from other devices.
- Compared to 11 channels in 2.4GHz, the 5GHz band has 25 channels. This means that you can fine-tune your network to function in different channels to reduce interference.
- 5GHz 802.11ac WiFi routers are more advanced thanks to useful features like Dynamic Frequency Seelction, Power Control, Beamforming, etc.
One major disadvantage of 5GHz band is that its range is shorter than 2.4GHz and it cannot effectively penetrate through thick walls. So, if you want to cover a big area with walls in between then 2.4GHz is the ideal solution. Since all the 5GHz Android devices also have 2.4GHz built-in to them, this should be a problem.
Do keep in mind that to get the advantages of 5GHz WiFi network, you need to connect to it via your Android device.
That is all. I hope that helps. If you need any help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible.